The potential for updating vocational higher education lecturers’ occupational knowledge via digital technology.

This study is concerned with the maintenance and development of the intellectual capital of vocational higher education (HE) teachers the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector. The project seeks to understand the potential for using digital forms of updating in this arena. Opportunities for updating explored webinars to access experts and key staff within local employers and videos demonstrating the use of key technologies or processes that voiced by these same experts and key staff (for example videos of manufacture, test or creative processes). These opportunities were considered to be Covid safe, time efficient and allowing for the updating of tacit as well as explicit forms of knowing (Eraut, 2004). The study took a mixed methods approach employing both semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire. Key findings indicate digital resources are a potentially useful tool for the development of vocational higher education lecturers’ occupational knowledge, suited to updating them in the ever-moving technology that surrounds their respective industries. Both webinars and videos appear to address most of barriers identified by the lectures and data suggests that these tools could be useful to the learning of lecturers and students alike. The report recommends trailing of these resources in practice.