A HEA Seminar at The Open University, Milton Keynes - Wednesday 17th March 2010
This seminar focused on practice learning and the boundary between study and workplace. It drew on teaching and learning opportunities in two domains - Business and Management, and Social Work - combining evidence about both technology and pedagogy. It reflected the HEFCE Teaching and Learning strategy's emphasis on technology as playing a fundamental role in higher education but with institutional contexts and strategies as key. The event was addressed primarily at enhancement i.e. improving existing processes and outcomes.
Seminar aims, objectives and outcomes
These were presented as a combined list, with some more obviously relevant to one of the two domains represented.
Aims
- To identify themes that are common to the development of effective learning in relation to employment and practice.
- To introduce ways in which we can use e-learning and online learning to enhance flexibility and choice for busy professional learners and to analyse what works well for such learners and why.
- To introduce the approach to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and IL (Information literacy) skills learning for social work students studying online courses and to discuss student experiences of these activities.
- To discuss findings from newly qualified social workers in relation to what worked for them and perceptions about how well-prepared they were for practice, as a result of their skills activities on course work.
- To share experience of teaching and learning practices in these domains and to identify how both similar and different approaches can be developed effectively, in different contexts.
- To raise awareness of issues involved in responding effectively to both employer and employee agendas around skills learning and improving practice.
Objectives
- To identify the possibilities and challenges of using e-learning and the online environment to build flexible learning opportunities at HE level.
- To explore how work-based activities can be used in online learning as a learning and assessment tool.
- To identify the possibilities and challenges for working with both employee learners and their employers to develop a learning programme that meets the needs of all stakeholders - the employer, the employee and the university.
- To raise awareness of teaching and learning strategies for skills learning in the social work context.
- To discuss the challenges and possibilities for supporting social worker skills and development for ICT and IL.
- To share perspectives on issues arising from shared experience, and ways of addressing the challenges identified.
Outcomes
Participants:
- engaged with and explored models for designing flexible, online learning in the workplace.
- engaged with and explored strategies for ICT and IL skills learning for social work.
- shared experience and ideas for designing both curriculum and assessment strategies to meet employer and employee needs.
- shared experiences of how ICT and IL skills are developed in different contexts.
- identified and reflected on approaches to meeting the challenges identified.
Places on this seminar were limited and priority was given to external delegates.
For more information, please see details to the right hand side of this page.
