GAMIFICATION AND BLENDED LEARNING IN VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND COACHING IN SHORT COURSES
Authors: Petrevska Nechkoska Renata , Bogdanovska Jovanovska Mimoza 
Published: December 2021

Vocational training and coaching delivered through short courses and workshops, needs to be as effective as possible due to several reasons: learners (and their employers) invest their time and energy, they expect direct usefulness of the course content and roadmap on how to implement the knowledge into real-life problems, there is certain extent of professional maturity that expects proper balance of theoretical and practical aspects and the outcomes are evident in short time for the benefit of all, or for the worse. These reasons motivated the trainers to use a specific instructional design that embodies gamification, blended learning and coaching for vocational training in short courses for group of participants from Western Balkans countries, with diverse backgrounds, languages, professions, education, personal and collective goals on the topic of preparing successful project proposals for funding, supported by the Western Balkans Alumni Association projects. The specifics in this instructional design have been multifold, compared to traditional training and coaching. One of the novel aspects is the combination of trainers related to the course content of projects funding from various aspects - National Agency expertise, academic, governmental and non-governmental experience, project evaluation and business practitioners. This setting of training facilitated by representative of almost every stakeholder in the higher educational ecosystem and articulated through the curricula of the trainers is aimed to enable overall knowledge apprehension, networking and immediate feedback loops. The incorporation of virtual activities before, during and after the in-person course utilises blended learning mashup of various tools such as e-learning platform for asynchronous communication, social networks for synchronous communication, webinar tool for virtual presence, video tutorials for future reference and expanded dissemination and personal contact for coaching. Another novelty in this approach is in the gamification aspect - introducing scout-game in the forest, using broad range of symbolic matrices - of compasses, maps, planned activities and unplanned events, training of skills and situational awareness, progress mechanics, challenges to achieve teamwork towards outputs and outcomes. And last but not least, the balance of theoretical and practical aspects is achieved by inviting each participant to have own working example and apply the concepts while receiving immediate feedback, or working on collective example - for all of which, follow up coaching is provided. The ‘magic’ of effective project proposals is complemented with appropriate change management and tactical management. The cognitive and knowledge dimension categories and components have been addressed in their entirety through the extended Bloom taxonomy and the evaluation has been made in formative and summative manner. The learning experience with our instructional design in this pilot instance happens for each participant - on the side of the learners and on the side of the trainers and other HEI stakeholders, including the WBAA - with specific goal to enable emergent effects of networked learners that can put their knowledge, skills and competences in right direction and produce primary and secondary effects for the Western Balkans region and EU.