With this in mind, we\u2019d like to fill you in on our recently published research<\/a> seeking to understand what educators in the vocational education & training (VET) space need to be effectively prepared to support vocational students in this modern digital teaching world, a summary of which follows below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our first major finding was that, in line with previous work in pedagogy in the VET space, VET educators were very aware of how useful technology could be to support teaching. They also in general indicated that they were comfortable with using technology in their own lives and were comfortable with learning how to use innovative technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This result is very consistent with the \u2018ease of use\u2019 metric within the widely used TAM framework<\/a>. The TAM framework provides a language system for analyzing digital frameworks and is separated into two separate measures, \u2018ease of use\u2019 and \u2018usefulness.\u2019 However, the result reveals the question of what do VET educators need to enable them to implement technology in their instruction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The key issue identified was that educators were less confident about how technology ties into their pedagogy. When asked whether they felt they could use technology in their classroom to support their students, VET educators were much less confident. Using the TAM framework as a lens again, it was clear from our study that whilst VET educators were happy with the \u2018ease of use measure,\u2019 there was still more work to be done to help educators understand the \u2018usefulness\u2019 of technology in their pedagogy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An approach to resolving this issue might be the Pedagogy Before Technology (PBT) model, proposed by Cowling & Birt<\/a>. The refined model in this paper shows how the PBT model can link the key questions of \u2018what is the problem?,\u2019 \u2018where is the solution?,\u2019 and \u2018how can technology help?\u2019 directly to these key concepts of \u2018ease of use\u2019 and \u2018usefulness\u2019 in the TAM model, helping to bridge technology comfort with the broader idea of technology use in the classroom. VET educators need assistance developing new technology centered pedagogies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, the last key finding of our work was that VET educators did not know how to connect their understanding of technology with their understanding of assessment. Specifically, they didn\u2019t understand how technology could be used to assess the skills of the students in their classes. VET educators were only using technology to proctor quizzes opposed tousing technology as a key assessment piece of the classroom experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\nVocational Educators don\u2019t hate technology<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
VET Educators need help on how technology improves instruction<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Especially when it comes to assessing skills<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/media-and-learning.eu\/files\/2022\/01\/image.png\")
<\/figure>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/media-and-learning.eu\/files\/2022\/01\/image-1.png\")
<\/figure>