**5. Conclusions**

The pandemic created a situation in which students and teachers were engaged in online education (though mostly involuntarily). Before the pandemic, there had been few large-scale applications of online education (with the possible exception

#### *Perspective Chapter: Online Learning in Professional and Vocational Education – Seeking… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112513*

of distance education programmes that had already used online education for many years). Although the pandemic created numerous and severe problems, it also created a potential to bring change to existing educational practices in vocational and professional education. Our study was designed to collect insights about how our teachers and students perceived the advantages of online education experienced during the pandemic and the affordances they considered worthwhile to implement permanently afterwards. This study contributes to the further development of well-thought-out actions to improve and enhance the applications of online learning in vocational and professional education.

The set-up of this study allowed the collection of affordances from the participants themselves. The GCM approach we applied seeks and embrace the knowledge, experiences and opinions of those who are most related to or affected by an issue [21]; in our study, these were the students and teachers at our own university. They were invited to generate statements and rate those statements on their importance and feasibility. In addition, staff members (e.g. policymakers, educational consultants and educational researchers from the university) were invited individually to divide the statements into related piles and assign labels that described the content of the piles they proposed. The findings allow to draw three conclusions which will be presented hereafter.

First, we conclude that the findings indicate seven clusters of statements that all refer to themes worthwhile for further developing online learning and teaching after the pandemic. These clusters of statements refer to very different aspects, such as didactical issues and the possibilities for interaction and commitment that online education offers. Moreover, the clusters point to aspects with a conditional nature, such as planning and scheduling issues and the need for proper preconditions. The Go Zone plot in our study led to additional insights that support policymakers in determining the priorities for developing the first and next steps as part of an institutional approach in professional and vocational education. Second, considering the nature of the statements, we conclude that the majority refer to very practical ideas. Third, what the statements have in common is that they do not express the need for very advanced and full-scale online education. Instead, they provide a supportive base for further enhancing and improving online learning and teaching as part of blended education.
