Paul Hager

Closing remarks for conference
What Paul saw:
- people looking for deeper conceptualisations of workplace learning that are still convincingly related to empirical work
- some constructive critique of CoP as means of organisational learning
- individual as part of a social activity
- learning goes beyond participation
- strong interest in theory
Paul's wrap up included the
obligatory thank you's to various organisers and helpers.

Looking around the hall, I think about half the number are here that were here at 9am Monday morn ... read more

Phil Hodkinson

The Final Keynote seems to have come around quickly! Rethinking the relationships between on and off the job learning

If we take the view that workplace learning is participatory and informal, then:
- work related learning can become invisible
- differences between on and off job learning are exaggerated
- focus on the workplace marginalises individual learning & individual movement.

Transfer of learning implies to Phil an acquisiton mode of learning.
Learning culture is the social practices through which people learn - a learning site might ... read more

Symposium (Part B)

Building the capability of VET Providers contd...

Changing nature of work within society that also apply to the training organisation.

We are not short of theories about learning! They bring with them particular views on learning, learners and teachers. VET practitioners are not tied to any one theory, there is a pragmatism in selecting and combining theories for application to our practice. However the problem with the theories is that they are grounded in assumptions such as the separation of work and learning, and the r ... read more

Symposium (Part A): Building the Capability of VET providers

Project website at http://consortiumresearchprogram.net.au
Reports from research consortium who have been working on NCVER research this year - through the consortium they have been tackling a variety of issues and much collaboration between the focus areas. Final phase will be a series of dissemination forums in which the products and tools will be tested and evaluated.

Tom Juravitch

Keynote- Globalisation and the Changing nature of work and its impact on workplace and labour organisation

Regimentation of work is still in existence - example given from call centre industry in telecommunications industry - this is not the way work was meant to be in the 21st century! Stress generated between reasons why people have entered the industry and the ways in which their work is delivered to them and monitored - eg call observation and sales tracking. Scheduling of leave time - employees told when leave could be taken, also when mandatory overtime needed. Impact ... read more

Kirsti Hulkari & Seija Mahlamaki-Kultanaen

Web Discussion as an Assessment Tool for Practical Nurse Students Learning during work based learning

Students actually asked why discussions weren't being used as part of assessment material. They were being asked to contribute learning journals and reflection, as well as participating in web based discussions.

Students undertaking a basic vocational degree. Wide range of fields available, eg pediatric nursing, aged care, emergency basic care.
Courses are a mixture of vocational and general education - want the learners to have lifelong learning skills. Over ... read more

Jason Hughes

Elearning and virtual Communities of Practice

Using the more academic model of CoP which is about how learning actually is.

critical overview of Lave and Wenger's analytical approach to learning, and then application to a group of e-Creatives who worked together for 3 months during this project. Within Lave and Wenger's 1991 text, ' not a presrciptive model, not an educational form, but an analytical approach or lens to reveal learning as it actually is', and then later in their text, they position legitimate peripheral participation as different from tradition ... read more

Bruno Clematide & Pernille Bottrup

Workplace Learning from the perspective of insitutional learning
Over time the link betweeen the world of work and institutional courses has changed and become looser, although at the same time the courses have become more likely to be national qualifications. Learning in a course has to be immediately useful the next day in the workplace, and also contribute to national qualifications and the industry as a whole.
So as a result...
What should teachers know about workplaces, and their learners?
to focus on:
- learner's perspective on work and present jo ... read more

John Mitchell & Suzy McKenna

Communities of Practice change practice but not always or easily

Cohen and Prusak - CoP's are difficult to sustain

Practice has been the tricky one to embrace (earlier in this blog [September?] I have a graphic about practice in CoPs .that spells it out for me from a RTF workshop)

CoP valuable, but Hodkinson & Hodkinson also draw attention to the possibility of promoting poor practice & social inequality, or may obstruct or frustrate organisational learning (final point Huysman 2004)

Waltja CoP from 2004 had some interesting starting points as the pa ... read more

Kirsti Hulkari & Seija Mahlamaki-Kultanen

Quality Development Tools for Work-based Learning in Social and Health Care

Quality of course is subjective, related to context and relative and the different players in workbased learning have different emphases.
This study emphasised the students as the clients, and looked at various methods for gathering data about quality of WBL.
Project tookplace in a small rural vocational institution. The students were student nurses and other health care workers. The findings were that the 3 players had different aspects of quality - students, teachers and workplace tuto ... read more

Reflection so far

The conference has had a huge range of speakers. When I first looked at the program I thought 'wow! how on earth am I going to get to everything I want.' But in looking more carefully at the abstracts and papers, it became clearer. Being able to pick and choose is a little like using RSS to pick and choose. Some conferences give a limited choice of sessions whereas through this one I've almost been able to make my own program of interest to me :-)
In looking around the session I'm in at the moment (bad choice of session I'll confess) a lot of people are just sitting listening. Few are ... read more

Tracey Lee

Cutting it: Learning and Work performance in Hairdressing Salons

Project in progress so preliminary findings so far will be presented.

industry profile - smaller businesses, some larger salons who tend to have their own training schools.
Entry to industry - similar to Australia, but some non apprentice entry to industry through on campus offering of courses. Changes in tedchnology and styles, and increasing customer service demands.

in talk focussed on franschised salons which had their own training school for apprentices and also for qualified stylists ... read more

Lesley Farrell

Common Knowledge

technologies we rely on are frail, it is the social activities that make them strong Brown & Duguid 2001

through working in globalised workspace work practice textual practice - artefacts are strongly text based

'Knowledge is not transmitted by texts, it is made and transformed in and with texts, and the people who make and use the texts are real knowledge workers , in the sense that they produce the knowledge that makes the Knowledge Economy happen' (Farrell in press)

Marjolein Berings, R Poell & P R-J Simons

Dimensions of On-the-Job learning styles in the nursing profession

Hypothesis - if we make employees aware of their OTJ learning styles then they will learn better in the workplace.
Learning styles that are in circulation aren't ideally suited to OTJ learning, but they provide a base to work from.
Selected nursing because of the changes in the profession that are ongoing and varied in nature - technology, medical and environment.

Learning style: Tendency to use a particular combination of approaches to learning, influenced by perceived capabilities and p ... read more

Phil Rutherford

CBT at the edge of Chaos

Finding the room was the first test!
Should we push competence further, not just skills, knowledge and attitudes to perform to the work tasks, or rather should it be pushed to encompass the "emergent and evolutionary ability to adapt to one's skills and knowledge to meet emerging and ever changing situations"? I suppose to some extent this depends on how much you push the contingency management and transfer dimensions of competency. In a workshop with staff last week there was discussion about the fact that the transfer dimension of competency h ... read more

Bente Noorgaard

Lonely Wolf
Engineers in SMEs
Centre for continuing education for engineers
mixture of methods used including providing industry based courses, short courses and some elearning.
Also have a role on developing learning outcomes with enterprises. Within 'method development unit ' provide teacher training for those going out to provide training in industry.

Lonely Wolf Project
aimed at engineers working in SME who may also take on other non-engineer roles such as environmental officer. Finding the right continuing education is difficult and being f ... read more

Kate Fannon

Learning everywhere, all at once

Changing context of vocational education and training - the new "worker-learner". Reality is changing for everyone, not just the Gen X and Y. Orientation to opportunities not jobs.

Solomon distinguished between the worker-learner and the learner-worker. But Kate would argue about this binary view - there is a greater mesh of choices and multiple, parallel sites for learning rather than a primary site of learning - closer to Billett, and the notion of the workplace as a place of social practice.

Aim of research (get from abstr ... read more

Paiva Tynjala

A Learning Network Promoting Knowledge Management
learning networks between workplaces and research institutes.

Wanting to develop knowledge management practices within organisations.

Characteristics of a learning network:
-interaction between participants
-shared objects - view and vision
-meta knowledge, awareness of whoo knows what and where you can find knowledge
-participation
-learning processses and learning outcomes

Listening to this talk I am wondering about the differences between this learning network and a COP. ... read more

Kati Tikkamala

Communities of Learning Poster

Kati commented that through doing her poster discussion she had had much more interaction and discussion than when presenting papers. When I was at the Workplace Learning conference in Denmark last year I heard her present a paper and the poster finalised the outcomes of her research. Rather than taking notes I used the voice recorder whilst we stood and discussed the poster content. Kati worked with two organisations to create communities of learning for frontline workers.

Geof Hawke

Challenges in achieving vocational skills through workplace leaning: a case study in Aged Care

Levels of aged care have been changing, changing requirements due to changes in government policy, levels of training required, increasing demand.

About 100 small residential homes were selected for a trial of a training program. They were divided into three groups a) satellite broadcasts only b)satellite and flexible learning package and c) flexible learning package only.
Pre- and post- program staff performance ratings for managers to complete.
In this progra ... read more

Bente Elkjaer

Prof. Bente Elkjaer (Doctoral school of Organizational Learning)
Keynote Monday 12th December
Stupid organisation how will you ever learn?
need for tensions in organization, learning @ work collective colIaborative, priority on business needs rather than education
Organizational Learning shift from process improvement (individual and their cognition) to COP (participation and practice).
what happens in participation that we can call it learning?
3rd wave - leave individual and environment together, just as there is not a separation between thoug ... read more