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 […]

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 & […]

Building the capability of VET Providers contd…
Clive Chappell
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 […]

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.
Berwyn […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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”? […]