Digital learning technologies are expected to fundamentally transform in-company vocational training. However, current surveys report that the potential of digitalisation in VET has not yet been fully exploited (e.g. EC 2020, 13, 72). In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic a sudden need for emergency remote education caused ad hoc implementations of digital learning technology. Some educators in companies offering apprenticeships have only been able to sustain home office-based training by using digital learning technologies for the first time. This contribution raises the question of whether these ad hoc implementations helped trainers to improve the use of digital learning technologies to support the development of apprentices’ vocational skills. Research shows that tapping the full potential of digital learning technologies requires pedagogies such as collaborative and individualized learning, project- and action-based learning, self-directed learning, gamification, and learner-centred training (e.g. De Witt 2013, Morris/Rohs 2021, Ng 2015, OECD 2017). However, it remains unclear how in-company trainers are using digital learning technology in detail, which functions they serve in the apprentices’ learning processes, and which ad hoc implementations are sustained beyond the end of the pandemic. These questions are of particular importance because the impact of digital learning technology on apprentices’ learning largely depends on the way trainers use these technologies (see Comi et al. 2017).

This contribution draws primarily on a questionnaire survey among vocational training staff in companies offering apprenticeships in Austria. Complementary interview-based data was collected in a second survey wave. The focus is on COVID-19 implications for in-company training and on the digital VET competencies (Redecker 2017) of vocational educators.

Digitalisation of learning may improve the quality of in-company vocational training for ex-ample by allowing for additional individual support in particular for heterogeneous groups of learners such as apprentices. This would require pedagogies that offer more individualized or self-directed learning. Preliminary results indicate that a number of trainers surveyed used digital learning technology to make training flexible enough for working and learning in distance. Implementations of digital learning such as these proved to be of little value out-side of the emergency remote situation. Accordingly, the use of digital learning innovations declined outside lockdown periods but did not quite fall back to pre-pandemic levels. An additional explorative analysis of the available data reveals that digitalizing the learning of the in-company trainers themselves supports tapping the full potential of digital tools. The final results will be presented at the conference.

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