With locations in Lausanne, Lugano, Zollikofen and Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training SFIVET is the Swiss governmental center of competence for vocational and professional education and training (VET/PET). SFIVET with its 250 employees is active in the following areas:
1. Provision of basic and continuing training to teaching staff at VET schools/PET colleges as well as to vocational trainers at industry training centers (1700 participants enrolled in basic and 5200 in refresher courses per year).
2. Training of qualified VET/PET specialists through the MSc in VET program.
3. Training of examiners as mandated by the Confederation.
4. Support to Cantons, professional organizations and schools in their efforts to develop programs and implement reforms both in the VET and PET sectors.
5. Pursuit of three research themes as well as internal evaluations to shed light on VET-related issues primarily from the standpoint of education science, economics, psychology and sociology.
Innovations in VET and especially technological innovations to support learning constitutes one of the specific streams of research at SFIVET, which are relevant to the present project. SFIVET’s role is multi-faceted and covers all the main issues treated within the ViSuAL project. In fact, SFIVET:
1. Has a long experience in learning across sites and hybrid learning environments, both at the teacher education level (the teacher diploma is offered to in-service teachers) and at the VET and PET level, whose most curricula are designed on a combination of work- and school-based segments.
2. Has a long expertise in research projects concerning the pedagogical and instructional use of technologies, and especially of visual-based and hyper-video technologies, to foster individual and collaborative learning;
3. As a teacher education institution, it can serve the need to involve teacher students in the experiments as well as in the dissemination of results