On 11 September 2024, the second-year trainees in the ‘Restaurant and Event Specialists’ training programme at the ‘Johanna Just’ Upper School Centre Potsdam met with the school management and the presidium of DEHOGA Brandenburg with Mr Steffen Freiberg, the Brandenburg State Minister for Education, Youth and Sport

The occasion was the presentation of the joint work of the school and DEHOGA Brandenburg in creating a multimedia learning application for training in ‘American Service’ in restaurants.

The ‘Johanna Just’ Upper School Centre is actively working on implementing digital learning opportunities for the design of classroom instruction, while DEHOGA Brandenburg is developing digital courses for its members for training and continuing education in Brandenburg’s hospitality industry. This was also the starting point of this successful cooperation in August 2022, which received its initial impetus from the ‘TourX – Centre of Vocational Excellence’ project.

The multimedia course ‘Working in American Service’ was developed over the course of the past training year at the Vocational school in many days of joint teaching. The theoretical knowledge transfer, the practical training of this type of service, which is so important for restaurant professionals, and the media-didactic implementation were realized step by step. Now is a media course available that teaches this gastronomic service method in 15 learning steps with accompanying video sequences. The course ‘Working in American Service’ is the core of an associated digital learning path that will be an important learning element for future trainees. The apprentices, who developed this course together with their teacher, will not have to worry about the upcoming final exams in the new apprenticeship year when it comes to ‘American service’, because they will not forget what they have learned.

Working on this course was also fun, as the ‘outtakes’ of the more than 100 GB of data material that was created during the course development show.

And the education minister? He praised the trainees not only for their commitment, but also pointed out the possible synergy effects of this project in the further development of digital learning in Brandenburg. The focus was on the current ‘Brandenburg school pilot project in the field of distance learning’ in the area of vocational education.

The minister compared the challenges of digitisation in vocational training to building a house and the resulting paths that lead to the house. First there are narrow paths used by few, which, when they have proven themselves as a path, are paved and expanded into access ways. This is also where the great opportunity of the implemented project lies. Now, all those involved hope to be able to use the synergies between the actors and the know-how gained from the school for new projects and plans.

There is still the ‘French’ and ‘English service’ to be taught to the future Brandenburg gastronomers in training.

The TourX project has provided an impetus that promotes the further digitalisation of teaching and learning for the future specialists in the Brandenburg hospitality industry.