DIGI-PAINT: A digital vision for Painting Decorating Educators

<< Background >>The lockdown period during the pandemic highlighted the weakness of the vocational training system in the painting trade. A key challenge was the lack of digital skills among teachers and students. Most educators demonstrated significant deficiencies in creating digital learning materials for students and knowledge of the most common digital tools for online learning to engage students. This was probably also due to the lack of appropriate digital content and the low level of collaboration and interaction with students in the online environment. The desires of tutors and trainers to create good digital tailored solutions in apprenticeship programs to support the digitalization of training to engage and engage learners in the virtual environment to meet current and future challenges.<< Objectives >>To build a structured program aimed at educators in the painting and decorating sector to support them in adapting to digital. To design a resource database with painter technical content to overcome the lack of face-to-face situations. To support the work-based learning phases, several real-life situations and practical cases have been developed in the event that they will take place virtually. DIGI-PAINT would like to get educators excited about the topic of digitalization, namely virtual reality, in order to overcome its disruptive effects on the world of training and further education in the painting and decoration sector.<< Implementation >>The first activity of the project was the pedagogical concept for school training. By working on the required pedagogical competencies, it was possible to set up virtual training to build their capacity. Pedagogical guidelines in the form of fact sheets were created for 5 digital tutorials and teacher booklets, which were validated by educators and vocational training providers. Afterwards, 5 pedagogical scripts (story telling) were developed for the creation of the 5 tutorials and digitized to support teachers in distance learning. This was followed by the interactive learning phases from real situations to work, with the aim of concretizing 6 virtual real situations in order to explain ULOs of the painter and varnisher qualification to tutors in companies and trainees in a digital context in order to overcome the lack of face-to-face learning times in companies. An initial test phase of the digital content as virtual reality was carried out as part of a transnational meeting in Dublin. A validation of the practical cases was carried out at national level by tutors and trainees in the partner countries before the scripts are digitized to the virtual real situations. A database of digital painting tools (templates, cases, videos, << Results >>Apart from the closer cooperation between the partners, which always represents added value for better knowledge of sector and training issues, the following results emerged from the project-related activities:1 - Five digital tutorials on five topics: Educational to digital, digital tools to motivate learners, assessing learners and tips for creating digital content (can be transferred to other sectors)2 - Five teacher booklets in factsheet format to support the tutorials3- Five real-life practical cases and virtual situations that can be used in the work-based learning phases:- Pathologies, identification and solutions- Measuring and calculating – surface area, paint and varnish quantities- Spraying white emulsions onto a raw plaster ceiling- Covering wood coatings- wallpapering4 – The database of painting tools to support painting educators in their teaching activities5 - 10 scripts for organizing digital content and tools6 – The hub for teachers, trainers and tutorsThe results have been validated by the sector actors through:Transnational meetings for validation and to test interactive real-life situations in the SMEunited Brussels, TU Dublin, CEPEONS Brussels and FORMEDIL Rome, CENTER DE COMPÉTENCES PARACHÈVEMENT