The “Digital Facilitator”: An Extended Profile to Manage the Digital Transformation of Swiss Vocational Schools

Digital transformation requires the field of education to increasingly deal with the interplay between the teachers’ individual development of digital competence and institutional integration and adoption of digital technology. This is especially crucial in the vocational education context, which is closer to the world of work and, therefore, more sensitive to the disruptive changes of digitalisation. This chapter addresses this issue by proposing the result of a project that aimed to identify a new professional profile in the context of dual vocational education in Switzerland. The Digital Facilitator is a new term that refers to a teacher with advanced digital competency who is an expert in facilitating digital innovation adoption within educational institutions. Thus, it constitutes a possible concrete way to address the issue of integrating the individual and the organisational perspectives related to digital transformation. The profile is discussed by presenting an analysis of acknowledged existing frameworks and by considering the specificities of the context in which it was developed. The opportunities and challenges associated with introducing the profile are also critically addressed.

Multi-Stakeholder Dialogues as Instrument for Design and Qualitative Research in Educational Organisations

The article focuses on the value of group discussions both as a method of organisational development and as a method of empirical social research. These two perspectives are discussed as a “double meaning”, which often occurs simultaneously in different forms. The concept of “multi-stakeholder dialogues” takes up this challenge. Following on from this, dimensions of the design and research of group discussions will be discussed. The contribution relates to the subproject “Multi-stakeholder Dialogues and Qualitative Evaluation” of the joint project “#ko.vernetzt”. The subproject had the task of accompanying, structuring and researching organisational development in a networked educational institution with dialogue formats. A total of nine dialogues were conducted with different groups of participants, six of which were analysed using qualitative methods. The research perspective is based on a concept of organisations from a praxeological perspective and an understanding of organisational culture as collective conjunctive experience. Thus, the object of qualitative research is the reconstruction of typical modus operandi of the processing of requirements. The results show that structural deficits in educational organisations are reproduced and reinforced by digitisation.

Competencies, Culture, and Change: A Model for Digital Transformation in K-12 Educational Contexts

On the surface, adopting technology presents itself as a technical issue. Yet, the real challenge of digital transformation in educational contexts necessitates a second-order change to disrupt and realign interconnected systems. A significant component of digital transformation in K-12 schools is an understanding of the unique affordances of digital tools and technologies and how these can be leveraged to align with learning goals and targets to impact teaching and learning in new ways. While there are several models for innovation diffusion and technology adoption in K-12 contexts, they fall short, particularly in describing the nature and interactions of these interconnected systems. These aspects of technology implementation remain a mystery. As a result, efforts to enact change in K-12 organizations often fall short due to a lack of understanding of context, inadequate goal-setting, insufficient professional development and personalized supports to build capacity, and a failure to evaluate progress. In K-12 educational settings, the people, the competencies, and the culture, alongside the strong leadership, resources, and organizational context, are all essential to effect sustainable change. We propose a model for digital transformation that considers all of these factors and interconnected systems.

#ko.vernetzt: Digital Transformation of an Educational Organization from a Media Educational Viewpoint

Like other areas, the education sector is facing challenges posed by digitization. The project #ko.vernetzt supports the educational organization Kolping-Bildungswerk Paderborn in the process of digital transformation. In this article it is presented and reflected from a practice-oriented media educational perspective. The outlined qualification measures are intended to ensure sustainable development in the context of digitization for both employees and the organization itself. The processes that are presented here are viewed from the perspectives of the organization and from the viewpoint of its employees. Media education and the transfer of work-related digital competences are equally of great importance in this respect. Insights from this project can be viewed in the greater discourse and eventually applied to other contexts. The work with Kolping-Bildungswerk Paderborn and all partners involved clearly shows that a successful digitization strategy must include the participation of all stakeholders and should always be viewed from the human perspective first.

Sustainability in a Digital Age as a Trigger for Organizational Development in Education

As we all know the terms sustainability and digitization are often used these days to describe current social challenges from a global perspective. In order to face these challenges, it is clear that we need an efficient and future-oriented education system. The question arises if the challenges in relation to climate change and digitization change these (learning) organizations as well? And, if yes, in what way? As this chapter points out, sustainability can be regarded as a trigger for an extensive organizational development focusing on ecological, economic (e.g. regarding learning outcomes and assessment) and social aspects. As a consequence, the social structure of the various actors in educational organizations as well as the way in which they interact with each other may/will change as well. In addition to that, climate change and digitization are both so-called wicked problems as there is neither a single solution nor a stringent strategy on how to cope with them.

Individualizing Workplace Learning with Digital Technologies

Vocational education and training (VET) at Swiss enterprises includes the work with various digital technologies. They ease administration of work hours, work tasks, evaluations or log book remarks; they support communication with peers, co-workers and trainers; and they come in handy for idea development and creative work. Overarching trends in terms of changing learning cultures in apprenticeship training, such as individualization, flexibilization, self-organized learning, project work or coaching, support the introduction of these technologies and also benefit from them. Based on three in-depth case studies, results on the usage and impact of digital technologies will be presented. This chapter addresses the following research questions: Which digital tools are used in workplace training? What are potential benefits and extended justifications for the use of digital tools? How are modern learning cultures impacting the use of digital tools? We will outline how and where digital technologies are used at the workplace in apprenticeship training, why management has introduced them and how apprentices and their trainers benefit from it. Based on our findings, we will draw conclusions about how learning cultures are influencing the use of technologies and vice versa how the introduction of these technologies shapes innovative learning cultures in VET.

Resistance to (Digital) Change

Resistance to change has been elaborated on from different perspectives: with a focus on employee resistance to change and as a systemic phenomenon, but also in the light of digital change and digital transformation. However, an integration of these approaches is not easy to find. This chapter discusses the phenomenon of resistance to change in light of current understandings of the concept as well as new elaborations, which might help to pinpoint specific challenges of digital change resistance. To this end, I will dive into the research traditions that have been built up around the concept. In order to understand resistance to digital change, specifically, I will draw upon the theory of Danish educational researcher Knut Illeris and explore the potential of his writings to explain resistance to digital change from a learning perspective. Throughout I will use examples from higher education digitalization research, to illustrate the respective phenomena. Key navigation points of this chapter are to elaborate resistance to (digital) change both as an individual and a systemic phenomenon and to contribute to a better understanding of resistance to digital change in light of incremental and disruptive change expectations.

Tracing Digital Transformation in Educational Organizations

This chapter describes the quantitative approaches for assessing various aspects of digital transformation from the joint research and development project #ko.vernetzt. In an application-oriented case study approach, the operationalization of a maturity model of digital transformation for educational organizations (MMEO) and the design and implementation of a multi-perspective evaluation concept are outlined. While the MMEO provides a state perspective on the digital transformation of an educational organization and its employees, the evaluation concept aims at tracing developments of media-related professional competencies. MMEO has been implemented in a study with N = 222 participants, while N = 59 learners were subject to the evaluation polls. The results provide the necessary evidence for implementing and continuously improving a qualification program in the regarded research context. However, the methodology can also be transferred to other organizations in the education sector and beyond.

The Concept of a Digital Twin and Its Potential for Learning Organizations

The digital transformation of organizations in the industrial sector is primarily driven by the opportunity to increase productivity while simultaneously reducing costs through integration into a cyber-physical system. One way to fully tap the potential of a cyber-physical system is the concept of the digital twin, i.e., the real-time digital representation of machines and resources involved – including human resources. The vision of representing humans by digital twins primarily aims at increasing economic benefits. The digital twin of a human, however, cannot be designed in a similar way to that of a machine. The human digital twin shall rather enable humans to act within the cyber-physical system. It therefore offers humans a power of control and the opportunity to provide feedback. The concept of the digital twin is still in its infancy and raises many questions in particular from an educational perspective. The contribution aims at answering the following questions and refers to the example of team learning: Which and how much data should and may the digital twin contain in order to support humans in their learning? To what extent will humans be able to control and design their own learning? How may skills, experiences, and social interactions of humans be represented in the digital twin; their growth and further development, respectively? With cyber-physical systems transcending corporate, national, and legal boundaries, what learning culture will be the frame of reference for the involved organizations?

Organizational Learning and Digital Transformation: A Theoretical Framework

The chapter discusses digital transformation as a potential source of crisis for the organization and develops a theoretical framework for further empirical research. The basic concept is that organizational learning is neither exclusively individually nor structurally and that actors and organizations are in a reciprocal relationship. Different requirements during digital transformation, either from the members of the organization or from the environment, force the organization to handle it. The chapter proposes four different ways, how organizations cope with digital transformation. Within the first two types, previous action routines terminate and organizational learning takes place. (1) The action routines of the members of the organization change, as well as there is a new understanding from the organization (educational process). (2) Digital transformation brings with it the implementation of the new digital objects, although the organizational members don’t act in a generally new way (learning process). Within the last two types, the organization refuses the requirements of the digital transformation. (3) The organization implements digital objects, but the organizational members don’t use them. And finally (4), the organization can actively refuse digital transformation.