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The purpose of this paper is to describe the assessment practices reported by Canadian educators and workplace supervisors involved in exemplary work‐based education (WBE) programs for high‐school students.

Six focus groups were conducted, four with teachers and coordinators and two with workplace supervisors from exemplary WBE programs, to identify the features of these exemplary programs that prepare adolescents to participate in WBE, that prepare workplace supervisors to mentor WBE students, and that characterize the day‐to‐day interactions in the workplace through which adolescents learn. Surprisingly, in the absence of any questions directly focused on assessment, participants spoke at length and with passion about the purpose and nature of assessment in their outstanding WBE programs.

Analyses of these interviews revealed six themes that describe the range of assessment practices associated with these three features of exemplary programs: identification of student interests and abilities; student self‐assessment; communication of expectations and responsibilities; contextualized assessment; collaboration between school and workplace; and connections between assessment and instruction.

The findings highlight practical assessment procedures, for teachers and workplace supervisors, which facilitate the meaningful participation and learning of students in WBE programs and of workers in the workplace.

As part of the Co-Operative Education Program (CEP) under study, a Work-integrated Learning (WIL) student engagement framework is presented. The framework focusses on the effectiveness of the WIL program with real-world assessment tasks to prepare students for graduate employment. In order to evaluate the level at which the engineering graduates are work-ready, an analysis of qualitative and quantitative survey data from CQU students, employers and data from other sources was undertaken. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

WIL is an effective pedagogical strategy employed in engineering curriculum to engage students with workplace partners and engineering practices. However, little is known about the problems exist in the WIL processes including insufficient resources and support for mentoring students. On overcoming the problems, an effective collaboration between students, universities and engineering workplaces provides an enhanced engagement experience and enables students’ work-ready skills. Central Queensland University (CQU)’s Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) and Diploma of Professional Practice (Co-op) students participate in two 6-month WIL placements over the course of their university studies.

To identify the impact of the co-operative education model on graduate outcomes, an analysis of student assessment data from 2016 to 2018 showed that the student employability indicators were consistently above the national average of graduate engineering students. All areas such as knowledge base, engineering ability and professional attributes, students’ performance were rated at or above the average of a graduate engineer by employers.

As part of practice assessment, engineering workplace employers provide an evaluation of students’ performance against the Engineers Australia (EA) Stage 1 Competency Standard for Professional Engineers, involving sixteen mandatory elements in the areas of knowledge and skill base, engineering application ability, and professional and personal attributes.

Jenny Chapman is a practitioner, consultant and lecturer in vocational rehabilitation, and has extensive experience of rehabilitation, training and service management in Australia and the UK. Continuing our occasional series on lessons from other countries we asked Jenny to give an account of some aspects of a very successful programme in which she worked for a number of years. The Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service (CRS) in Australia, where Jenny gained her experience in vocational rehabilitation, continue to provide effective ‘return to work’ programmes for disabled people. The use of methods such as workplace assessment is one reason why Australia is extremely successful in return to work and placement rates.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight both the need for measurement of graduate capabilities post-degree completion and the challenges posed by such a task. Higher education institutions provide an important site of learning that can equip future professionals with capabilities to manage and respond to complex sustainability challenges in their careers. Measurement of graduate uptake and application of sustainability capabilities is an important part of advancing sustainability curriculum and pedagogy to educate the twenty-first century sustainability capable graduates.

This paper explores the nature of capabilities and reviews existing approaches to capability assessment.

The nature of capabilities and their assessment post-degree completion pose a number of challenges for the development of assessment and measurement tools, which is why sustainability capability assessment methods are deserving of specific research attention.

The assessment and application of capability in graduates’ professional contexts are an important part of closing the loop between learning and teaching in higher education and professional application of this learning. It is imperative that more research be undertaken on the methodology of graduate assessment, given the need to understand graduate learning outcomes as they apply in professional settings for graduate employability, promoting sustainability and developing effective sustainability pedagogy.

Given that there is significant overlap between employability skills, generic graduate attributes and sustainability capabilities, this paper has relevance beyond the measurement of sustainability capability to the measurement of uptake and professional application of generic capabilities more broadly.

The measurement of graduate capability offers potential to enhance learning for sustainability. Measurement of graduate capabilities is a critical part of closing the loop between workplace expectations, graduate learning outcomes, learning and teaching and curriculum development during degree programs.

The review provided in this paper highlights a critical gap in research on methodologies to undertake measurement of workplace application of graduate capability. The paper explores considerations for measurement of graduate learning outcomes, specifically the difference between measuring competencies, skills and capability and the necessity for the measurement of the latter in the context of sustainability education for future professionals.

Mental ill‐health in the workplace is estimated to cost UK employers £6.2b each year in lost working days. This concern to employers and employees alike was recently highlighted by the Health Education Board for Scotland (HEBS) needs assessment study of workplace health promotion, which identified stress as a major issue. A Health and Safety Executive review (1993) of the stress literature proposed the incorporation of stress within the framework of the assessment and control cycle already introduced to minimise physical health and safety risks. This was supported by the HEBS study that identified health and safety as the predominant health‐related culture in Scottish workplaces. It is therefore appropriate to include stress control with other health and safety issues. The Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) had already developed a risk assessment approach, entitled the Organisational Stress Health Audit (OSHA), and the feasibility of this was tested in the pilot study commissioned by HEBS. This paper presents the background to this organisational approach, its feasibility in controlling stress across different types of organisation and future plans for development of the approach. The views presented are those of the researchers and not the commissioning body.

The Mental Wellbeing Impact Assessment (MWIA) is an evidence-based tool that guides decision makers, such as policy makers and service managers, about the potential impacts of a new programme or policy change. It was initially used in urban regeneration but has subsequently been used in housing, children’s centres and education. The purpose of this paper is to report, for the first time, on the strengths and weaknesses of using the MWIA in the workplace.

Feedback was collected from staff who participated in stakeholder workshops as part of the MWIA process at two different public sector organisations.

The MWIA can be used as an effective workplace assessment tool and is valuable as both a diagnostic tool and as an intervention in its own right. The MWIA generates tailored action plans focussed on addressing the organisation or team-specific issues. The weaknesses of the MWIA in the workplace are mainly focussed around management cooperation and commitment to the process which should be screened for prior to engaging in the full stakeholder workshop.

This is the first report of MWIA’s use in the workplace but suggests that it is a useful tool which can be used to support workplace wellbeing, especially in relation to a policy or organisational change. Further studies should be carried out to fully understand the impact of the MWIA in the workplace.

The purpose of this study was to understand student experiences of authentically assessed community partnership projects and reflect on authentic assessment from a social and environmental sustainability perspective.

The authors present an elaborated case study including graduate-level courses at a university in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The authors draw on a thematic analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews and written reflections from 18 students.

Students appreciated the benefits of authentic assessment, such as workplace realism, a greater level of personal investment and opportunities to draw on diverse skills. Teams varied in how they navigated novel challenges and in their ability to develop focused projects capable of affecting change for sustainability. Students considered group work the greatest obstacle to achieving sustainability goals.

The case study provides a novel contribution by exploring in-depth the student experience of authentic assessment activities designed to foster social and environmental sustainability outcomes. The authors provide practical limitations of authentic assessment and discuss tensions between authentic assessment and other education goals.

This chapter addresses a practical industrial relations problem, namely the absence of a monitoring framework to assess and improve labor–management relations in organizations. The authors argue that assessing and improving organizational labor relations requires attention to both vertical and horizontal alignments of labor relations institutions and practices. Vertical alignment refers to the internal consistency across the strategic, functional, and workplace levels noted by Kochan, Katz, and McKersie in their strategic choice framework (1986). Drawing on two “best practice” labor relations cases, Saturn and Kaiser Permanente as well as two original case studies of healthcare organizations, the authors develop the notion of horizontal alignment, i.e., the internal consistency across labor relations processes, substantive issues, and outcomes.

Over the last twenty years, many studies have examined the impact of structured writing programs on improving accounting students’ writing skills. In this chapter, we extend this research by using writing assignments that are representative of the workplace writing experiences that students encounter in their professional careers, by developing an evaluation instrument to assess the effectiveness of structured writing programs, and by using business advisory board members to evaluate improvement in students’ writing. Our results suggest that our new approach to designing writing assignments representative of workplace writing helps students improve their writing skills. Our business advisory board members’ ratings indicate that the overall quality of the students’ writing improved over two semesters of completing a series of workplace writing assignments. Specifically, our structured writing program improved students’ business writing skills in the areas of organization (paragraph unity, layout, and conclusion) and style and tone (conciseness and word choice). Students also improved in their ability to explain technical aspects of accounting work and in certain aspects of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. The results and tools provided in this study should assist other programs in either implementing or improving a structured writing program.

The study discusses the importance of workplace learning in the current era of work and how organisations are shifting their focus toward employee learning and development. It highlights the need for employees to continuously up-skill themselves to keep up with the demand for skills. The purpose of this study is to introduce a modern approach to evaluating workplace learning to promote and enhance better performance within the workplace.

It introduces a deep modern learning approach called “behavior-oriented drive and influential functions of formal and informal learning”. The study also develops the concept of the “Study, Plan, Do, Check, and Act” framework to simulate practise and theory within and outside of work to allow continuous improvement, learning new workplace tools, and bridging digital transformation challenges. The study highlights that workplace learning occurs in a variety of contexts and uses various tools, which poses challenges for the design and development of technology that supports and analyses workplace learning.

Based on behaviour-orientated drive and influential functions for formal and informal learning, a grade of 6.54% days was registered for formal learning tools and 4.89% days for informal learning tools. From the statistics in this study, This study concluded that informal learning tools contribute more to the development of the workplace than formal learning. In informal learning, employees act autonomously at their own will and pace to obtain the required knowledge. The time to acquire knowledge through informal learning tools is shorter than in formal learning. Future relevant research should review more learning tools for formal and informal learning.

Modern workplace learning is a key tool for organisations to gain a competitive advantage. Learning based on formal training and development programs, informal learning and knowledge sharing influence the development of human capital resources.

The study combines social science and engineering approaches to enable non-engineers to pioneer execution of tasks and examine their performance based on the approach detailed in the results, methodology and discussion sections. It contributes to the field of learning organisations and organisational learning by exploring the learning processes of modern professionals. By investigating the learning practices and experiences of knowledge workers, this study seeks to identify the factors that promote or learn and the impact of learning on the workplace.