Learning in vivo

From victim to winner of WIL placements



The offering of cooperative and work-integrated education programmes requires sufficient experiential/work-integrated learning providers (ELPs) in order to place students. Often higher education institutions fall victim to insufficient ELPs, which impacts the throughput of programmes with credit bearing work-integrated learning (WIL).

  

Vaughan Owgan (2012: 39) illuminates the dictionary meaning of victim, namely someone that “has come to feel helpless and passive in the face of events [that] they cannot control”. He indicates that the slowing down of the beauty-salon business is usually accompanied by a feeling of helplessness that turns into passivity—doing nothing. Concomitantly there is a reduction of advertising of beauty services during winter months. His advice in opposition to sitting helplessly, passively hoping, hold true with regard to recruiting and securing ELPS. His first two points—converted to a higher education context—and the fifth apply to academic management:

1. Academic staff members are working themselves to a standstill, but just cannot get on top of matters—perhaps addressing the academic staff numbers is necessary?
2. Evaluate the range of offering—consolidate and/or get rid of programmes with very limited student numbers.

Owgan’s (2012) next three points—also converted to a higher education context—relates to lecturing staff:

1. Maintain an accurate database of the community of practice—it has been found that a struggling beauty salon quite often has a lousy client database.
   • Implement an accurate standardise database—not random lists of pockets of stake holders and/or members of the community of practice.
   • Continuously grow the database and keep it accurate.
2. Increase the frequency of contact with the community of practice (stake holders)—remember the slogan “out of sight equals out of mind”.
   • Keep the community of practice informed about what is happening at the university. It need not be substantial glossy publications—short, but regular bite-size information morsels that add value to members of the community of practice.
   • Keep in mind the notion: “the right message to the right person at the right time”—make use of email and/or SMS packages and put the database in 3 to work.
3. Revisit ELPs that a Memorandum of Undertaking/understanding and/or Memorandum of Agreement have been entered into. Do not take those previously for granted. Show secured ELPs that they matter.

Owgan, V. 2012. Jump start your business for spring. Professional Beauty, September 2012, 39-42.

Networking for experiential learning providers

Cooperative and work-integrated education (CWIE) in higher education is about the institution and industry collaborating in offering educational programmes. The occupational field plays a key role in curriculum design, during which it is determined if work-integrated learning is the appropriate teaching and learning method and what part of the curriculum should be taught/learned this way. It follows that employers in industry should then serve as experiential/work-integrated learning providers (ELPs).

Take note of what Thelme Janse van Rensburg (2012: 25) accentuates:

Online marketing is the fastest growing branch of marketing today. As the world becomes ever more connected, keeping up with development and trends is vital for marketers trying to reach new audiences — who are more discerning, fragmented and cynical than ever.

You may ask what does this have to do with cooperative and work-integrated education. Allow me to explain. “Effective communication with your target market is key to business success” states (Janse van Rensburg, 2012: 25). Translated into higher education it means: effective communication with the key stakeholders employing the graduates of your qualification is key to success in teaching and learning.

Online communication with members of the community of practice provides an affordable means to attract potential experiential/work-integrated learning providers (ELPs). Janse van Rensburg (2012) emphasises that successful marketing (read communication) is about reaching the right people, in the right places at the right time. Knowing online avenues and selecting the most appropriate one/s to reach the target market/s is not only becoming a vital soft skill for marketers, but also vitally important for CWIE-practitioners.

• Online marketing (communication) extends beyond advertising on Internet to include target-market email communication; social media utilisation; search engine optimisation; and online public relations.
• Where to start, says Janse van Rensburg (2012), is at the programme’s webpage/s—a “front desk” where you can direct targeted people for qualification information and what the work-integrated learning (WIL) entail.
• Search engine optimisation (SEO) includes ‘tricks’ to increase the visibility of webpages through search engines—in effect to improve the ranking by enhancing the popularity.
• The social media, says Janse van Rensburg (2012), “provides a significant window of opportunity for getting in touch with” the community of practice:
  • Facebook, Twitter and Mxit present opportunities to inform and stay in touch through both an online profile and interaction. Twitter is an excellent means to keep in touch with the community of practice. Key players can further attract interest by liking Facebook entries.
  • LinkedIn allows for ‘business-to-business’ networking within the community of practice.
  • A blog serves as excellent facility to publish regular updates and snippets of information. Members in the community of practice may, as readers, subscribe to feeds to inform them about new posts. Previous posts are searchable through categories and sequential history. Readers may participate through comments and even as guest authors (if permitted by the blog provider).
  • YouTube enables the sharing of online videos about, for example, developments in the field; and the mentoring of students.

The ‘Big Five’ in social media in South Africa are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging and YouTube.

Janse van Rensburg (2012) likens an email campaign to the historical method of distributing pamphlets; but with the added advantage that it allows for responses and online conversations. The lists of addresses of the members of professional, vocational and/or statutory bodies can be obtained in order to generate a range of persuasive messages to generate interest and recruit ELPs.

Janse van Rensburg (2012) further mentions online marketing. Adverts on the webpages of professional, vocational and/or statutory bodies; the webpages of journals relevant to the community of practice; etc, could be used cost-effectively.

Janse van Rensburg, T. 2012. Revitalise your business. Professional Beauty, September 2012, 25-28.