The WIL Learning Community is a staff member group that focuses on sharing and fostering good practice in the design, delivery, assessment and evaluation of WIL across all disciplines in ECU.
Meeting for a brown bag lunchtime discussion once every second month, the WIL Learning Community is a forum for all WIL practitioners (academic and professional staff) to discuss good practice and new developments in all aspects of Work Integrated Learning at ECU, statewide, nationally, and internationally.
Join our mailing list and our MS Teams site: WIL Learning Community to keep up to date. Contact Denise or Heather for details.
To attend our next meeting, please register through Staff Kiosk or the Staff Development Calendar: WIL Learning Community
Join the national body (free membership for ECU staff): Join ACEN (Australian Collaborative Education Network)
Details
Date: 12:15-1:15pm, Thursday 29 September
Venue: Building 8, Room 204, Joondalup Campus
Light lunch to follow, hosted by Centre for Learning and Teaching
Register: ECU WIL Learning Community
Abstract
COVID-19 compelled North-West University (South Africa) to consider alternatives to the traditional face-to-face excursions associated with WIL. Based on successful face-to-face excursions in the Faculty of Education as part of WIL for first year students, a multi-faculty team considered at the outset the conditions needed for virtual, online excursions to achieve the same outcomes, and to enhance self-directed learning with a view to addressing the professional learning opportunities associated with WIL in Teacher Education, Law and the Health Sciences. Virtual excursions usually refer to learning opportunities where ‘a museum, author, park or monument is brought to the student’ (Hehr, 2014:1). The virtual excursion in the context of the innovations associated with the three faculties at NWU, was conceived as an activity system (Engeström, 1987) where students’ learning was scaffolded across the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), and where their ‘social and pedagogical boundaries are stretched or expanded’ (De Beer & Henning, 2011:204). This seminar describes the research insights arising from the development and experience of the virtual excursions at NWU during COVID-19.