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This study aims to explore a self-managed action learning (SMAL) initiative undertaken by social work assessors in England, which led to insights into the practice of SMAL.

The paper draws upon the experience of the authors in relation to an actual SMAL intervention in a social care context in England.

The paper suggests that, in contrast to extant literature, it is not the absence of an “expert” facilitator, which has proved to be most challenging but rather dealing with the practicalities of managing inter-organisational sets online. Specific individual and inter-organisational learning came about as a result of the SMAL initiative, including the implementation of inter-organisational networking to support isolated assessors.

The ideas and perspectives discussed in this paper will be explored through further empirical research.

The paper illustrates how SMAL can be implemented and suggests how it can facilitate organisational and individual learning.

The paper discusses an initiative with the aim of better supporting assessors of newly qualified social workers; a task of enormous importance to the future of social work practice in England.

The paper contributes to a limited literature on the practice of SMAL. The uniqueness comes from both the multi-organisational aspect of the programme, that it is self-managed and delivered virtually.

This study aims to assess the socio-cognitive transformation and subject knowledge development of international students studying in China's universities with diverse learning environment.

The data was collected through on-line survey and quantitative approach was adopted on a Likert scale to assess students' cognitive and social development as a responsible mind-set, ethical awareness, understanding cultural diversity and subject knowledge development. The assessment scale consisted of 25 statements to cover the foundational indicators that represent socio-cognitive transformation. The questionnaire was pilot tested for internal consistency by calculating Cronbach’s alpha. Furthermore, exploratory factor analysis was applied to ensure the traits of the construct intended to measure. A total of 316 participants responded to the survey. With descriptive statistics, X² of association and Friedman’s two-way analysis of variance by rank was applied to test the hypothesis.

This study argues that diverse learning environment has positive impact on learners’ socio-cognitive transformation. It enhances students' capability to understand cultural values to accept diversity and awareness about global community issues and also subject knowledge skill development.

In the current century, study abroad programs have increased the mobility of international students, and the role of higher education institutions has become immense, multifaceted and dynamic. Universities are taking a position to play a considerable role in creating learning opportunities for awareness of societal issues and transform social behavior. Studying abroad programs is a growing concept in response to learners' cogitative and socialized transformation. There is an absence of research conducted to explore the impact of a diverse cultural environment on the socio-cognitive transformation of international students. Therefore, the current study focused on exploring the cognitive and societal development of international students studying in China.

Previous studies showed that combining learning based on experiences in the past with learning from an envisioned future scenario results in more innovative and radical ideas, as well as in a higher number of covered content domains. However, currently there is no holistic learning theory that integrates both sources of learning. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether it is possible to extend Bateson’s theory of learning, to link these two learning sources in one coherent framework.

To answer this research question, the author draws on learning from an envisioned future, and tries to link it with the most important levels of learning in Bateson’s framework.

This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to link the important but still underexplored aspect of “learning from the future” to the complex and multifaceted work of Bateson. Given the fact that both sources of learning and experience yield a great potential to create new knowledge, this study outlines a possibility to include both sources into one learning theory.

This work provides the basis for further research in building a general holistic theory of learning to learn.

On the individual level, the proposed approach can be easily applied with systemic coaching processes in general and coaching processes in the fields of developing an individual vision in particular. In the field of organizational learning, the awareness of different learning sources and different learning modes on the one hand and knowledge about the implementation of enabling spaces (PE-ba, FE-ba) to support these various learning modes on the other hand help organizations to generate new knowledge and create innovative and sustainable solutions, products and services.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, it is the first theoretical work that describes the integration of learning from past experiences and learning from future experiences in a methodological way.

Simulation-based optimisation (SO) is a popular optimisation approach for building and civil engineering construction planning. However, in the framework of SO, the simulation is continuously invoked during the optimisation trajectory, which increases the computational loads to levels unrealistic for timely construction decisions. Modification on the optimisation settings such as reducing searching ability is a popular method to address this challenge, but the quality measurement of the obtained optimal decisions, also termed as optimisation quality, is also reduced by this setting. Therefore, this study aims to develop an optimisation approach for construction planning that reduces the high computational loads of SO and provides reliable optimisation quality simultaneously.

This study proposes the optimisation approach by modifying the SO framework through establishing an embedded connection between simulation and optimisation technologies. This approach reduces the computational loads and ensures the optimisation quality associated with the conventional SO approach by accurately learning the knowledge from construction simulations using embedded ensemble learning algorithms, which automatically provides efficient and reliable fitness evaluations for optimisation iterations.

A large-scale project application shows that the proposed approach was able to reduce computational loads of SO by approximately 90%. Meanwhile, the proposed approach outperformed SO in terms of optimisation quality when the optimisation has limited searching ability.

The core contribution of this research is to provide an innovative method that improves efficiency and ensures effectiveness, simultaneously, of the well-known SO approach in construction applications. The proposed method is an alternative approach to SO that can run on standard computing platforms and support nearly real-time construction on-site decision-making.

How learning is facilitated in inter-organizational projects remains underdeveloped in the literature. The aim of this study is to focus on viewing the relationship between the multiple organizations in a project, from a perspective of the learning aspect.

This research analyses the learning trajectory that occurred in the largest tunnel project in the Netherlands. Data were collected through archival documents, in-depth interviews, and site visits. Answering the research question will be done through inductive research.

The results indicate that the most significant change that exploitative learning has led to is the change in mind-set. The learning paradox of projects does not play a factor in the learning trajectory present at the GSP project.

While the research was conducted in a Dutch context, it is suggested that the findings presented would align with the experiences of construction organizations in other parts of the world.

The findings have implications for understanding learning in practical project management. The organizations need to focus on learning initiatives on people, and not on the collection of data.

This research responds to the debate over the learning in projects. Learning stimulates openness and that this has positive impact om collaboration.

Management of inter-organizational projects focuses on the collective benefits of a group of organizations on a shared activity for a limited period and the coordination among them. However, how learning is facilitated in the inter-organizational project remains under-developed in the literature.

This research analyses the exploitative learning process in the longest tunnel project on land in the Netherlands realized in a densely populated area. Data were collected through archived documents, in-depth interviews, site visits in the ethnographic research to analyze the actors, the daily practices and social situations in projects.

The empirical findings indicate that exploitative learning is promoted positively between the owner and the contractor and internally within the contractor. The most significant change that the exploitative learning process has led to is the change in mindset toward the collaboration. Project culture is considered to be shaped by exploitative learning in the inter-organizational project. However, there is a gap between the transfer of knowledge from the inter-organizational project to the parent organization.

The findings have implications for understanding learning in the inter-organizational project setting.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of students’ self-regulation, co-regulation and behavioral engagement on their performance in flipped learning environments in higher education.

The subjects were college students taking an education course offered at a 4-year university in South Korea. Structural equation modeling was adopted to analyze 221 student responses.

The findings indicated that the more students self-regulated, the more likely they were to engage in co-regulation with other students in the class. Students’ self-regulation and co-regulation also significantly affected their behavioral engagement. Finally, students’ self-regulation positively affected their academic performance, while co-regulation and behavioral engagement did not affect their performance.

Based on these findings, this study provides meaningful implications for scholars and practitioners on how to select and use more appropriate instructional and evaluation strategies to improve students’ positive behavior, engagement and performance in a flipped learning environment.

E-learning is a very popular concept in the education sector today, and one of the best ways to implement this is through blended learning. However, the implementation of blended learning program at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is quite new in Bangladesh. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of blended learning, how to construct a blended learning program, the benefits of blended learning and some prerequisites to implement blended learning program successfully at HEIs in Bangladesh.

Nature of the study is explanatory, descriptive as well as evaluative. Primary data were collected through face-to-face interviews using structured questionnaire having both open- and close-ended questions including personal observations. Secondary data comprise relevant documents available from government agencies, archives, and library and research organizations.

By utilizing the blended learning tools, HEIs in Bangladesh can achieve radical improvements in education quality as well as in the accessibility and cost-effectiveness of learning programs. Moreover, any innovative educational reform will be successful only when it is fully accepted and adopted by all the key stakeholders: students, parents, teachers, academic administrators, researchers and policy makers.

Several practical solutions have been presented in this paper: how to create a blended learning program, how to overcome the obstacles for successful implementation of blended learning and how to create a flipped classroom with the aid of technology.

A country’s soul and economic well-being depends to a large extent on the quality of their citizen’s education. Implementing innovative teaching programs within the education system will enhance the quality of education at HEIs in Bangladesh, creating more efficient labor force hence benefiting the overall society.

Originality in terms of exposing the hurdles that needs to be addressed for successful implementation of blended learning programs at HEIs in Bangladesh and providing an easy guideline to educators on how to create flipped classrooms.

The purpose of this paper is to identify staff skills and competencies on which Chinese open universities should focus their professional development activities in order to enhance the quality of open and distance learning (ODL) in China.

Data were collected from surveys of 220 academic and academic-related Chinese staff, each of whom participated in one of seven 3-day Learning Design and Course Creation (LDCC) workshops at three large regional open universities in China between 2017 and 2019. The workshops were based on the UK Open University (UKOU) approach to learning design (LD) and course creation. Using content analysis methodology, textual responses were analysed and compared against the Instructional Design Competencies framework provided by the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (IBSTPI).

(1) Designing instructional interventions, (2) keeping up to date with design theories, (3) communicating in order to manage stakeholders, teams and projects were the main competencies identified from the participants responses. However, these three identified competencies differed in emphasis between the institutions that took part.

In Western higher education institutions (HEIs), LD has developed as an important approach to improving quality. A need has been identified for robust approaches to quality and professional development opportunities to enhance teaching and learning standards in open and distance learning (ODL) in China. This paper identifies and discusses specific LD skills and competencies that could be targeted to improve the quality of ODL in China.