Working and learning in networks

I’m currently pulling together various thoughts on issues surrounding organisational design, networks and workplace or occupational learning. Initially, I’m drawing on:

the notion of learning networks, defined by Sloep (2008) as: “online, social network that is designed to support non-formal learning in a particular domain” to frame a discussion of the use of social technologies for workplace learning and the management of knowledge. In particular, the affordances of social technologies in enabling learning outcomes traditionally seen as vicarious by-products of work activities to be captured and made explicit as micro-learning objects (Peschl 2006; Schmidt 2005), will be explored in the context of professional learning that focuses on responding to complex and ‘wicked’ problems (Margaryan et al, 2013).

From this, I’m looking to explore

C2L-LC_comb

… how technology enabled learning networks act as mechanisms for personal professional competence development. How might or how do professionals combine and use self-selected digital tools to support the integration of work and learning as Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) (Pata 2009; Ralagopal, et al 2012) and approaches to Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) (Redecker 2009)?

So I *think* the argument I’m developing is that increasingly for *some* occupations, workplace learning is in practice operationalised as a ‘web of relations’ (Fenwick 2008) within and across organisational and professional boundaries and so the long-standing practices of L&D functions are increasingly redundant in this context. By extension, I’d suggest that there are various implications arising form this for much higher education provision: for example, is the privileging of knowledge content really justified, can the assumptions that students are effective learners in such a context justified, where or what may indicate knowledgeable authority in such a context?

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