DIDAKTIČNO-DIGITALNO ORODJE ZA USPOSABLJANJE IZ PRAKTIČNIH VSEBIN

The pandemic has posed challenges to practical education, particularly in agriculture and horticulture. This project aimed to develop, implement and evaluate an innovative online training programme, free of charge to users. It aimed to reinforce trainers' professional development, integrate their knowledge, skills and competencies into their teaching and enhance students' and other stakeholders' professional and pedagogical competencies. The project aimed to: - Promote education that is accessible at any time and in any location; - Provide training for teachers and trainers in the effective online delivery of practical content; - Increase teaching flexibility; - Make distance learning accessible to all learners (especially students, but also external users), including those from vulnerable groups; - Ensure the sustainability and use of the project results for other stakeholders, including adults engaged in lifelong learning and vulnerable groups.

The project's objectives include enabling distance learning for all students, increasing the flexibility of practical training and improving the pedagogical and digital competences of tutors and students. The project aimed to create an effective tool for distance learning of practical content, with a particular focus on different forms of collaborative learning between all participants in the learning process: lecturer, tutor, student, as well as adults involved in lifelong learning and vulnerable groups. As the content is practical, we have used a lot of visual and audio effects to achieve the best possible impact. We have included a variety of digital assessment tools and the telephone as a tool that we all use frequently.

The project has developed the following five results. 1: Analysis of the state of the existing tools, environments and applications for distance education with case studies (in English and Slovenian), including an analysis of different distance education resources, a collection of online courses to support distance education lecturers, contemporary pedagogical-didactic approaches, principles and challenges of distance education, case studies of digital tools/applications, a SWOT analysis, an analysis of questionnaires, an analysis of interviews and a selection of tools for working in a digital environment. Case studies of European good practices in digital agricultural education have been added. In order to disseminate and strengthen pedagogical competences, we have also presented several papers with pedagogical/didactic content related to digital environments at different conferences (Quality in Higher Education, When I Teach, I Build, EduIzziv and Creative Learning Environments). 2: Proposing the curriculum of the online training course "e-learning for practical teaching" and preparing the expert guides (in English, Spanish, Croatian and Slovenian). The curriculum has been prepared for tomato, pepper and viticulture) and a document containing the introduction to the curriculum for the training course "Vegetable Growing", the descriptions of the units for the three modules: tomato growing, pepper growing, vine growing. Each module contains the general objectives, the duration, the target groups, who can teach the course, the elements of assessment, a list and description of the teaching units. The unit syllabus contains general information, objectives and learning outcomes and references. Guidelines for mentors/lecturers are added. 3: The e-application for both teaching and self-study is available at https://digiagri.miteam.si, to register you must follow the instructions given. A personalised learning platform has been developed in order to - the entire learning process (planning, implementation, assessment, evaluation) - LMS environment for managing organised forms of education, learning paths, assessments, tests, assignments, certificates. The W-application is partly in Slovenian, partly in English, the instructions are also in Spanish and Croatian. The platform is interactive and allows to reach different taxonomic levels and social learning, with instructions and immediate feedback. The tasks are designed on three levels: 1. reproduction of theory in the form of quizzes; 2. calculation tasks; 3. practical work (home experiments, uploading photos and videos, critical evaluation, comments). The DIGIAGRI e-application consists of two workspaces: an internal one (DIGIAGRI Students and DIGIAGRI Community) and a public one (DIGIAGRI Public). The internal workspace contains collaborative and educational working groups and other tools such as a content library, member list, publications and other collaborative tools, but is only accessible to registered users. The public workspace is also accessible to anonymous, non-registered users. Evaluations of the platform have been carried out and improvements have been made based on feedback. 4: Development of e-materials and production of an online interactive (in English, Spanish, Croatian and Slovenian). The materials has been produced on the MITEAM platform (https://digiagri.miteam.si/). The materials on tomato, pepper and grapevine production are freely available as an example of a practical training format. Some horticultural articles have been published in the magazine My countryside, and tips for gardeners have been published in Kranjčanka and Slogine novice with the aim of improving self-sufficiency. Some of the material is designed as 'easy reading' for vulnerable groups. This approach is suitable for students with learning difficulties, as well as for students from more remote areas and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, which was also welcomed from an inclusion perspective. 5: Examples of e-learning plans and their implementation (in the field) and evaluation in practice. Online training for mentors was developed with chapters on Who is a Mentor, Mentoring in an Online Environment, Mentoring Vulnerable Groups. Multiplier events took place in all three partner countries.