Online and Soft Skills Trainings in Vocational Education in International Context: Reflections about the State-of-the-Art and Future Potential on the Example of China

Additional to ongoing digital transformation COVID-19 pushed forward the need to integrate online trainings in Vocational Education Training Systems as one element of digital educational offerings. However, in many industries there is still limited acceptance for online trainings among trainers and learners due to the long-standing habits and influence of traditional training models with proportionally large face-to-face parts. Even in China with its digital pioneering role, only reserved interest in online trainings could be observed during the pandemic as a result in the BMBF-funded project INWICA (Innovative further education for workers in China). For the future, it will be necessary to exploit the still highly unused potential of live e-learning in means of a well thought-out didactic and culture-sensitive design. Additional to new online training formats, soft skills as a training content, summarised as the 4Cs rule - critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity - play an increasingly vital role in new world economics requirements (Ungureanu, 2020; Yan & Kongjit, 2020). Both, the design of trainings in an adequate online format and the growing importance of soft skills as an increasingly meaningful content in Industry 4.0-context, are important sub-topics when it comes to educational reforms on national as well as on international level. Both topics are closely linked to questions about new competencies and how to meet the changing demands of new teaching and learning formats in the ongoing digitization in Vocational Education Training. The concept of soft skills still lacks a clear definition (Matteson, 2016), in the INWICA project this term is referring to skills, needed for effective interpersonal interaction in socially diverse environment, such as (intercultural) communication and leadership. This paper summarizes insights about technical, organizational and didactical challenges for designing online trainings in a hybrid setting on basis of three exemplarily pilot trainings in China. Furthermore, it describes the findings from ten half-structured interviews with training experts about culture-sensitive design and demanded topics in China when offering soft skills trainings in an online format.