In the last six months, we have been fortunate to work closely with 3 different Norwegian vocational schools.
NKI, Viken Vocational School and Vestfold Telemark Vocational School are all at the forefront when it comes to work on developing new study offers and quality assurance of existing portfolios. All three have invested in good system support for their internal processes through the transition to Edutorium.
What have we learned? As in the higher education sector, the professionals are skilled, and administrative personnel go to great lengths to ensure good quality in all work. However, it is difficult when the systems do not play on teams.
Using e-mail, word and PDF (as all vocational schools did until this year), has major limitations and places great demands on the individual employee. Is the "final.last" or "last.last" the actually approved version of the study plan? Did both Liv and Hans make changes in their respective versions of "last.last"? And which version was actually sent to the principal or NOKUT? And are we absolutely sure that it is the latest version that was sent for publication?
For vocational schools, the introduction of Edutorium has contributed to a proper clean-up of their own study portfolio. The workflow ensures that the right person gets the right task at the right time, and ensures that all versions are saved (without any worries about which one is the approved one). Edutorium also secures the history. Many revisions ahead of time, students will still be able to look up and find the study plan that was valid when they were students. This could be useful in meetings with future employers (and provides security for the vocational school)
Many vocational schools have shown interest this spring. We are really looking forward to having more vocational schools on the team!