Enseignement professionnel | EPFL Graph Search

vignette|Enseignant d’informatique en situation de démonstration des composants de l’unité centrale d’un ordinateur au lycée professionnel de Ferké (Nord de la Côte d'Ivoire). L'enseignement professionnel est un enseignement technique secondaire ou supérieur, en formation initiale ou par alternance, en relation avec le monde de l'entreprise qui permet d'acquérir des connaissances et des compétences dans un domaine professionnel, alors que l’enseignement général est plus académique. Enseignement secondaire L'enseignement secondaire technique, comme l'enseignement secondaire professionnel, est un enseignement secondaire qui permet d'acquérir des connaissances et des compétences dans un domaine professionnel, alors que l’enseignement général est plus transversal et conceptuel. En Belgique Enseignement technique de transition Cet enseignement issu de celui de général de transition, vise à rendre des élèves performants pour les amener vers les études supé

Design and evaluation of digital tools to expand experience in vocational education

Kevin Gonyop Kim

Vocational education and training (VET) is the most popular form of upper-secondary education in Switzerland, with more than two-thirds of the teenagers enrolling in a VET program after finishing their compulsory education. The vast majority of the Swiss VET systems have a dual-track structure where students learn in schools for one or two days per week while they do an apprenticeship in a company for the remaining days. Their professional competencies are developed through a combination of workplace experiences reinforced by the theoretical knowledge learned in school.While the apprenticeship at workplaces provides valuable experience to the learners, one concern is that there is a lack of diversity in the experiences of an individual apprentice. Motivated by this limited experience of VET learners in the workplace, the goal of our research has been to explore the possibilities of expanding their experiences. Focusing on design-related professions in VET, we consider exploring digital variations of a design as a way to expand the original experience related to the design. The research objectives of this thesis are (1) exploring possibilities to expand the experience of learners in design-related VET and (2) investigating the potential benefits of the expanded experience. To accomplish the research objectives, we formalize the idea of expanding experience for VET learners by defining the three dimensions of expansion: parametric, temporal, and social. We explore these three dimensions in three studies.For the parametric dimension, we investigate how learners explore a multidimensional space of possible designs using a digital tool and how we can support the process with an interface that enables disentangled exploration of design parameters. We present a tool called BloomGraph that has been developed for florist apprentices to explore flower bouquet designs, and the results from an experimental study that investigates the effectiveness of a graph interface for design exploration.For the temporal dimension, we explore how we can support the VET learners with envisioning the designs that change over time. We present a virtual-reality tool called GardenVR developed for gardener apprentices that allows creating a garden and exploring it in an immersive environment. In an experimental study with gardener apprentices, we investigate how they explore the time dimension using the tool, compare the tool with the current method of practice, paper-sketching, and study how the two interfaces can be combined in an instructional design to enhance the design outcome.Lastly, for the social dimension, we present a tool called Mixplorer that has been designed for a classroom scenario of gardener apprentices. The tool provides a way to socially explore design spaces by allowing the apprentices to create an initial design and recombine it with the designs of other learners. We present the results of two studies conducted using the tool that investigate its feasibility in the VET setting, potential benefits for the learners, and the effectiveness of the design-mixing process in creative practices.

EPFL2022

Detecting Latent Training Needs Using Large Datasets

Ramtin Yazdanian

In today's world, there is no shortage of disruptors acting on various professional domains. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, with its AI-driven and automation-focused technologies, has fundamentally changed many domains -- particularly the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) domain -- and continues to do so. The COVID-19 pandemic and its ensuing lockdowns have resulted in dramatic change in the workplace. These disruptors are fast-acting and rapidly change the skills landscape of many professional domains, introducing new skills and rendering old ones obsolete. In such a situation, it is imperative for educational institutions to keep their curricula updated in order to (re)train the workforce with the right set of skills for the new economy. However, most of the methodologies commonly used for analyzing training needs and effecting curricular change were developed during a time when the pace of change was slower, and thus have trouble quickly and effectively responding to today's rapid changes. As a result, the development of new approaches for the analysis of training needs is of utmost importance.The present dissertation is the result of an effort to develop such new approaches, using different types of data and approaching the problem from different perspectives. These approaches use big data methods on data sources that are large, pre-existing, and continually updated in order to identify the skill needs of the present and/or predict the skill needs of the future for various professions. Focusing on the ICT domain but also making forays into vocational domains, the present work examines the usefulness and feasibility of methodologies such as the estimation of topical difficulty, the prediction of the appearance of new skills, and the prediction of emerging skills (less popular skills expected to experience a surge in hiring demand) for the identification of training needs. The findings of this dissertation are twofold. Firstly, they demonstrate the pivotal role that decentralized educational platforms such as Stack Overflow (an online Q&A platform for ICT) and Udemy (a MOOC platform where anyone can create a course) play in lifelong learning, essentially making the case for a policy of sponsorship and promotion of such platforms in other professional domains. Secondly and more importantly, the results showcase the feasibility of predicting the emerging skills of the near future. The successful emerging skills methodology can therefore be used to provide valuable insights to training providers at a moment's notice, giving them time to prepare for the skills landscape of the future in advance. Thus, AI can be used to help solve the challenges it creates for educational institutions and the workforce. Future work, both in the form of policymaking and in the form of research, can help capitalize and expand on the results of this dissertation, furthering the cause of rapid curricular change.

EPFL2022

BloomGraph: Graph-Based Exploration of Bouquet Designs for Florist Apprentices

Pierre Dillenbourg, Kevin Gonyop Kim, Catharine Regina Monika Maria Oertel Genannt Bierbach

Exploring design space is an important process in finding solutions to a design task. In this paper, we present BloomGraph, an online application developed for florist apprentices to explore the space of bouquet designs. BloomGraph provides a graph-based interface that allows users to explore design variations as they follow the nodes in a graph. This paper presents the preliminary result from an experimental study with florist apprentices in vocational education in Switzerland. Based on the early findings, we discuss the potential of the application as a learning tool and address the next steps to be followed.

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2019

Detecting Latent Training Needs Using Large Datasets

Ramtin Yazdanian

EPFL2022

Design and evaluation of digital tools to expand experience in vocational education

Kevin Gonyop Kim

EPFL2022