How can VET providers improve teaching digital skills for care and nursing studengs? This was one of the questions explored during the latest DigiCareVET project meeting in Leiden, the Netherlands.

DigiCareVET is an Erasmus+ project that focuses on digital and wellbeing technologies in care work. Its goal is to help vocational schools prepare care professionals who are confident in using digital tools and able to recognise where technology can make a real difference.

The meeting and training programme included visits to mboRijnland’s education locations and to the Dutch Innovation Factory, a local business incubator that is also home to a Experimental House, mboRijnland’ss learning centre for wellbeing technologies.

The learning centre brings together dozens of technologies that can support people in different situations. Learners can try out the devices themselves and explore how they could be used in care work.

The selection includes a robotic cat that can provide companionship, a device that helps put on compression stockings, a large-screen phone designed for older people and various devices for monitoring health data.

For care professionals, the important question is not simply whether a technology is new or impressive. It is whether it solves a real problem for a person receiving care or makes the work of a care professional easier.

The Dutch approach also takes the technologies outside the learning centre. Devices are introduced to local communities using „typical Duthc“ way: cargo bikes. This makes it easier for people to discover what is available and how technology could help them support an older or otherwise dependent family member at home.

This practical approach is also important for vocational education. Future care professionals need opportunities to test technologies, discuss their uses and limitations, and connect them with real situations from care work.

Bringing technology into vocational education

The DigiCareVET partners have now reached the stage of piloting the first learning methodologies and lesson content developed during the project.

Partners have started testing new learning modules with teachers and students. The experience from the pilot will help the project partners improve the materials before making them available more widely.

Other vocational schools providing training in care work and childcare will then be invited to explore the materials, together with organisations working in these fields.

For VET professionals, the project offers practical ways to bring digital and wellbeing technologies into teaching. For care employers, it provides an opportunity to consider which technologies future employees should already know and how digital competence can support better care.