Didactical considerations for further education learning factories: A three case study

Industrial upskilling becomes increasingly essential as higher skill requirements and workforce scarcity spread throughout the industry. Whilehiring and consultancy strategies often come with a high cost and a long time before reaching top performance or low knowledge absorption, theupskilling of in-house workers often results in an immediate, long-term benefit. However, industrial upskilling strategies have oftenunderperformed due to misalignment with the learning requirements for the enrolled workers. Learning factories have shown promising resultshere, but the way to teach and learn still need to be tailored for this industrial upskilling. This article investigates how upskilling can be achievedwithin three learning factories under the BLINDED Learning Factory initiative. The study examines the didactical dimension compared to theadaptability and authenticity of the technology.
The results show that the learning factories' different dimensions must be considered together with the didactics to ensure authenticity,adaptability and learning. Lastly, the article discusses how to balance these considerations and the targeted industrial learners based on lessonslearned from the BLINDED Learning Factory initiative.