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The study compares how work-integrated learning (WIL) placement positioning, duration, assessment strategies and environment at three Southern African universities influence engineering students' academic and employability outcomes.

The study used a qualitative case study approach that drew on the principles of collaborative autoethnography (CAE). The researchers reflected on WIL placement practices, structure, assessment, environment and outcomes at their universities and then analysed the reflections using comparative descriptive techniques.

The study reports no uniformity among the universities in positioning WIL placement in the curriculum. It is done during end-of-year vacations, between the penultimate and final year or in the last year. The study found WIL placement positioning does not influence academic outcomes; however, the influence on employability outcomes needs further investigation. Components of WIL placement assessment are similar, presentations, logbooks and reports. However, there are differences in the weightings of the various assessment components and the contribution of the industry supervisor. There is a growing trend towards placing students within universities to mitigate the challenges of limited opportunities of placements available in the industry. The impact of this also needs to be further investigated. Lastly, there are policy-related challenges in placing international students. Work restrictions on student visas limit international students’ access to WIL placement. Southern African universities need to lobby the waivers to student visa restrictions that limit their participation in WIL programs if there are to succeed in their internationalisation efforts.

The study highlights the gaps in understanding Southern African universities' WIL placement practices, particularly relating to the positioning of WIL placement in the curriculum, the assessment methods used and the theory to work integration and employability outcomes.

This research argues that architecture knowledge is fragmented between the profession and academia as evidenced by long-standing conflicting opinions regarding desirable graduate attributes. Work-integrated learning (WIL) is one mode of education where these fragments should come together. This research seeks to address a missing part of that WIL model and understand the profession's view of what constitutes quality education as a United Nations (UN) Sustainability Development Goal (SDG).

Utilising a three round Delphi survey of the architecture profession engaged in WIL programs, this study reports on their perspectives of the key benefits and attributes of WIL and the value of WIL experiences as part of a quality higher education system.

The architecture profession confirmed the value of WIL programs as contributing to students developing an understanding of workplace culture and contexts. There was strong agreement that WIL experiences can be a valuable part of a quality education and enhance graduate employability. Challenges for practice included semester-based program timing, the length of engagement with practice and the lack of WIL program guidance by universities to prepare the profession for WIL experiences.

While WIL has been extensively researched over the last decade, it is limited in the architecture discipline. Survey findings address the research gap in understanding the architecture profession's views as a key WIL stakeholder which is important given the rapidly changing practice environments, globalisation and the increasingly transdisciplinary context.

This paper explored collective grief through the case of a Business Management College which suddenly and unexpectedly went into administration. The aim was to gain and apply insight to future crises in collective grief such as what occurred during Covid 19.

120 EVRE submissions with weekly reflective journal entries and 121 Capstone submissions including reflections were analysed as secondary textual data using content-thematic analysis and inferential statistics.

This study confirms the theory that grief is not linear. However, even though no positive correlation was found between two different cohorts (EVRE and CAPP submissions), who did experience the same crisis in different ways, those people did all seem to share the stage of avoidance.

The textual data was limited in scope as not all students chose to express their grief through the written submission or the Kubler-Ross lens.

This research does suggest that initially, institutional responses to collective grief should address initial stages of “avoidance”.

In responding to collecting grief, such as Covid 19, institutions need to recognise the non-linear process of grief and not expect a “one-size-fits-all” approach to be a viable solution.

There is not much research available looking at student experience and emotional pressures (if at all) collectively during a crisis.

Building on the concepts of learning communities of practice, the paper aims to evaluate their application within degree apprenticeships (DAs) to support pedagogic engagement and inclusive education within a university setting.

A case study of an existing B2B sales degree apprenticeship reviewed relevant programme documents and evaluated apprentice learner experience through an anonymised online survey.

The study found that sales apprentices had a reflexive awareness of how learning communities operated within this context and raised some valuable insights about their perceptions of inclusive education. These communities have differing dynamics that value engaging with workplace professionals, peers and university. Apprentices prefer tuition that accommodates their shared interests as employee learners within an occupational role. Issues surrounding inclusive education are seen as integral to the experience of being an apprentice.

Post-Covid engagement could be used to frame more effective social learning for work-integrated practice and programme teams could advocate for a greater integration of DAs within institutional settings.

This research indicates that B2B sales degree apprentices see themselves as operating within distinctive learning communities of practice that support their work-integrated (WIL) studies in higher education. The paper recommends programme teams provide more collaborative engagement within learning communities to support inclusive education goals.

This study intends to conceptually and technically examine the literature on work integrated learning (WIL) through a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis. The present study addresses eight distinct research questions: (1) descriptive features of the extracted literature on WIL, (2) publications trends and thematic evolution in the field of WIL, (3) the most relevant and high-impact sources on WIL, (4) the most global cited articles on WIL, (5) the most relevant and high-impact authors on WIL, (6) the most relevant countries on WIL, (7) outcomes of Bradford’s Law of Scattering and Lotka’s Law of Scientific Productivity and (8) trending research avenues for future studies in the field of WIL.

The present study employed systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis mapping techniques to analyze 1,295 articles extracted from the Scopus database. The analysis utilized Biblioshiny software and VOSviewer software as the primary tools.

The findings reveal that WIL constitutes a steadily expanding subject discipline, showcasing a notable 23.28% annual growth in scientific production spanning from 2002 to 2023 (July). Australia, South Africa and Canada emerged as the most productive countries within the field of WIL, as evidenced by their cumulative scientific production. The thematic map of keyword analysis suggests several burgeoning avenues for future researchers in the WIL domain, including education, reflective practices, curriculum, employability skills, international students, learning and self-efficacy.

This study contributes to the WIL discourse by providing a comprehensive literature review. The present study’s findings hold significance for graduates, universities, employers, the higher education industry, policymakers, regulators and the broader community.

This study identifies gendered disparities among women students participating in work-integrated learning and explores the effects of the disparities on their perceptions on perceived opportunities, competencies, sense of belonging, and professional identity.

A series of semi-structured focus groups were run with 59 participants at six higher education institutions in four countries (Australia, Canada, Sweden, United Kingdom). All focus groups were designed with the same questions and formatting.

Thematic analysis of the transcripts revealed two overarching themes, namely perceptions of self and interactions with others in work placements. Theme categories included awareness of self-presentation, sense of autonomy, perceived Allies, emotional labour, barriers to opportunity, sense of belonging, intersections of identity, and validation value.

This study fills an important gap in the international literature about gendered experiences in WIL and highlights inequalities that women experience while on work placements.

The purpose of this study is to explore the benefits and barriers for learning in industrial PhD education through the perspectives of industrial PhD students. A work-integrated learning (WIL) approach is applied to highlight key issues that university and industry need to consider promoting mutual learning.

The empirical context is a Swedish university profiling WIL offering PhD programs in three disciplines for industrial PhD students from both the private and public sectors. Data was gathered using qualitative methods; 19 semistructured interviews with industrial PhD students.

Findings show that industrial PhD students are developing practical and transferable skills, hence, contributing to research of interest for academia and work–life. Identified benefits for learning include proximity and access to data, project and networks and contextual understanding and tacit knowledge. Barriers for learning are the perceived limited understanding of employers, the dilemma of balancing and switching between different roles, lack of belonging and identity, deficient collaboration agreements and ethical dilemmas.

Contributes insights into an industrial PhD education transforming along with societal needs promoting a future workforce of researchers with skills, new work practices and learning capabilities applicable in the work–life of contemporary society.

This study contributes to the emerging field of studies of alternative doctoral educations by identifying benefits and barriers for learning and providing recommendations for how university and industry may promote learning in a resilient industrial PhD education collaboration.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the number of co-operative (co-op) education work terms that students completed and the importance they attach to employer and job attributes (i.e. work values).

Data were collected from a large cross-sectional survey of co-op students (N = 2,097) from one Canadian university.

Of the 19 work values measured, only six were related to work experience. Whereas work experience was related to several of the least important work values, such as geographic location, it was unrelated to many of the most important work values, such as work–life balance. Further, evidence suggests that changes in work values occur when work experience is first introduced in the curriculum (e.g. first co-op work term), not at subsequent work experiences.

The findings extend the understanding of how work-integrated learning (WIL) prepares students to make decisions about their careers in the future of work and provide insights to address the challenge of scaling WIL. However, the study draws on cross-sectional data from one single Canadian university and does not explore potentially confounding factors including time itself or critical events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

WIL educators may leverage these findings to improve their understanding of how students' work values evolve as they complete WIL experiences. They may also use insights from the study to align students' needs and employers' understandings of those needs.

This study is the first to explore how work values might change throughout a WIL program, particularly among Gen Z students whose work values seem divergent from those of previous generations.

Within the umbrella of technology and vocational education (TVET), technology or technical education in higher institutions of learning is obligated to produce the required manpower needed in the industry. Thus, it is pertinent to explore the interaction between the industry and higher education students. Drawing on the tenets of theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study offers valuable insights into the nomological networks of work-integrated learning (WIL), perceived behavioral control (PBC), subjective norm (SBN), personal attitude (PAT) and job search intention (JSI).

The study applied a structurally hypothesized model that was drawn from the TPB to collect data for the constructs. Using a cross-sectional survey after the WIL experiences of the students, we collected data from technology education undergraduates (N = 214) in their final academic year from universities in Nigeria.

With structural equation modeling, the study found that WIL is directly associated with JSI, PBC, SBN and PAT. In line with the tenets of the TPB, simple mediation models were supported about the influence of WIL on JSI via PBC and PAT discretely but not via SBN. Further, the results support two paths of serial mediation models, indicating sequential indirect links between WIL and JSI via SBN and PBC, as well as via SBN and PAT.

Our findings have implications for higher education practitioners, industry experts and employers of labor.

Although extant literature has relatively shown that WIL impacts employability skills, this study has remarkably shown the WIL-JSI nexuses within the variables of TPB.