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The purpose of this paper, intended primarily for practitioners, is to demonstrate how features of psychological capital (PsyCap) may be combined with manager efforts to collaborate with an employee on an action learning project. In reciprocal action learning, manager and employee create a partnership to learn, achieve work-focused goals and advance their relationship. Initiatives aimed at positively stimulating employee assets and psychological or behavioral attributes can overlay the action learning process.

A narrative synthesis was used to examine three sources of empirical research from organizational psychology and human resource management: reciprocity, action learning and PsyCap. Information was integrated to create a guide, a model for managers for use in considering options about how to structure employee and self-learning, as well as options for use in stimulating employee assets and PsyCap.

The approach presented may serve as a practical guide for manager consideration. Research identifies several types of behaviors and activities intended to positively stimulate and reinforce the learning of both participants. The literature on PsyCap offers many initiatives for a manager to consider in assisting an employee to develop talent and positive attitudes. Such efforts have to be carefully tailored to the individual employee, the tasks at hand and the manager’s own learning needs.

The value of action learning is supported by a relatively large research base. The significance of PsyCap also has substantial support. Innovatively, this paper offers guidance to a manager in consideration of combining the attributes of both concepts to maximize positive effects on learning, personal growth, skill development and work achievement.

This paper seeks to describe and analyse an approach to course design as part of a strategic, technology‐inspired, cross‐university intervention to widen participation. A curriculum framework was developed for students who wished to make their work the focus of their study and could not readily access current university provision. A deliberate assumption was made that this would require a technologically inspired response to teaching, learning and assessment.

The approach taken was one of action research, by planning the curriculum framework, validating a course, delivery and review through interviews. Cybernetics was applied post‐hoc to analyse the data generated.

Staff found the framework a useful source of inspiration and critique for current practices, although established practice and preconceptions could render the framework meaningless. The ideas in the framework are not enough to change the institution – authoritative sanction may be needed. The cybernetic concepts of variety and its absorption proved useful in analysing the framework, and highlighted weaknesses in the design of the framework regarding the organisation of teaching.

Clarity about strategic purpose when making a change intervention is vital – in this instance raising the level of critical debate was more successful than recruitment. The establishment of an independent unit may be a more successful strategy than embedding university‐wide. Further work is required to understand how to market novel approaches. The action research shows that the university has the capability to develop curriculum designs that offer new groups of students access to higher education while improving their work practice.

The findings from interview confirm the value that peers attach to this development. Although the pedagogical design in this action research is based on previous work, the cybernetic analysis and conclusions are new.

The purpose of this paper is to propose Kamachiy-Mayistru (KM), an adaptive module to support teaching to people with learning difficulties. In Colombia, learning disabilities and difficulties are frequent in the integration classroom. Proper learning can be achieved as long as teaching strategies and didactic tools are the most adequate to the specific student characteristics and follow the suggestions given by experts for each learning difficulty. This module assists the teacher to prepare a course taking into account the disability profile, the student profile and pedagogical model suggestions. In this way, the student can learn utilizing the format and didactic tools more appropriate to their specific necessities.

The design and implementation of the KM comprises the following phases: identify the most important student, teacher, difficulties and course parameters to take into account in the adaptation process; design the data model that supports activity adaptation, based on student characteristics and difficulties; implement the platform; and validate the approach through a case study of teachers and their students with difficulties.

The application of KM in the case study indicated the effectiveness of KM to assist teachers in organizing course activities for students with and without disabilities or difficulties.

KM addresses specific student difficulties: attention, memory and languages. KM does not address severe cognitive disabilities. Regarding the validation, it is recommended to pursue new case studies to further demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in a broader population.

The main approach in KM is to suggest activities or pedagogical strategies to teachers to best support learning in students with difficulties or disabilities. The core of KM is an algorithm, called “Adapt Course”, that takes as input student and disability profiles, the course contents and the pedagogical model and creates course structures that are specially tailored to each student.

This model recommends teachers different activities, based on the specific student difficulties, to create personalized courses. It is able to address specific educational issues that are associated with learning difficulties and disabilities, such as educational integration, through content organization and personalized information display, which are based on the inherent characteristics of each student in the classroom.

It is based on a conceptual model that provides the essential architecture to design and implement virtual learning environments for students with learning difficulties or disabilities.

This article offers a reflective analysis of the Eco Ambassadors Project as an example of the some of the ways in which learning about environmental issues and active citizenship can be encouraged and enabled through collaboration and negotiated participation. Some policy background to the project is given, followed by a critical consideration of the theoretical framework of situated learning; participation in a community of practice is then presented in relation to the project, alongside theories of citizenship. Three activities undertaken during the project are highlighted and these are critically examined in relation to the theories under consideration. The paper argues that the theoretical framework of learning by participation can usefully augment and help better explain how learners develop their identities as citizens, and that through participation people can become active members of communities that are environmentally and politically aware.

The purpose of this paper is in providing guidance to human resource development and frontline managers in shaping employee learning at work.

This paper takes a viewpoint approach.

This paper builds on recent discussions on the inseparable nature of working and learning: peripheral management practice that facilitates employee learning (Cohen, 2014) to focus on the practical activities that frontline managers can do to promote and facilitate employee learning.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, this paper contains no material previously published or written by any other person, except where due reference is given in the text.

To demonstrate the applicability of machine‐learning tools in quality management.

Two popular machine‐learning approaches, decision tree induction and association rules mining, were applied on a set of 960 production case records. The accuracy of results was investigated using randomized experimentation and comprehensibility of rules was assessed by experts in the field.

Both machine‐learning approaches exhibited very good accuracy of results (average error was about 9 percent); however, association rules mining outperformed decision tree induction in comprehensibility and correctness of learned rules.

The proposed methodology is limited with respect to case representation. Production cases are described via attribute‐value sets and the relation between attribute values cannot be determined by the selected machine‐learning methods.

Results demonstrate that machine‐learning techniques may be effectively used to enhance quality management procedures and modeling of cause‐effect relationships, associated with faulty products.

The article proposes a general methodology on how to use machine‐learning techniques to support quality management. The application of the technique in ISDN modem manufacturing demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed general methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, using fine-grained exploratory multi-case studies, organisational learning practices – and associated constraints – impacting the performance of four small- and medium-sized project organisations which deliver energy efficiency projects in South Africa and whose learning practice mixes are of wider significance for the emerging project society in the region.

The unit of analysis is the Energy Efficiency Demand Side Management (EEDSM) programme; a US$104m grant funded the initiative directed at supporting energy efficient retro-fit projects across local municipalities in South Africa. Thematic analysis is undertaken, based on multiple exploratory interviews with project practitioners working for small- and medium-sized EEDSM project organisations.

Recognising the criticality of tacit knowledge as a focus for learning, within unstructured, novel, non-routine and technically specialised learning contexts in particular, the widespread lack of organisational harnessing through linkages to strategy and performance are noted, and advocacy is offered for the development of appropriate learning cultures linked to communities of practice that bring specialists together from across regional project societies.

The socio-political context of the EEDSM programme, although briefly addressed for its organisational cultural implications, was not given detailed consideration in the exploratory interviews. This would have enhanced the idiographic complexity of the findings, while also reducing prospects for distilling generalisable organisational learning improvement opportunities for emerging project societies. However, the study does not seek to provide evidence for specific learning practice effects on performance as this was not something the interviewees felt able to comment on in significant detail.

Learning practice studies for small- and medium-sized project organisations remains sparse, so are studies of business environments within developing countries, in general, or sub-Saharan Africa, in particular. Looking beyond narrow individual project views of performance, the present study’s project society-based business environment is theorised as both constraining and benefiting from the project-learning practices discussed by the respondents.

The purpose of this paper is to present and provide an evaluative study of a new Instructional Design Model for online and work‐based Learning.

The approach is both evaluative and pragmatic, focusing on clear practical out‐workings. First, the rational for the development of a new Instructional Design Model is discussed. Next, the pilot is evaluated in the context of the experience of those involved and relevant issues are highlighted. Subsequently, the implications are emphasized and areas meriting further research shown.

The results demonstrate the integrity of the model with this group of students.

Although small scale and having limited potential for generalisation outside the original context, the research makes the ways forward clear. These include, using the model in different contexts and examining further the ways in which links between theory and practice may be enhanced. In addition, emerging implications include the importance of developing online learning directly in the workplace, of using a constructivist approach and of fully integrating social interaction and assessments.

Arguably, this research is of significant value in today's society where access to universities may be limited and effective online and work based learning may provide new options.

The paper is original, building on previous research and facilitating interconnections between the different fields. It has value in progressing research in the areas of constructivist instructional design models related to online and work‐based learning.

Purpose: To present small cases of teachers who undertook inquiry-based collaborative work to implement and refine disciplinary literacy instruction in various content areas.

Design: Disciplinary literacy is explored alongside best practices in teacher professional learning, since disciplinary literacy is an instructional shift. This chapter addresses the question of how teachers might use an exemplary collaboration process to identify and test promising disciplinary literacy instructional practices.

Findings: Findings from various research projects point toward inquiry and collaboration as promising mechanisms for refining instruction to make it more disciplinary in purpose and implementation.

Practical Implications: The authors argue that disciplinary literacy is a relatively new conception of literacy skills in various content areas, and therefore jumping immediately to exemplary practices is unwise. Instead the authors recommend collaboration and inquiry as tools to generate and refine practices thoughtfully over time.

Recently, researchers have begun investigating the learning process that occurs within computer games (learning to play), as opposed to studying games that support explicit learning for educational purposes (playing to learn). With the increasing popularity of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), some research has begun to look beyond individual play and is now focusing on social play. By conducting a 30 day virtual participant observation in an MMOG, namely World of Warcraft (WoW) this paper aims to identify and provide a theoretical explanation of the process of learning that takes place in such an open‐ended virtual world.

Through the lens of activity theory, the paper focuses its analysis on the tool, the goal, the activity of game playing and contradictions.

It was found that social learning could occur through intrinsic and extrinsic play. Intrinsic play is play oriented toward goal completion while extrinsic play is directed toward reflection and expansion of intrinsic play. WoW is designed with tools that facilitate these types of play, and therefore learning that emerges from them. Furthermore, learning involves not only the process of acquiring knowledge and skills to accomplish certain goals, but also the process of defining the goal, thus shaping the learning process.

The results could be used to inform game design either for social play or for social learning.