With the Aim of Multi-directed and Work-integrated Professional Development

Abstract

In a time when most countries are facing a rapidly emerging knowledge society, the investment in human resources is essential for companies and organisations. In parallel, technology enhanced learning has enabled more flexible forms of professional development with work-integrated learning, an interesting shift that also challenges the traditional university model. An interesting concept for realising the work-integrated learning principle of solving practical problems in the industry, is the offer to participants and companies to 'Bring Your Own Data ' (BYOD). This case history is based on the BUFFL project, where the acronym BUFFL could be translated from Swedish to English as 'Industry development at bank and insurance companies through flexible lifelong learning'. A case story that involves several aspects of knowledge management such as how theories from the university could be applied to data provided by companies and organisations. The BUFFL project is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between six companies, three universities, and researchers from different university departments. The aim of this study is to present, analyse and discuss the design and implementation of a pilot project for a technology enhanced and multi-directed lifelong professional development. The main research question to answer was: "What are the bank and insurance company staff perceptions of the BUFFL project design of technology enhanced professional development, and the idea of bringing their own data to course activities?". Data for a preliminary project evaluation have been gathered by course evaluation questionnaires from 14 instances of 9 course modules. Questionnaires comprised 30 questions with a mix of Likert-scale questions and questions with open-ended free-text answers. With the aim of finding data that have a potential to answer the research question 10 Likert-scale questions and 4 free-text questions were selected. Results from the Likert-scale questions were presented as a descriptive statistical analysis that discusses frequency, central tendency and variation. Open-ended free-text answers have been categorised in a deductive thematic analysis and compared to the results from the Likert-scale questions. The study was conducted entirely in Swedish with questions and answers translated to English by the author. Findings indicate that a technology enhanced and workplace integrated course design is appreciated by the participants, when information and communication technologies work. On the other hand, technology incidents have caused irritation and the provisional support model needs a further development that also could survive the project span. The complaints on too theoretical course literature, and that course design lacks adaption to the participants’ actual workplace situations are contradicted by the result of the quantitative analysis. However, the course design would need redesign to better match the conditions for full-time working participants.