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This chapter examines the teaching practice of the author in the Faculty of Education, University of Malta, taking sessions in smart learning as part of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) study units in Bachelors of Education and Masters in Teaching and Learning degree programs between 2017 and 2019. My teaching sessions ran concurrent with undertaking separate doctoral research investigating how participants experience “smart learning journeys.” Smart learning journeys in the research were conceptualized as real-world journeys, with geo-spatially relevant points of interest forming a journey of locations related to a topic of learning, providing context-aware content via digital interactions. Research was not connected to teaching practice, though students who took TEL units also participated in the same smart learning journey activity as part of their syllabus.

Though teaching sessions were not part of my research, my classroom practice modified as a result of emerging research findings, and my teaching benefited as I gained deeper understanding about smart learning activities and the role of the learner in them. Using dialogic learning methods and techniques inspired from my research interview methodology, class sessions became noticeably more effective as students engaged directly in discovering their own learning from having participated in the smart learning journey.

This paper aims to demonstrate the significance and potential of learning as a performance lever.

Through experience of working within a number of organizations across varied industries the author has formulated a clear link between learning and performance. This paper intends to demonstrate an approach that ensures a collaborative responsibility between learning functions and organization management in the deployment of learning opportunities in a performance journey from current to expected levels.

The paper considers that learning and performance journeys can be combined and managed to greater effect if training is not treated as a one‐off event and that change is more likely if the responsibility for learning and performance is held by individuals and the coordination of learning opportunity support is led by specialists yet implemented in an integrated way by all.

There are a number of implications: the concept of learning and performance journeys being coordinated to ensure transfer of learning to the workplace rather than a focus on single training events or interventions; the use of multi‐media approaches to the provision of learning opportunity to enable improved performance over time; the focus of measurement, reporting and subsequent adjustments to the provision of learning on performance outputs rather than measurement of training inputs.

The paper demonstrates learning and performance journeys as a concept. It is of significant value to heads of learning and development and organization management involved in change and the achievement of strategy and vision.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how educators can harness the natural momentum of learning to create a dramatic and exciting hero’s learning journey. Given the importance of motivation, educators can borrow ideas from game designers by using gamification – a process to re-frame a real life goal to be more appealing and achievable. A series of learning activities, developed to meet both cognitive and emotional needs, results in an engaging learning journey.

The concept presented, based on PSI Theory, OCEAN Big Five character traits and player/learner archetypes, is that learners are motivated by three basic needs: affiliation, competence or certainty (assuming other physiological needs are met).

Armed with insight into types of motivations at different phases, learner experience designers can create different learning journeys and user profiles. Learning activities can be planned for each need and phase based on changing motivations: collaborate and curate (affiliation), choice and ownership (certainty), challenge and accountability (competence).

Further research is needed in the area of gamification in education. A qualitative study should be conducted on preferred learning and assessment activities for each player archetype and, importantly, this research should represent broad samples and not be restricted to the online gaming community.

Rather than focussing on an isolated unit of study, and asynchronous eLearning modules, learning designers can use modern technologies to seed and nurture learning communities where each person has an appealing pathway to enable them to move from novice to expert at their own pace in a spiral of satisfying learning.

The purpose of this research is to support responsible decision-making in Higher Education (HE) settings by understanding what type of learning journey satisfies students most in their HE experience and what they want from the learning.

This paper analyses the key tool used to assess satisfaction factors for UK students, the National Student Survey (NSS). It adopts peculiar regression statistical tests to identify the NSS items that influence “overall student satisfaction” by reviewing responses over 9 years from accountancy students at business schools located in England.

The findings of the study provide evidence that students are most satisfied with a learning journey where they are part of a course that is “well organised and running smoothly”, which provides “intellectual stimulation” that helps in developing their ability to “present themselves with confidence” and provides “academic advice and support”. The findings of the paper show that students are not satisfied so much by utilitarian aspects of learning but rather those that relate to who they are and where they are in their learning journey, the level of intellectual stimulation they have experienced, the self-confidence they have developed and the supportive relationship they have developed with academics. A factor that did not relate highly was “assessment and feedback” which has been the focus of much university resource. Results show the factors that impacted overall satisfaction are most related to students wanting to develop personal responsibility. These findings shape the key principles of responsible design and management of HE programmes and influence strategic decision-making.

Focussing on helping students experience, the type of learning journey that develops the virtue of responsibility emergent from the analysis will not only satisfy the student but will also have a knock-on effect of improving NSS scores, university league table ranking and accreditation under the Teaching Excellence Framework. The improved reputation aspects would then feed back into increased student satisfaction (Dean and Gibbs, 2015). The findings will also help HE managers and leaders to evaluate their decisions through three lenses: responsibility, students’ experience and students overall learning journey.

Much of the information published on the NSS have been predominantly descriptive and has resulted in decisions being made for students based on uninformed analysis of the survey’s results. This study uses advanced statistical modelling to evidence the relationship between factors of the NSS and overall student satisfaction providing key information regarding students’ importance to the type of learning journey they value and that this relates to a desire in wanting to develop responsibility. This study shows the link between factors of the NSS to provide useful lenses for HE managers and leaders to use to support responsible decision-making processes.

The overall aim of this chapter is to provoke reflection around how higher education (HE) engaged students in online learning during COVID-19. Discussion will outline the challenges that HE faced in engaging students in a complex and uncertain COVID-19 landscape and how this changed the dynamics of student engagement and support. It also discusses the role of the academic in the use of inclusive pedagogies to ensure that learning and support met the needs of the students’ in their online learning journeys. The chapter concludes that while COVID-19 meant wide scale change for HEIs that these best practices should create the “new norm” in curriculum design and is an era where HE professionals should be proud of the legacy they leave and the support they gave to ensure that students could continue their learning journeys.

This chapter outlines an audit process that led to a group of non-Aboriginal academics, and professional staff embarking on a journey to explore insights into Aboriginal knowledge and culture. It presents a compelling account of the benefits of a project devised by a creative Aboriginal teacher and community arts practitioner, The Embedding Diversity: Towards a Culturally Inclusive Pedagogy.

The Embedding Diversity project allowed a reflective and process-based deep learning to occur which enabled practical and meaningful Reconciliation to transpire between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal staff at an Australian University. Within the Faculty of Education and Social Work, staff collaborated with, listened to, and were taught by Aboriginal people in a range of contexts. Through this partnership, training, engagement, and conversations were had that shifted perspectives and changed thinking.

The outcome of this project was a commitment to change and advocacy for cultural competence to embedding stronger and more informed Aboriginal education, Aboriginal Studies Units of Study (subjects), and perspectives in teacher education curriculum. We present this project as it is reflective of the meaningful Reconciliation and educational reform which may be possible in other learning communities.

This paper aims to share key ideas forwarded in the five-book series focused on the Intelligent Social Change Journey (ISCJ) reflecting the latest research in the Consciousness Series supported by the Mountain Quest Institute and collaborators. This review is based on five separate books released as Part I (Laying the Groundwork), Part II (Learning from the Past), Part III (Learning in the Present), Part IV (Co-Creating the Future) and Part V (Living the Future) of The Profundity and Bifurcation of Change.

Reflecting the consilience approach taken by this in-depth research, the review of ideas provided in this paper tap into a deep array of research in knowledge and learning, with specific reference to recent neuroscience understanding that is emerging, and looks to psychology, physics, cell biology, systems and complexity, cognitive theory, social theory and spirituality for their contributions. The five books are heavily referenced (look to the larger work for these references) and, considering the individual as an intelligent complex adaptive learning system (Bennet et al., 2015b), entangle materials from science to philosophy, facts to psychology, management to poetry and words to pictures. This much shorter review can only partially represent this approach.

At this point in the history of humanity ? in the midst of a conscious expansion of our human capacity and understanding ? the rules are changing. As we move away from predictable patterns susceptible to logic, we are increasingly reliant on our ?gut? instinct, an internal sense of knowing that can tap into the intuitional plane. Yet, this knowing can only serve us if we ?know? what to do with it, how to act. Development of our mental faculties is essential to acting. We are on a developmental journey of the body, mind and heart, moving from the heaviness of cause-and-effect linear extrapolations, to the fluidity of co-evolving with our environment, to the lightness of breathing our thought and feelings into reality. Grounded in development of our mental faculties, these are phase changes, each building on and expanding previous learning in our movement toward intelligent activity.

This review lays the groundwork for the ISCJ, exploring consciousness through the lens of the cause-and-effect logic of Phase 1 (Learning from the Past), the co-evolving of Phase 2 (Learning in the Present) and the creative leap of Phase 3 (Co-Creating the Future). This research connects the expansion of consciousness to development of the human knowledge system.

Suggests that there are many dilemmas facing the aspiring learning organization and true commitment to its principles is a way of integrating the false dichotomy of “concern for the task” versus “concern for the people”. Each organization’s journey in learning endeavour will be different. How to understand, release and apply the powerful pragmatism of the learning organization is the key to success. Begins by exploring some key concepts based on action research and studies into the learning organization. Describes a model of learning culture, an associated learning culture survey and how this translates into a flexible programme of organizational development. Concludes by considering how this methodology may be posited as a useful investigation, analysis and measurement tool within an overall framework of organizational development.

This paper is a consequence of several years of research and management learning activity with small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), which focused on the development of the organisations and the concomitant development of managers within those organisations. The empirical study sample revealed a preference by owner managers and directors for action learning as a medium for the development the organisation and its people. In situations in which action learning was operational, the owner managers and directors in the sample were positive about the effect on organisational effectiveness. The authors conclude with the proposition that the development of a learning organization is a journey, which might never be completed, however, the decision to embark on the journey and the process leading to embarkation provide the organisation and its people with an increasingly effective compass through which the company is able to navigate itself through the hostile uncertainty of the business environment.