It has often been said that it is naive to assume that students would actually learn from an in vivo (real-life) setting what they need to—i.e. what has been specified in the curriculum. It is my experience that students do not necessary experience, despite prior arrangements, what they should from a work placement. This is because of various reasons, among others work pressures. Besides the learning environmental factors, the student's own attitude may also restrict the student's learning.
In vivo learning educators/coordinators/work-integrated learning lecturers have tried many ways to bring about the desired learning of students, for example:
- Conducting on-campus orientation prior to placement of students in the in vivo learning setting (going for experiential/work-integrated learning)
- Providing students with work-integrated learning guidelines, detailing the relevant learning outcomes students must achieve and specifying what evidence of learning is required (this is especially important in the case of distance education institutions), for example, what the portfolio of evidence or work-project report should include
- Providing mentors (the work-place learning supervisors) with guidelines detailing what the students should be exposed to, their roles a learning mentors and what evidence of learning is expected from students
- Monitoring the learning and progress of students during in vivo/work-integrated learning
- Facilitate debriefing (or reflection) of students on return from in vivo/work-integrated learning stints away from campus
- Providing students with log books (to capture their experience and have each entry ratified) or with journals to capture their learning
- Require of students to present their portfolios to a panel that would interrogate their mastery of the specified learning outcomes
What about making use of story-telling and narrative analysis?
The in vivo/work-integrated learning guide would include the learning outcomes to be accomplished and suggested in vivo (real-life) settings.
The guide would further include (a) examples of daily journaling and/or recording of experiences, observations and realisations; (b) some indicators about story telling; and (c) a narrative analysis model—such as Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach and Zilber (1998)—with basic explanations.
The instruction would be simple:
- when the student is of opinion that she/he has mastered the specified learning outcomes she/he must write or tell the story about the learning experiences. If told, the student must transcribe the audio recording to text and edit it for readability
- to do an analysis of her/his own narrative/experience-story (making use of the model in the guide)
- illustrate/explain/qualify by linking up the analysis of the narrative with the specified learning outcomes to substantiate why she/he is of opinion the outcomes were mastered/accomplished
What do blog readers think? Could such an approach work? If readers think not, why? What are the potential pitfalls?
Feedback from a friend:
"Hi, Thomas.
Taking a rather oblique look at the problem, I'd ask, "What is it about the situation that mitigates against the desired outcome?" Assuming the student has been given all the essential input (as you've listed) he knows what is wanted of him. OK. He's probably in a real-life workplace for the first time; it's and entirely new and perhaps stressful experience. He's encountering the sort of people, rules, procedures and environment he's never experienced before. Pressures will be on him to perform a job. He may be earning a salary for the first time - which will be a distraction. It will be during what is normally a holiday period, and his friends may be on the beach, or whatever. -- Just some ideas, based on observation of "Vac Students" in the Chemical industry."
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