<< Background >>Identified in the 2017 report of the French Inspectorate General of Social Affairs – IGAS, “digitalisation of vocational training is likely to profoundly renew pedagogies and training courses”. Indeed, e-learning practices in VET open the way to a large modernisation of the pedagogical approaches: development of new supports, increase of the interactivity, diversification of the tools, flexibility, and empowerment. All of these are crucially linked to the needed adaptation of the training offer to the learners’ needs, enhancing their motivation, and commitment to learning. Indeed, because of their remote, modular, and often asynchronous distribution methods, digital training is likely to remove certain constraints that limit access to training; a 2013 INSEE survey showed 16% of adults quit the VET sector due to the distance from the place of training. Using the modularization and adaptability of pedagogies and courses by developing digital learning ecosystems is then a great opportunity for the learners, gaining in flexibility and benefiting from a tailored approach.In that context, tackling the objective of developing more active and inclusive modalities for all is a real challenge for the VET sector, facing a large range of difficulties considering the learners’ heterogeneity: demographically (from 17 to 70 years old, from rural to urban areas, facing diverse socio-economic background), across large value chains, for employees or job seekers, all these differences modifying their learning needs, objectives, and styles. Meanwhile, digitalisation can also create or reinforce inequalities: difficulties to take into consideration the learners’ particular needs, especially the ones facing learning difficulties while shifting from physical to online training, computer illiteracy and lack of digital skills to benefit fully from the tools. Hence, the modernization and digitization of the VET sector remain to this day a modest and unequal process (IGAS).However, nowadays, all the educational sectors are digitalising in emergency reacting to COVID-19. The acculturation to digital tools is then a crucial step to answer to the current needs and strategy of the sector. This digitalisation hence supposes taking a qualitative leap forward, however, these changes are not natural, and more cooperation needs to be strengthened, to enable developing an innovative and digital system more broadly, on the one hand, to limit the risk of exclusion of the less qualified or from fragile territories and on the other hand to modernize vocational training.The UPTOOL project has been launched to answer these inter-related challenges of developing qualitative, learners-based digital approach in VET training, by facilitating active pedagogies and a better understanding of the heterogeneity of learners’ profiles in offering a tailored online educational ecosystem.<< Objectives >>To specifically tackle this global challenge and context, the project will rely on 4 concrete objectives:OBJECTIVE 1: STIMULATE THE DEPLOYMENT OF TAILORED AND ACTIVE PEDAGOGIES RELYING ON DIGITAL SOLUTIONS. Learners are individuals, and as such each is different. Different learners have different needs; they differ, for example, in their goals, prior knowledge, learning styles and skills. In the world of educational research, we are now beginning to introduce the issues linked to the cognitive differences of learners by deploying more and more adaptive systems, integrating the specificities of each learner in the construction of learning methods. In the field of VET training, performing these adaptations are crucial but difficult, as, on the contrary with other sectors with more homogeneous cohort, there is a greater need for personalisation in vocational training. In that way, implementing active pedagogy is a real challenge in which the use of digital learning can provide a range of supporting tools: by providing more flexibility on the learning rhythm, by enabling to access diverse supports including short and brief precise contents for workers, and longer-term handouts on a specific topic for learners with more needs in terms of didactic information. However, identifying and understanding these needs is a complex process as it requires analysing the learners’ profiles and their interactions with the tools. To bring insights to this challenge, the project will propose a strict methodology in which the learning profiles will be assessed and translated into case studies enabling.OBJECTIVE 2: PREVENT LEARNING DROPOUT WHEN SHIFTING FROM TRADITIONAL TO ONLINE MODALITIES and target learning impairments and disabilities by tackling several profiles in the recommendations, including learners with cognitive impairments. As stated in the IGAS report, “digital modalities should not contribute to increasing inequalities in access to training but on the contrary, should be used to reduce them. This requires ensuring the production of an offer aimed at priority audiences, namely job seekers and employees of small businesses; to reduce the situations of illiteracy”.OBJECTIVE 3: SUPPORT LEARNERS, TRAINERS, AND INSTITUTIONS IN THE SHIFT TO MORE DIGITAL MODALITIES BY OFFERING BEST PRACTICES TOWARDS AN INCLUSIVE VIRTUAL LEARNING ECOSYSTEM, FIGHTING AGAINST DIGITAL ILLITERACY. By offering support on the modernisation and digitalisation of the VET sector, the project will enable working on the participants’ acculturation to the digital transformation processes, that, even if the society is more and more digitally aware, remains a challenge. This is also the case for the trainers and pedagogical teams regarding their digital skills to implement qualitative e-learning contents, as, according to IGAS, the ability to use digital tools is a brake on the implementation of this digitalization. The lack of digital skills in the team represents still a barrier to digital training in 63% of cases. Hence, specific materials dedicated to the trainers will be developed, enabling them to acquire new digital skills enabling to ease the transformation process.OBJECTIVE 4: SUPPORT THE DEPLOYMENT OF A QUALITATIVE E-LEARNING STRATEGY, even more in the context of COVID-19, to avoid short term visions and take the opportunity of the situation for developing a more inclusive educational model instead of digitalising in the hurry.<< Implementation >>To achieve these objectives, the partners agreed on a set of activities leading to the achievement of the 4 project results and 10 project management and implementation activities. The logical set of activities will include: STEP 1 - ANALYSIS OF THE LEARNING PROFILES. The partners will identify how various learning situations reflect on the individual learning process of the learners and gather this information in use cases. This will be feasible by theoretically assessing the learners’ profiles and the reactions of learners on small tests on diverse e-learning modalities crossing with several criteria, likely to integrate at least: demographic information, analysis of the pedagogical challenges of the learners including metacognitive skills, learning motivations and digital. STEP 2 – TRANSLATION OF THE THEORETICAL MODELS IN LEARNING MODALITIES. A digital awareness-raising training module will be created based on pre-existing contents (digital practices, literacy, cybersecurity) and digitalised on diverse formats and modalities answering the needs of each use case i.e. learners' particular needs. This will include applying modifications of formats (text form, reading supports, graphic environment, sound environment, interactivity, offering radically different e-learning modalities (asynchronous, mobile learning, microlearning, web-based ecosystems, social learning, flipped learning, serious game for instance), and finally, diverse pedagogical approaches (inquiry-based learning, didactic, active and discovery-based pedagogies ...). Combined, these three levels will enable a strong personalisation of the training to the learners' needs.STEP 3 - EXPERIMENT AT REAL SCALE. Once the materials and tools will be ready, yearly experimentation will be launched. Based on a learning analytics module, key metrics will be collected: completion rates, students' progress, when a user last logged in, course status, number of students enrolled, total time spent training, individual assessment/quiz scores, learning path data, number of answer attempts. STEP 4 - ASSESSING AND SUSTAINING. Once collected, these data will be translated into recommendations for the pedagogical engineers and learners, in a view to supporting active pedagogies in VET education. These practices will be gathered in a handbook structured around the current issues encountered by digital training systems. Its ambition is to show what questions to ask yourself to improve the training systems in line with developing active and learners-centred learning modalities. This guide will provide a co-construction axis to VET learning where pedagogical engineers, trainers and learners can dialogue to reconcile digital and an optimal learning experience. Materials will be created for upskilling trainers and the pedagogical engineering teams regarding the use and understanding of the different e-learning modalities that can enable developing a better tailored and inclusive digital learning programme for the learners. A large dissemination campaign will enable enlarging, replicating and transferring the project outcomes at a larger scale. To achieve this methodology, the partnership will rely on a multi-stakeholder approach, gathering a specialist of e-learning modalities (Haikara), 2 VET centres in France (Purple Campus) and in Germany (BBW) as well as the University of Latvia, through their Faculty of Education, Psychology and Art enabling to approach digitally-enhanced education with a concrete and specific assessment methodology.<< Results >>The project will eventually result in several tangible and intangible outcomes: 1. The release of documented strategies towards digitalization and active pedagogies applied to the VET sector and gathered in a final handbook.2. The deployment of a training module on digital literacy, highly replicable by being universal and crucial nowadays in several professions from ICT to non-ICT workers. 3. The release of an e-learning ecosystem on the topic targeted, developed based on each theoretical definitions of the learners’ profiles. 4. Eventually, pedagogical material for training the trainers and pedagogical engineers to operationalise the results of the project in their daily activities. Intangible results and impacts will be reached including:1. By promoting inclusive learning and active pedagogies: better reaching the pedagogical objectives of the VET digitised courses; reducing the dropout of digital learning sessions and increasing inclusiveness of the learning pathways2. By supporting the modernisation of the VET sector: increasing digital competencies of learners and trainers3. By developing awareness-raising contents on digital skills: working on computer illiteracy of the learners, even the youngest that do not have nowadays access or the proper understanding of the possibilities offered by technology-enhanced pedagogies; participating in the integration of digital skills for non-ICT related professions