Professional Qualification and Digitization

New digital technologies lead to more online-based and platformbased business models and will continue to change work processes. The use and further development of new technologies place new and changed demands on employees. Many professional tasks will become more complex, more demanding and thus tend to be of higher quality. This also places increased demands on professional qualifications in both initial vocational and further training.

This paper systematizes some of the findings on the connection between vocational education and training and digitization. The corona crisis is proving to be an accelerator of the structural change to digital teaching-learning formats. Training companies have a higher degree of digitization than non-training companies. The higher the degree of digitization of a company, the more likely it is that employees will take part in further training and the more time and money companies will spend on further training. The higher the degree of digitization of a company, the more digital media are used in training and further education. The requirements of digitization are not only in the area of IT knowledge, but also encompass a wide range of skills.

The companies see a great added value of the digital learning offers in the fact that they can be easily integrated into everyday work. In addition, they consider the combination of digital learning media with attendance phases in the context of blended learning to be advantageous. However, digital learning media do not automatically lead to better and more sustainable learning outcomes than conventional methods. The prerequisite for this is that trainers and advanced trainers have the necessary media didactic tools. The didactic advantages of digital media have not yet been sufficiently recognized. Digital learning opportunities should therefore be tailored to specific target groups so that all population groups can benefit from them. This also means that there should also be modules with which self-directed learning can be learned.