Each institution chooses its own focus. The digital transition is too comprehensive to be at the forefront of all areas.
Magazine
Mbo and SURF are growing together, to their mutual delight
Up to 90 per cent of mbo institutions are now member of SURF. What ambitions do they have regarding digital transformation? Where are the opportunities for cross-sector collaboration? We asked three mbo institutions, diverse in size and specialties: ROC van Amsterdam-Flevoland, SVO vakopleiding food and Cibap Vocational College for Design.
In January 2023, Digital Transformation Impulse for Education will start, an eight-year programme aimed at making better use of the opportunities of digitalisation for education. The Digital Transformation Impulse is a sequel to the mbo innovation programme Doorpakken op digitalisering and the ho-innovation programme Versnellingsplan Onderwijsinnovatie met ict. This time, the three sectors will work together. An ambitious plan? Certainly, but then the similarities in digital ambitions between the sectors are significant.
How knowledge travels through the world
"Our ambition is to bring both student, employee and organisation into the digital transformation on time and preferably at the front," says Gaby Allard, member of the Executive Board of the ROC van Amsterdam-Flevoland (ROCvA-F), the largest mbo institution in the Netherlands. "Of course ict contributes to efficiency and allows for changing educational content, but the value of ict is greatest when it comes to how students are positioned in society as human beings. Digital skills have become incredibly important for that."
Gaby Allard, board member ROC van Amsterdam-Flevoland
Urgent themes for ROCvA-F include training employees to be more digitally proficient, preparing for the professional field, remote guidance and lifelong development, as well as implementing a digital learning environment, digital examinations and personalised learning. These are topics that are likely to be familiar to other institutions as well. Yet each institution chooses its own focus. The digital transition is too extensive to be at the forefront of all areas. ROCvA-F, for instance, plunged into directing learning resources. From next school year, 2023-2024, all students at ROCvA-F will be able to use MBOmarktplaats to choose the supplier from which they purchase their learning resources. The aim is for other mbo institutions to also join this concept.
ROCvA-F is also among the forerunners in the field of open educational resources (OER). It has a Content Creation Team, which works in collaboration with teachers, companies and experts to develop and share OERs for a number of domains. This is a culture-changing project, because programme teams must learn to share with each other; both within their own ROC and with other mbo institutions. ROCvA-F sees great potential in further developing the underlying infrastructure for OERs, such as edusources, together with higher education. But the biggest gains, as far as Allard is concerned, lie elsewhere.
"Ultimately, it's about how students and staff move around, how knowledge travels through the world."
"Digital transformation is most easily explained through resources, technology and access," she says. "Ultimately, it's about how students and staff move around, how knowledge travels through the world - we still find that a difficult story to sell. That's where we as administrators can collectively develop a lot more knowledge."
Digital transformation too important for non-commitment
This is also experienced by Roeland Buijsse, chair of the Executive Board of SVO vakopleiding food. This relatively small institution with locations throughout the Netherlands has traditionally been a forerunner in digitalisation, mostly because of their investment in distance learning and lifelong development. Recently, this mbo has invested heavily in virtual reality and augmented reality. For instance, students at SVO nowadays learn to recognise meat parts not only with a real meat part in front of them, but also by viewing and turning virtual pieces of meat in the digital learning environment. They can also perform tasks in a VR version of a fast-food restaurant and in a digital cold store. Students can access all products through a VR dashboard.
Roeland Buijsse, chair of the board SVO vakopleiding food
"It is sustainable and it allows students to learn place- and time-independent," says Buijsse. "It really comes on top of teaching in practicum classes. And there is an edifying side to it: we like to show the market what is possible."
The development process of these educational products, by teachers together with the industry, has been a success. However, the implementation phase proved to be a lot more complicated. "The fact that we have these products in-house and tell about them, does not mean that all teachers use them. It is not yet a regular component of the lessons, and it has to become so."
"From 2023, we will become more coercive, even though doing so, not actually fits the nature of our organisation."
Tactics to seduce teachers to brush up their digital skills did not yield the desired results with everyone. The chair draws the conclusion that casualness is not enough to achieve digital transformation. "From 2023, we will become more coercive, even though doing so, not actually fits the nature of our organisation. Otherwise, we won't get it done."
He fully understands the discomfort experienced by some teachers. "This is a bigger step than the one to the digiboard. But we consider this so important for the future of our education, towards our students who do consider this important, that we all have to go through this."
SVO students learn to recognise products with a real product as well as a virtual version they can view and turn
Voyage of discovery through the Metaverse
For smaller schools, even more so than for larger ones, choices have to be made when it comes to joint innovation. Not only because of a smaller budget, but also because each collaborative project requires manpower.
"For us, the trick is to get involved in initiatives to which we can contribute and develop further, on our own scale," says Désirée Majoor, chair of the Executive Board of Cibap Vocational College for Design. The added value for its students and staff must be large and concrete. According to Majoor, this is the case, for example, in an initiative by Media Perspectives, in which a number of companies and vocational schools are jointly gaining knowledge about the Metaverse, the virtual 3D universe under construction.
Désirée Majoor, chair of the board Cibap Vocational College for Design
"Companies are struggling to find staff with the right knowledge and skills and finding that their own employees are lagging behind the rapid developments," says Majoor. "As schools, we find that our teachers face the same problem. Our students have to learn. That is why we take joint responsibility in this."
"We have the ambition to better support lifelong development."
Not only the content of subjects is changing under the influence of digitalisation, but also the education itself. This is why Cibap recently drew up a plan for blended learning, which will be implemented in phases. Courses whose qualification file is being updated, will include blended education in the toolkit for educational innovation. And finally, ict enables flexibilisation and personalised learning. "We have the ambition to better support lifelong development," says Majoor. "Even the target group we already have in our schools will eventually get a flexible education offer. That movement has to go hand in hand."
SURF and the mbo
The mbo institutions see that acting together in the digital transition offers great added value. While ROCvA-F has been a member of SURF for years and also provides the CSC chair, SVO Vocational College for Food and Cibap Vocational College for Design recently became full members. "You see that mbo schools now better know how to find each other, and SURF and MBO Digitaal are an important link in that," says Majoor. "Moreover, within SURF a service package is available that became increasingly extensive and relevant to us. Eventually, you then reach the tipping point at which it makes sense to join."
This is also how Roeland Buijsse thinks. "We are hooking up more and more and that suits us well. For SURF, it means they have to take into account a small school that needs very concrete tenders."
Gaby Allard hopes to learn a lot more from the other institutions and bring their own knowledge. "One of our themes is social innovation, learning from each other. For us an important reason for being affiliated to SURF and eager to collaborate with other sectors."
Text: Marjolein van Trigt
mbo and SURF are growing together, to their mutual delight is an article from SURF Magazine.
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