VET students respond to teaching content on YouTube and are happy with Facebook as a platform for study details, according to  new research for the estimable National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Much like life really.

It’s a case of cyber horses for courses, according to Victor Callan and Margaret Johnston, who report that students in study that involves teamwork favour Facebook and Twitter, while apprentices use YouTube to learn practical skills.

As to how social media will fit into training, it is early days but Callan and Johnston suggest;

“what is increasingly being understood by VET teachers and their training organisations is that the students who are taking up VET qualifications are already highly connected and very active learners who are willing to explore. They are not the passive consumers of VET training of the past. The use of new technologies is highly compatible with their lifestyles, preferences for how they want to interact with their world, including more control over what they do, as well as where, when and how they do it.”

But what students want is not the way VET works now; as the study warns; “there is the risk that Facebook becomes the default learning management system, operating outside the system used by a training organisation.”