Digital Transformation of Curricula for Vocational High Schools the Field of Electrical Engineering and Electronics

"<< Background >>The demand for specialists in electrical engineering, electronics and automation continues to grow worldwide. To encourage young people to choose this industry and actively develop it, it is necessary to provide education, especially at the secondary school level, when young people encounter these issues for the first time, at the highest level, using modern tools and up-to-date educational content. It is therefore necessary to develop new educational tools, especially those that use digital tools and enable today's youth to use them easily. The development of a digital educational platform containing educational materials in a convenient form, with up-to-date content and developed at an internationally unified level will significantly improve the quality of education at the vocational education level. An important aspect of the project is also the exchange of good practices at the international level between teachers providing vocational education in the field of electronics and electrical engineering. It allows for the unification of education levels between different countries, and thus the training of specialists prepared for the global market.<< Objectives >>The main goal of the project was to develop an educational tool in the field of electronics and electrical engineering that uses new information technologies and is easily accessible to the recipient. An important aspect of the developed educational tool was the appropriate selection of educational content common to vocational education programmes in different programme countries. Another important goal of the program was to exchange good practices and present educational tools used by various project partners, allowing for the modernization of the offered content and familiarization with new laboratory tools. The presence of an academic partner in the consortium allowed for the selection of educational content in such a way as to enable a smooth transition of users of the platform developed in the project from secondary school education to academic education. The presence of partners from outside the education sector, but related to education, was aimed at using the latest information and communication technologies to develop the project results, enabling the creation of a modern, functional and easy-to-use tool.<< Implementation >>The implementation of activities can be divided into three stages: preparatory and exploratory activities, activities related to the development of the main project result, and activities related to the verification and dissemination of project results. The first group of activities includes the ""Co-creation workshop"" devoted to the selection of the scope of educational materials to be digitized and a series of study visits aimed at exchanging good practices and learning about the educational potential of the project partners. The second group of activities involved developing the main result of the project, i.e. preparing educational materials in a specific scope and form and their digitization in the form of the EVOCE educational platform. The third group of activities includes pilot workshops for school youth, aimed at testing and verifying the quality of the developed project results, and a series of dissemination activities aimed at the environment (local and more global) of the project partners. Complementary activities included activities related to the visibility of the project and its promotion in various environments and on various platforms, especially digital ones.<< Results >>The main result of the project, with a wide scope and long-term impact, is the interactive educational platform EVOCE, offering an educational course in the area of electrical engineering and electronics addressed to students of secondary vocational schools as a further training course and to teachers of such schools as a tool supporting the educational process. The EVOCE platform, which is the result of the project, covers three thematic areas: basic electrical circuits, electronic components and systems, and the basics of electrical and electronic measurements. This is a fundamental area, always included in education in the field of electrical engineering and electronics. The second type of results were educational activities carried out as part of the project, including a series of study visits to project partners and a series of pilot workshops for school youth. These activities allowed for the increase of competences of participants (both teachers and students) in the area of professional competences, as well as in the area of soft skills, including the internationalization of the educational process."