An active learning organisation: teaching projects in electrical engineering education

The introduction of active learning in engineering education is often started by enthusiastic teachers or change agents. They usually encounter resistance from stakeholders such as colleagues, department boards or students. For a successful introduction these stakeholders all have to learn what active learning involves for them. This means that active learning has to take place on three levels: the students, the staff, and the organisation. These three actors have each to learn from experience, and their learning processes have to be related. Learning on the lowest level is based on the cycle of Kolb for experiential learning. If learning is seen as a form of change, similar cycles can be distinguished for learning on the levels of the staff and the organisation. On the staff level a model of Van Delden's for influencing staff members is used. For organisational change some ideas about the learning organisation from Senge are adapted to educational organisations like departments. A comprehensive view on student learning, staff development, and organisational learning is presented. The model includes four aspects of learning on three levels of educational actors and the relations among them. This model can be an illuminating guide for the introduction and/or general acceptance of active learning at your institution as a lasting change

Embracing Diversity in Organisations by Promoting Identity

Recognising diversity in organisations through enabling the promotion of individual identity is key to successful participation and learning. This paper will discuss ethnographic data from a UK debt recovery organisation that explored the lives of the debt collectors. Making use of sociocultural theory, the organisation was constructed as a community of practice. In seeking to understand the mechanisms of learning, it emerged that relationships that were centred on learning and knowledge sharing were key to employees understanding the practices of the organisation. The tacit, nuanced nature of knowledge in this organisation relied on functioning learning relationships and an environment that encouraged the promotion of individual identity to enable successful participation. Employees assumed the roles of more learned other and apprentice, supporting Vygotskian (1978) notions of learning through relationship. The implications of this for organisations are that a blueprint for learning within organisation cannot be created and, instead, businesses should value the diversity of individual identity

Exploring the relationship between knowledge management and organizational learning via fuzzy cognitive mapping

The normative literature within the field of Knowledge Management has tended to concentrate on techniques and methodologies for codifying knowledge. Similarly, the literature on organizational learning, focuses on aspects of those knowledge that are pertinent at the macro-organizational level (i.e. the overall business). There remains little published literature on how knowledge management and organizational learning are interrelated within business scenarios. In addressing this relative void, the authors of this paper present a model that highlights the factors for such an inter-relationship, which are extrapolated from a manufacturing organisation using a qualitative case study research strategy, supplanted by a cognitive mapping technique: Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM). The paper looks at the Information Systems Evaluation (ISE) process within a manufacturing organisation, the authors subsequently presenting a model that not only defines a relationship between KM and OL, but highlights factors that could lead a firm to develop itself towards a learning organisation

School organisation and STEM career-related learning

The aim of the research project has been to identify the range of factors that shape senior leadership team decisions with regards to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) career-related learning. Evidence has shown that the support of school senior leaders and their organisation of STEM within the school is highly significant in determining the success of STEM in an individual school. This research points to the importance of management structures within schools which prioritise career-related learning and provide effective support for all teaching staff to play their part. The findings support schools investing in senior teachers to provide career-related learning for pupils. The report goes on to identify the factors influencing senior leaders in taking forward STEM career-related learning across their school. The report explores how schools can enhance their STEM career-related learning provision, both within their local context, but also in the context of shifting policy and infrastructure. It examines, in particular, commissioning career guidance services, staff development, and the role of school strategy. The report closes with a series of recommendations for schools to consider

Peer review : organisational learning for nurses : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Nursing at Massey University

Organisational learning as it relates to the development of a peer review system within a clinical area of nursing practice is the focus of this study. Sixteen Public Health Nurses, with the manager of their service, and three key managers from the employing Crown Health Enterprise in provincial New Zealand, took part with the researcher in this praxis-oriented participatory action research process. A framework of the learning organisation was created to direct the research inquiry and evaluate data in relation to the developing peer review system. Through the use of critically reflexive discussions in an ongoing spiral of planning, implementing, observing, and assessing, this study illuminates the growth of the learning organisation and the building of a peer review system. within a cost-conscious healthcare service delivery environment. The account of the research process includes factors facilitative of, and critical to, the learning organisation. Use of many direct quotes from participants creates a context against which to visualise problems and constraints faced by the research group, and offers the reader a decision trail with which to resolve issues of credibility. Use of the peer process, it is suggested, will generate vital information about organisational performance, which will enable nurses to assume legitimate control of clinical nursing workplaces. Conclusions derived from this study suggest that peer review and the learning organisation are important tools for both assuring the quality of clinical nursing performance and securing organisational goals

Influences of Implementing the Learning Organisation on Companies’ Financial and Non-Financial Performances

The learning organisation (LO) concept as one of the numerous management tools available has been significantly gaining in popularity around the globe. Yet few models have been implemented to assess the lo’s influences on companies’ non-financial and financial performances. Therefore, at the usp Institute a Learning Organisation Assessing Model (LOAM) was developed and implemented over a period of five years. The empirical research presented in this article reveals positive non-financial and financial effects on the performances of companies with a more developed LO concept according to the LOAM. Research findings reveal the critical success factors in the implementation of the LO and provide tangible advice to management in helping them to achieve the best results possible when applying the LO concept.management tools and techniques, learning organisation, financial and non-financial performances

The Necessary Architecture of Self-Regulating Teams

In this paper we present the meaning of self-regulation in Self- Regulating Teams (SRTs) and show the importance of self- regulating teams in a learning organisation. Self-regulating (also known as self-managing) teams guide and perform their own tasks without a visible leader. In the present dynamic business environment, SRTs promise to deliver higher motivation and empowerment to the individuals that participate in them as well as elevated performance and efficiency to the organisations that implement them. However, as management support and change in business culture are prerequisites for the success of SRTs, their implementation is not an easy task. Often, unsuccessful SRTs have been (in our opinion, wrongly) criticized as a source of ambiguity for organisations and as yet another management technique that does not deliver its promises. We start exploring the validity of such a criticism by discussing the shift from a training paradigm to a self- development paradigm in order to draw the picture of a learning organisation as an entity that facilitates learning of all its members and continuously transforms itself as a whole. We continue by showing the contribution that SRTs could make to the process of an organisation that aims to become a learning organisation. In this paper we adopt a cybernetic approach to describe the role of SRTs and to identify the necessary conditions for SRTs to work at all. We present the necessary architecture of SRTs; the architecture that is needed to deliver their promised advantages. We show how Gordon Pasks Conversation Theory could be applied to self-regulating teams and present how learning conversation could provide the framework for successful organisational evolution through team development and team self- regulation. We show how the establishment of such an architecture can lead to a better understanding of self-regulating teams and thus to their successful evolution and development within an organisation. We conclude by stating the implications of our analysis

Flexible futures: the academic librarian

Australian academic libraries are highly adaptive to the changing needs of learning and teaching and research and the demands of the changing information environment. Liaison Librarians are absolutely central to the academic library's ability to manage change and anticipate and prepare for the future. However little is shared in conference papers and journal publications about how Liaison is organised, developed and supported by academic libraries. Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and University of Tasmania (UTAS) Libraries have explicit, well established and long-running Liaison programs. UTAS recently embarked on a change process to move from an individual, school-focussed model to a faculty-focused, team approach to Liaison organisation. The process led to the organisation of teams, with team-member leadership roles in collection development, learning and teaching, and research support. The new organisation also established a learning environment in which librarians continue to change in a rapidly changing environment. At QUT Library the Workforce Plan has set the framework for the re-examination of the highly Faculty-integrated Liaison model to improve support for the University's research agenda, to respond to the changes in scholarly communication and to work collaboratively with the University's Teaching and Learning Support (TALSS) to embed information and academic literacies into the University's curriculum. This paper examines recent literature on Liaison, discusses two case studies of Liaison organisation at QUT and UTAS Libraries and how these changing models prepare libraries and librarians for the future of university learning and teaching and research and the changing information environment

The Learning Organisation Meme: Emergence of a Management Replicator (or Parrots, Patterns and Performance)

Organisations and organisms are self-maintaining systems which spontaneously seek to preserve an evolved order. Both are enabled by replicators: memes or genes respectively. Whereas genes are the units of transmission of our biological inheritance memes are the units of transmission of our cultural inheritance. They cause organisations to settle into patterns, routines and habits of behaviour: manifestations of a particular memetic inheritance. These patterns enable the organisation but simultaneously limit its performance. Both systems share the evolutionary dynamic of adaptive radiation followed by stabilisation. Memetic examples include new markets, new technologies and new business ideas. Business theories and their derivative, managerial fads, are a class of memes. This paper illustrates the increasing returns dynamic in the evolution of management recipes by contrasting Business Process Re-engineering and the Learning Organisation. It ends with a plea for the Learning Organisations to retain memetic diversity rather than be trapped in sterile competitions to define an LO. The power of the Learning Organisation movement may, paradoxically, be that we are not stuck with what it is