Synchronous and Asynchronous Distance Teaching for Safety and Hygiene in the course "Basic Electrical Engineering and Applications" of the 2nd class of Mechanical Engineers in Vocational Education and Training. (English)

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      In this article, we present the teaching of hygiene and safety for the 2nd grade of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, as it was implemented through the distance "lessons" of theory and laboratory and was organized in the Electronic Classrooms and Teleconferences, through the Panhellenic School Network. Teaching about the application of safety instructions and general precautions contributes significantly to ensuring the best safety policy for health and safety in education, for the immediate period as well as the current health crisis following the worldwide spread of Covid - 19 continues. The standards of the course through the appropriate correspondences in the syllabus of the course Electrical Engineering and Applications for the B class of the Department of Vocational Education and Training (VET), through the use of online digital tools, acquire a topical dimension as they are completely connected with everyday students' lives, thus providing and highlighting the positive added value in technical education. Although the presentation of the didactic application moves primarily to a narrative- intuitive level of teaching arrangement, it is obvious that this material should be presented, as it concerns the first spontaneous approach to issues of didactic and scientific ethics related to technical laboratory knowledge, as it can be captured through the DE. It should be noted here that even after such a long time (one year of exclusion), formal training, even for the basics of Distance Education (DE), has not taken place. According to the international literature, the issues of effective management of laboratory knowledge of VET, even today, are investigated (Gedrimiene et al., 2019). The spread of the disease occurs as a whole within a socio- economic context which has long been known in the field of social theory as a society of risk (Beck, 1992). The critical conditions under which the whole world found itself, not only the educational communities, after the spread of the Coronavirus (Covid - 19) which focused on public hygiene and imposed a mandatory and "violent" movement of mentalities and attitudes. After the emergency measures (home restrictions) and in the face of the risk of "paralysis" and distancing from learning - educational activities, the majority of teachers became active in any way they could, mainly interested in the lives of students, their mental and spiritual health. These efforts tended to bridge the gap that arose. The learning processes were adapted in the context of the emergency. In some cases, however, this adjustment was not possible. The main reason for the failure of DE in VET was determined by the complete lack of experience regarding the appropriate educational material (electronic books, electronic interactive laboratory exercises - simulation laboratories) and in general by the lack of references to DE laboratory learning practice. VET teachers have tried and continue to strive throughout the pandemic to transfer some of the experience of laboratory courses through distance education, despite the lack of adequate supportive teaching materials and electronic media. Unfortunately, we are now convinced, after so many months of exclusion, that on the one hand, the DE of laboratory teaching succeeds only in special cases, always according to the international literature (Polat & Ekren, 2020), and on the other hand, it is certain that courses without special support conditions are not possible (Petrenko, et al., 2020). Even if for some Specialties (Electronics, Informatics, etc.) some laboratories are implemented by online platforms, the basic laboratory teaching of all other Specialties "falls", either in the description - demonstration or, in the "gap". Students do not acquire the necessary and basic laboratory experience. Without wishing to deviate from the main topic of our article, we consider it appropriate to note as a recorded necessity of this phase, the redesign and the existence of necessary electronic educational material that would cover from theory the basic concepts of the models of laboratory exercises (where is possible), and the organization of the exercises with simulation workshops, so that, the cognitive educational objects of the Specialties are covered and the education of the students is fundamentally compatible with the current development of the professions. Nevertheless, a topic of Mechanical Engineering specialization on occupational safety and hygiene managed to be presented. In particular, the issue of hygiene and safety was approached from a different perspective in school life. The issues of safety and hygiene suddenly became topical from the first days of the appearance and spread of the disease. The first reactions in all schools in Greece (General High Schools (GEL) - Vocational High Schools (EPAL) - Laboratory Centers (EC)) concerned from disinfection and antiseptic liquids for each class to instructions for cleaning and ventilation. After the home restriction and the restriction of the circulation for the whole population, the discussion about the importance of hygiene and safety came back more intense and this time it concerned its application on a nationwide scale. One month after the interruption of the courses and after the instructions for the implementation of the distance education, either modern DE or asynchronous (Electronic classes), the issue of safety and hygiene standards for engineers (Brauer, 2016) and consequently for the students of VET, it returned as an "object of teaching" given the interest gained by the students. Our course was "organized" in the electronic classes of "Panhellenic School Network - The network in the service of Education" (asynchronously) and "carried out" through DE. The reference standards of the course (Olagbegi, Kwasi-Effah, & Ugbi, 2013), with the appropriate correspondences in the syllabus of the course Electrical Engineering and Applications for the 2nd grade of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (two hours of theory and two hours of laboratory per week), acquired a topical dimension and was fully connected to the daily life of our students, thus providing and highlighting another positive added value in technical education (Kanchana, Sivaprakash, & Joseph, 2015). The main purpose of organizing these distance learning courses was to make every effort to raise the level of awareness of students about the importance of health and safety in the learning and workplace (Hemamalinie, Jeyaarthi, & Ramajeyam, 2014). The article contributes positively both to the dissemination of health and safety measures and the implementation of distance education, continuing the dialogue on the enrichment and use of online tools by the school community. The theoretical and social context of the work concerns the current health crisis after the worldwide spread of Covid-19 disease. The research methodology utilized the structured observations from the first attempts to implement DE in VET. The added didactic value of the proposed teaching scenario also results from the utilization of new tools, educational resources, digital repositories in the learning process, Electronic Arcs and DE. With the completion of the courses and through what was presented, the theory and practice in the Technical High Schools were connected with the remote modern and asynchronous digital tools. In the activity related to the online tool "Padlet" (Rashid, Yunus & Wahi 2019) the students searched for additional data from the internet which were specifically related to electric shock. The students organized their deliverables online. This form of teamwork is based on the foundations of the web 2.0 era. In the additional works, the students were asked to present the effects of issues related to the effects of various accidents (for example electric shock). Finally, it should be noted that as there was no institutionalized framework for distance education, the terms of assessment of teaching itself concerned the learning criteria, the degree of effectiveness and participation of students, as well as the citation of the added value of the script, as crystallized in the application of teaching. Our work is useful as it is an example of good practical application of the context of VET. The interest of our work is also important as the pedagogical space of VET contains several cognitive objects of technical and applied orientation, mainly in terms of skills. Besides, the knowledge that was developed during the implementation of the courses, concerned on the one hand the objects of the Specialty, on the other hand, the use of online collaborative models (web 2.0) in combination with the development, implementation and evaluation of educational scenarios, in terms of basic principles and procedures for VET. The basic principles are directly related to how educational activities and future teaching interventions should be designed in the future and in particular how they will be implemented in the future, after pedagogical planning, in distance learning environments. The skills developed left valuable legacy for future use in teaching analytics, selecting the most appropriate teaching approach for creating educational activities, selecting appropriate digital presentation tools, utilizing appropriate pedagogical digital video materials. and specific oriented information from the internet) and finally, the broadening of the evaluative framework of the learning experience. The participation of students in these specific forms of teaching surprised us pleasantly, but we must find a way to expand it. The extensions of the course concern the social pedagogy and the professional orientation for issues of the Specialties ("learning" - "engineering") of VET. As a future direction, online teamwork practices (web 2.0 applications) based on remote teamwork methodology are being prepared. A second thought concerns the expansion of video use with a digital commenting tool and the addition of students' participatory self-assessment during playback. In any case, our future orientation is mainly concerned with the application of these teaching experiences (online collaborative forms of web 2.0 and the combination of e-class and video conferencing tools) in real classroom and laboratory conditions, in mixed learning conditions (school classroom - laboratory and digitals tools - repositories). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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