Learning in vivo

Definition of work-integrated learning and related terms

[Updated 27 April 2010, based on commentary received]

Work-integrated learning (WiL) is one of the tuition and learning components of Unisa students, registered for vocational and professional programmes offered by Unisa. Work-integrated learning:

· focuses on theory and practice in relevant authentic, work-based contexts

· helps the student socialise into the workplace environment

· is differentiated from laboratory and field practicals

· is aimed at developing specific competence that forms part of the overall curriculum

· relates to the development of knowledge, skills and attitudes -- in an integrated way; learning work practices; whole person and interpersonal relations development

· is achieved through the placement at and hosting of students by employer organisations

· is enabled by workplace mentoring, aimed at helping the student recognise her/his strengths and development needs

· is monitored by academic staff and assessed by both workplace practitioners and academic staff

· is ultimately an institutional responsibility, accountable to statutory, professional and/or vocational bodies

· is dependent upon a structured training relationship between Unisa, host employer organisation and the student, as illustrated below:

 

 

Download Wil definition - 1st notes by Prof Geertsema + Prof Hendrick + Dr Groenewald

Terminology in use and/or well known among stalwarts in the vocational and/or professional fields:

· Cooperative education	1. A form of education in which the educational institution and the occupational field co-operate in order to provide a joint educational programme, which includes workplace experience 2. A strategy where students undergo in-service training and gain work experience as integral part of their curriculum. The experience complements and supplements the academic learning to produce employment ready graduates. The experience must be well planned and supervised.
· Employer organisation	A host organisation that receives students and provides services, resources, etc. in aid of a student’s learning: welcome, orientate, dwell and sent forth.
· Experiential/in-service training or learning	The in‐occupational field experiences described as a process of placing students in the workplace for hands‐on experience. A workplace activity linked to the formal academic programme for purposes of experiential performance and to allow the student first‐hand experience. The process must allow for abstract conceptualization, experimentation, real and concrete experience and reflective observation. Is typically done in terms of a log book with supervision by a workplace mentor. Students apply their knowledge gained and by doing and experiencing the daily routines.
· Experiential learning grant (ELG)	A Sectoral Education & Training Authority (SETA) grant that caters for studnets who need in-service training as a requirement for the successful completion of a registered qualification.
· Laboratory or field practical/practicum	It is a form of tuition where activities and/or experiments are done with required apparatus in order to illustrate theory and give students an opportunity to gain supervised experiences. It is differentiated from work-integrated learning in that it forms part of the theory tuition, but undertaken in a suitably equipped laboratory, which could be in nature.
· Field based training	A model of distance education for teaching the conceptual material and enabling students located throughout the country to be trained largely in their home-based contexts, with the focus on professional development work. This comprises fieldwork practice and supervision in home locations.
· Mentoring	A competent and suitably qualified practitioner (the mentor), fostering, helps and guides the student’s (the mentee) growth and development—normally not done for personal gain.
· Monitoring	On-site monitoring by academic staff is done with the following specific objectives in mind: ·    To gather evidence regarding the learning of the student ·    To detect the student’s progress towards attaining the learning outcomes ·    To obtain the workplace supervisor’s (mentor) evaluation about the performance and conduct of the student ·    To mediate discretely regarding problems identified ·    To aid the student to reflect on experiences, in order to optimise learning
· Placement	1. The site where a student undergoes experience 2. The process of facilitating the student’s application and interview process as may be required by host organisations after short-listing
· Workplace learning	Many higher education programmes consider workplace learning to be a valid learning experience for students. Most professional training programmes include a ‘practicum’, which can vary from a few weeks to a few years of practical experience at a site of professional practice. This model can be strongly or weekly integrated into the formal learning programme, depending on how it is supported, supervised, and assessed. In such programmes, the workplace is present, both as a learning resource and as a benchmark of practice

Download Glossary of Terms related to work-integrated learning (WiL)

Learning in Social Media

Learning moves in the bytes and through threads of social media. Patti Anklam's taxonomy contains five types of social media (SM), which Harold Jarche equates to various forms of learning. Patti Anklam has been pondering about the way the term social media is used, not necessary meaning the same in different contexts. She observes that the use of social tools has forever shifted relationships to conversation as the centre of attention, which Harold Jarche argues is the essence of learning. He accentuates that it is necessary to stop thinking of learning as a separate issue or entity and gives the example that "when you learn with and from your customers" learning-marketing becomes one. He goes as far as to say eliminating the "L word is a start".

Media SM — Blogging software, for example, makes social computing fairly simple, coined mass amateurisation. With this post, for example, I share my learning with readers of learning in vivo.

Customer SM — is about building online communities — customer communities — sets of Internet tools and applications that are driven by the needs of organisations to control their brand; to be responsive to the needs of customers; pay attention to the marketplace; and the development of new products based on the ideas and feedback from customers.

Enterprise SM — is about the shift focus in the use of Web-based technologies from content to conversation; from publishing to interacting—technologies and practices are embedded in a web of relationships. The top five drivers of Enterprise 2.0 are the connectivity across teams and geographies; access to subject experts; increasing productivity; knowledge repository; and fostering innovation.

Personal SM — is the collection of technologies and practices in order to support the development of personal intellectual and social capital. I have, for example started this blog to capture my personal body of knowledge and share it with other, for what it is worth.

Crowd SM — encompasses "the ways that social media are used to promote causes, but also to respond to crises and natural disasters, to call up collective wisdom, or to stream events."

I recommend readers of this post to visit the hyperlinks and personally read the posts of Patti Anklam and Harold Jarche who much more eloquently elaborate on the taxonomy, learning and knowledge management.

Emergent practice for complex and novel practice for chaotic

Learning in real-life situation is shifting towards emergent and novel practice because best practices are restricted to simple situations. Harold Jarche advocates the nurturing of a linchpin culture—locking pin that goes through the end of an axle outside the wheel to keep the wheel from coming off; anything serving to hold together the parts of a whole; or something that holds the various elements of a complicated structure together.

An assortment of linchpins.

Harold Jarche points out that the industrial model is no longer of much use, because work is difficult, calling for innovation and is becoming increasingly one of a kind and creative. He sketches the Cynefin-model framework as follow:

Cynefin is a Welsh word, chosen by the Welsh scholar Dave Snowden, which conveys the sense that we all have multiple pasts: cultural, religious, geographic, etc. The term illustrates the evolutionary nature of complex systems, including their inherent uncertainty and serves as reminder that all human interactions are strongly influenced and frequently determined by our personal and collective experiences.

Domain		Cause and effect relationship		Response	Practice
Simple		Is obvious.		Sense - Categorise - Respond	Apply best practice
Complicated		Requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge.		Sense - Analyze - Respond	Apply good practice
Complex		Can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance.		Probe - Sense - Respond	Sense emergent practice
Chaotic		No relationship between cause and effect at systems level.		Act - Sense - Respond	Discover novel practice
Disorder		State of not knowing what type of causality exists		People tend to revert to their own comfort zone in decision making in order to respond.	Complacency leads to failure

In the Cynefin framework the boundary between simple and chaotic is seen as catastrophic. It's not enough that selected individuals are prepared (becoming linchpins); collectively society will have to be able to deal with change— communities need to be helped out of their comfort zones, overcome their fears and get innate creativity flowing (a linchpin culture).