Enhancing Quality through Work Integrated Learning and Collaboration Partnership

• For Sweden to be able to compete in the global economy, our students with a degree from higher education must be ready for a career in working life. Today's work life is facing a major ongoing transformation, characterized by increased complexity, higher specialization, and digitalization. This demands competencies beyond traditional theoretical knowledge, such as preparing for uncertainty and unknown outcomes (Barnett, 2000; Vallo Hult & Byström, 2021). Therefore, it is essential to engage students in learning to learn, i.e., lifelong learning so that the tools and methods for learning in higher education can also be developed through future work (Billett, 2014; Islind, Norström, Vallo Hult, & Ramadani Olsson, 2021). For University West, this means that our education programs must be developed in collaboration with industry partners from the surrounding society to provide arelevant and attractive education, which corresponds to the labour market's long-term competence needs. We want our students to develop abilities and skills that enable them to be part of and drive sustainable societal development in practice.Work Integrated Learning (WIL) is University West's overarching profile, based on the concept of advanced knowledge – characterized by complex problem solving – and the mutual acknowledgment of advanced knowledge within the academy and among its partners. What characterizes WIL at University West is that we have developed and refined a combination of different approaches over a long period, including research -based WIL, through fundamental learning concepts such as socio- cultural, critical and action-oriented learning theories. These influences have shaped WIL at University West into a dynamic and academic area of knowledge and subject. In order to achieve a strategic and qualitative development of work-integrated learning, the University West Board decided to WIL-certify all educational programs with a clear sustainability perspective. The quality processis called the WIL certification process. It has now been developed at the university fortwo years.Experience andrefinements are ready to mature into an overall quality framework worth conceptualizing and disseminating to more universities that systematically want to develop WIL as an explicit quality dimension in higher educa tion. The project is still ongoing but have generated some preliminary findings and outcomes from the initial phase. Data collection activities include workshops and focus groups with selected participants from the target groups at the university (managers/prefects and teachers) as well as at the collaborative partner organization (managers and supervisors/mentors). The focus of the workshops was placed on capturing the participants understanding and perspectives on WIL as a concept, and to map the conditions for and experiences of conducting WIL in teaching and learning at work. We aim for identifying good (or less good) examples of WIL, what they are, how they are understood and why they are (or are not) important.The purpose of this paper is to describe the lessons learned so far and present a conceptual quality framework for WIL in higher education with a clear connection to sustainable development. The quality framework may function as a mediating “support object” between higher education institutions, industry partners, and actors in the surrounding society to promote WIL concepts and experiences in collaboration strategies.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Lärande (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Learning (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Work-integrated learning (WIL)

higher education

collaboration

quality framework

Work Integrated Learning

Arbetsintegrerat lärande

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vet (ämneskategori)

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