Theme 2: Tailoring of Learning Contracts

The tailoring concept is one of the unique features being extensively used in WBL. This is one of the attractions for WBL from employers and employees. The work-based

learners’ learning contracts are customised to their work role and responsibilities so that

they learn at workplace without having to commute to the university. This arrangement is agreed upon between the employer and the university to ensure that it meets with the academic rigour, standards and learning outcomes of the programme whilst contributing to the productivity of workplace. This is a radical change when compared with the traditional HE programmes where structured teacher-centred programmes are delivered. The Learning

and Skills Improvement Service’s (LSIS) (2009) World Class Skills programme (WCS), ‘the Operations delivering successful WBL Skills’ make explicit reference to the

workplace as the preferred learning and assessment environment. The importance of identifying and incorporating specific work activities, facilities and equipment into the learning programme for individuals and/or groups of learners should be acknowledged at the programme planning stage.Liyanage, Strachan et al (2011b) emphasise the importance of receiving inputs from the employer and PB at various stages in the process including the planning phase in order to improve the effectiveness of design, development and delivery of online programmes for work-based learners.

Some of the quotes from stakeholders indicate the pros and cons of the tailoring concept.

Academics

The academic comment below shows the difficulty of implementing the tailored concept“The concept sounds lovely but administratively and practically a nightmare. Our systems and support are not set up to achieve this plus with module occupancy, even options are not enabled. I cannot do it on my own without support from the faculty/university. It’s costly in terms of time and resources and not affordable by the university. Tailoring for all the modules and giving them options is not possible. In assessments we ask students to look at their workplaces and focus their projects towards it. In RM, once there were students from European Central Bank who had a whole course

tailored to their needs”.

Another approach to tailoring is to offer different options to students. This is under consideration by academics but practically it is not happening in most cases. “We are

slightly increasing choices so that students could skip what they are knowledgeable about

and take up something they want to their workplace.”

An MSc Engineering tutor commented “All hands on practical projects are carried

out at the workplace so what students are requested to do by the university is to cohesively report/document their work and what they expect from the tutors is just the guidance to do it but not teaching. However, students always seek the theoretical view point from us when

they cannot resolve the problem at workplace.” This disproves the point in the literature which says “One problem with omitting reference to theory is to leave an impression that

WBL is “vocational”, which could mean in other words that it is suitable for those who do not like to learn in the classroom” but students cannot get around with the work-place problems without merging them with theory as per above tutor’s comment. In addition, this

doing or activity was not enough to produce learning; rather doing should become a trying, an experiment with the world to find out what it is like. Experiments serve to make the espoused theories tacit, applicable to the situation at hand, and more understandable.

Other than the administrative difficulties in terms of time, and cost with higher number of students, there is a further important concern about tailoring: “Not a good idea because students come from different backgrounds and different capacities so maintaining equal quality standards according to the programme benchmark levels will be difficult.”

However, the same Engineering tutor further commented “Students are guided on

fitting their projects to meet the module learning objectives. In our case, students have more power in terms of content because they are the experts in their own subject so we as tutors can only assess the module on the basis of learning outcomes of documented project

only but not on the complexity of the project.” This is a very important quote which

explains the way students’ engineering projects and assignments are tailored. The

subjectivity in level of complexity of different individual projects in terms of comparison purposes is compensated by assessing them against defined learning outcomes.

In other disciplines other than engineering, not much tailoring takes place as a whole programme “Standard curriculum structure is fixed for all the students but they undertake projects with the approval of employers to be benefitted for workplace.” This is a key benefit for the employers in WBL where student projects contribute to resolve and improve organisational issues.

When asked about the difficulties in maintaining standard marking practices “We

assessed those using sta ndard learning outcomes and created standard marking schemes to which examiners were trained in order to maintain the equal ma rking standards for all

the learners.”

It was observed that majority of tutors are concerned about offering module options to students due to the same constraints mentioned above but following comments from students reflect their desire to have the same. There is also a structural constraint that those options with too few students are discouraged by the university as they are not efficient to conduct.

Students

“I can apply any work based project to a particular module, but there is no

tailoring with respect to the modules I can take.” There is a need for academics to let

students choose modules from a list according to their wish, capabilities and knowledge gaps. However, this does not sit well with the University policy regarding this, and a desire to achieve staff efficiency.

“I really enjoyed the fact that it is not just tailoring but you could apply that for

your work. I designed a website for my college through one of the assignments. I did a

project to capture disabled students’ learning styles in my dissertation which was used by

my college for the benefit of disabled students.” This further confirms the academics’ view above on mutual benefits an employer could enjoy out of tailoring if students are supported as opposed to ”I didn’t do anything related to libraries in my dissertation. I being a self

learner anyway didn’t have to contribute to my employer in my dissertation by taking a project from the college.”

“It’s very beneficial for students though because you could get a lot of help from

your workplace for those assignments which are related to your work role.” These

comments show that by tailoring, students and employers get most of the benefits. However the university’s RoI is doubtful due to the high investment needed.

One of the MSc Professional Engineering students commented “All my modules

were based around my work role and I believe that in WBL you need to be able to reflect

on what you did and try to see better ways of doing it in future”. Reflective learning is emphasised here based on Honey and Mumford's (1992) Learning Cycle and Learning Styles and Meisel and Fearon’s (1996) concept of metacognition which means that one

constantly thinks about one’s problem-solving processes.Also, how they prepare learning contracts is shown in the comment below “I sat with my mentor/training manager and looked at each module’s learning outcomes and tried to tailor it from the company’s

business point of view as to what is best for the company from my learning whilst complying with the university’s expected standards and the programme leader gave inputs to improve it. The programme leader explained me that my learning contract would go to the EngCUK at the end of my programme for them to see what my intension was and what I have achieved.” These types of exclusive partnerships between employers and students

contribute to a healthy WBL operation.

Support services

The example of diversity of approach among programmes is highlighted by the support staff “The engineering WBL programme has a lot of tailoring in the student learning contracts whereas the other programmes have a set of modules which students

have to compulsorily follow”. Among the five programmes being evaluated, this currently happens only in the Engineering programme whereas other programmes include ‘standard’ modules although opportunity to apply ideas to their workplace through some of the assignments and through the final dissertation exists.

The following comment illustrates the complexity of handling different learning modes (FT/PT/face-to-face/DL/WBL) and their respective tailoring. “For face-to-fa ce students we have core modules and then a number of optional modules. Then for DL students we need to have different codes to identify them from face-to-fa ce students and those optional modules create another set of complex combinations. Administratively this is very costly. We are planning to increase DL student numbers in next 5 years so we need to seriously think about this before that. Also, WBL students may study at a str etch and also they may take a break due to an overseas work commitment which they inform us but they might forget to inform us back after the break when they resume studies so our

systems should be able to track this”. Well established administrative procedures have to be incorporated into the system to handle these instances.

The view of the Students’ Union regarding tailoring is both positive and negative.

“When you tailor student’s workplace activities as part of their assessments, I feel you

degrade the rigour of a university degree and it’s a disadvantage for student’s personal development and creativity. In face-to-fa ce degrees students have to learn new theories and refer so much new resources for new knowledge but in WBL if you ask the student to submit what they have done in the workplace it could be done in a way they find easiest or what they are good at but how would you develop the skills you are not good at but are

essential in your life/career?” and positively “for those who couldn’t make it to university due to various circumstances even though they are clever enough to acquire required

levels with many years of work experience at higher level it’s fair to recognize and

appreciate their skills to be able to convert them to a paper qualification.”

“It won’t be difficult if we develop a framework.” The necessity of a framework is emphasized here which can streamline the tailoring concept so that equal standards can be maintained for each individual programme. “A learner who has done a quite tailored or specific WBL which might not transfer the requirements of another workplace, they will have to explain the employer that they did it in accordance with the framework and levels

of HE and also QA has been complied according to standards.” This is where the accreditation by the PB could play an important role.

A support services staff provides an example of how she has personally tailored her learning to workplace “I did MSc in Life Long Learning (LLL) and Adult Education on

Distance mode recently and I used a lot of stuff what we do at workplace. Most of my assignments were about pedagogy of WBL, and policies and my project was on impact of

WBL. I didn’t have an official mentor. You have to be well organized, motivated and independent. If you don’tpush yourself no one will push you”.

When queried whether the applying of tailoring concept is depending on the subject area and student numbers “I don’t think so in terms of the subject area but WBL is viable for smaller student numbers”.

Employers

A key beneficiary from the tailoring of learning contracts to the workplace is the employer. Thus their views are important in assessing this approach. “As a concept it is an

excellent idea, unfortuna tely I feel that this would impact upon the delivery times and costs

of these interventions”

“I’m not convinced of tailoring it to individuals but it should be easily done for a

company or may be to a series of companies. This is where APEL can play a role. We are looking for rounded engineers who can attend to any engineering matter irrespective of

their core discipline. If the programme can accommodate individual student’s weak areas

it would be beneficial. As per the Institute of Accreditation everyone has to achieve competencies in all levels therefore learning different skills at this level would be beneficial for employees as well as for the company. Also, if management force runs out of vacancies being created in one position, everyone will have opportunities if they are competent in all areas to fulfill those gaps.” The idea of tailoring content for employees by

identifying their skill gaps is more sensible as per the employers’ views. However,

employers too, appreciate the fact that it can be difficult for the university to do.

Professional bodies

Tailoring of learning content to workplace activities cannot be achieved without the support of the PB which accredits or approves the programme content/qualification. Otherwise students will not get the intended benefit out of it. The PBs had mixed views on this. “Excellent concept but difficult, expensive and time consuming. These cannot be accredited for its individual nature but they can be standardized up to an extent”. This shows the negative and challenging nature of it whilst the following comments demonstrate the positive aspects. “As long as the final qualification can be guaranteed to show the student has met our institution’s knowledge needs, this would be welcome.” and “You cannot get away with the fact that WBL is individual and two employees in the same company will learn two different things and we do take them as case by case basis on

different learning contracts. That’s why we don’t accredit MSc Professional Engineering

but we recognize it”. The best way to approach this situation is to obtain prior approval from the PB once the learning contract is prepared before embarking on the programme.