Hybrid Craft Training in Vocational Education: Integrating E‑Learning and VR in Glassblowing Apprenticeships

This article investigates how an e‑learning platform and a virtual reality (VR) workshop simulator can be integrated into a traditional craft apprenticeship without displacing workshop‑based learning. Drawing on the Craeft glassblowing Pilot 1 at CERFAV, it reports a two‑phase mixed‑methods study contrasting a Traditional Augmented (TA) group, which used a Craeft e‑learning platform and a VR glassblowing simulator, with a Traditional (T) control group following the standard Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) programme. Quantitative data from formative assessments and CPC examination results are combined with qualitative feedback, satisfaction surveys, self‑assessment questionnaires, and interviews with apprentices and trainers. In Phase 1, where digital tools were deployed in a separated mode alongside existing instruction, the e‑learning platform was perceived as pedagogically valuable, but effects on assessment outcomes were limited and uneven, with greater score dispersion in the TA group. In Phase 2, redesigned hybrid usage scenarios assigned distinct and complementary roles to the e‑learning platform, VR, and workshop practice within an iterative learning cycle, yielding more consistent advantages for the TA group in cross‑cutting theoretical subjects and reducing variance in their scores. Qualitative analyses show that apprentices adopt a pragmatic stance towards digital tools, using the e‑learning platform primarily for revision and exam preparation and VR for workshop discovery and tool recognition, while maintaining a strong attachment to material practice. The study concludes that, in small, high‑stakes craft VET programmes, the impact of virtual learning environments depends less on their intrinsic properties than on their orchestration within coherent hybrid designs and on trainers’ capacity to align them with authentic tasks and assessment regimes.