Formal vocational education of young people is usually disconnected from their engagement in extracurricular activities. Schools and out-of-school learning environments rarely come together to develop a programme that would cross their borders. This results from different agendas prevailing in these sectors. School programmes are driven by national curricula giving teachers little time to go beyond the particular content of their course and its predefined schedule. On the other side of the scene there are non-formal education providers offering a range of courses which can be adapted to the needs and interests of learners in a particular context and time.

The key question of the project is how to bridge this gap and develop approaches which would open fields of cooperation between teachers and trainers for the benefit of young people preparing for their vocational careers. We look at the whole “ecology of learning” which goes beyond a narrow view of formal education towards a holistic perspective embracing school, online learning practices and out-of-school activities. With this perspective in view we aim to:

• • Strengthen partners’ cooperation with other organisations across the formal and non-formal VET sectors
  • Provide opportunities for students to extend their learning of vocational subjects beyond school
  • Design flexible learning pathways focusing on competent use of digital technologies for their future professions
  • Validate the approaches through piloting them during the project lifetime
  • Elaborate the findings from the pilots and publish them
  • Propagate the methodology widely to encourage growth of similar initiatives

The main output of the project is a methodical publication Digitally enriched curriculum bridging formal and non-formal VET describing 3 different models developed by the partners. The content will include exemplary learning scenarios in different areas of vocational education and training, issued in 4 languages: English, Polish, Greek and Italian. It will be published soon on this website for free downloads.

We will keep you updated on the progress of work. In the meantime, you can consult the section Tools and resources where we briefly introduce the technology used by us in the course of project workshops.