Hybrid Learning Environments: Merging Learning and Work Processes to Facilitate Knowledge Integration and Transitions

This paper deals with the problematic nature of the transition between education and the workplace. A smooth transition between education and the workplace requires learners to develop an integrated knowledge base, but this is problematic as most educational programmes offer knowledge and experiences in a fragmented manner, scattered over a variety of subjects, modules and (work) experiences. To overcome this problem, we propose a design approach and shifting the educational focus of attention from individual learners to learning environments. The broader notion of learning environments facilitates transitions by establishing horizontal connections between schools and the workplace. The main argument of this paper is that combining or connecting aspects of school-based settings only is not sufficient to ensure learners will develop an integrated knowledge base. The concept and examples of “hybrid learning environment” show how formal, school-based learning and workplace experiences can be closely connected. The paper offers a framework of four coherent perspectives that can help to understand the complex nature of such environments and to design hybrid learning environments: the “agency perspective”, the “spatial perspective”, the “temporal perspective”, and the “instrumental perspective”. The framework is applied to three cases taken from vocational education in the Netherlands to describe what hybrid learning environments look like in contemporary educational practice.

[1]  Ilya Zitter,et al.  Adding a design perspective to study learning environments in higher professional education , 2011 .

[2]  Sanna Järvelä,et al.  Motivation in Real-Life, Dynamic, and Interactive Learning Environments: Stretching Constructs and Methodologies , 2004 .

[3]  Ilya Zitter,et al.  In search of common ground: A task conceptualization to facilitate the design of (e)learning environments with design patterns , 2009, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[4]  Nienke Nieveen,et al.  Design Approaches and Tools in Education and Training , 2012 .

[5]  Ilya Zitter,et al.  The role of professional objects in technology-enhanced learning environments in higher education , 2012, Interact. Learn. Environ..

[6]  P. Tynjälä,et al.  Pedagogical perspectives on the relationships between higher education and working life , 2003 .

[7]  A. Collins,et al.  Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning , 1989 .

[8]  M. F. van der Schaaf,et al.  Development of students' personal professional theories in senior secondary vocational education , 2011 .

[9]  E. Bruijn,et al.  Authentic and self-directed learning in vocational education : challenges to vocational educators. , 2011 .

[10]  J. Aken.  Management Research Based on the Paradigm of the Design Sciences: The Quest for Field-Tested and Grounded Technological Rules , 2004 .

[11]  A. Sfard.  On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of Choosing Just One , 1998 .

[12]  P. Tynjälä.  Perspectives into learning at the workplace , 2008 .

[13]  Thomas C. Reeves,et al.  Immersive learning technologies: Realism and online authentic learning , 2007, J. Comput. High. Educ..

[14]  Hanna Dumont and David Istance and Francisco Benavides.  The nature of learning : using research to inspire practice , 2010 .

[15]  K.P.E. Gravemeijer,et al.  Design Research as a Means for Building a Knowledge Base for Teachers and Teaching in Mathematics Education , 2009, The Elementary School Journal.

[16]  Y. Engeström,et al.  From Learning Environments and Implementation to Activity Systems and Expansive Learning , 2009 .

[17]  Allan Collins,et al.  Design Research: Theoretical and Methodological Issues , 2004 .

[18]  Allan Collins,et al.  Toward a Design Science of Education , 1992 .

[19]  Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry , 2003 .

[20]  Stephen Richard Billett,et al.  Constituting the workplace curriculum , 2006 .

[21]  Ilya Zitter,et al.  Designing for Learning : Studying learning environments in higher professional education from a design perspective , 2010 .

[22]  Paul A. Kirschner.  Learning in innovative learning environments , 2005, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[23]  Richard E. Clark,et al.  Blueprints for complex learning: The 4C/ID-model , 2002 .

[24]  Abbie Brown,et al.  Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in c , 1992 .

[25]  Sanne Akkerman,et al.  The complexity of educational design research , 2013 .

[26]  S. Brand-Gruwel,et al.  The challenge of self‐directed and self‐regulated learning in vocational education: a theoretical analysis and synthesis of requirements , 2010 .

[27]  P. Kirschner,et al.  Taking the Load Off a Learner's Mind: Instructional Design for Complex Learning , 2003 .

[28]  Martha S. Feldman,et al.  Organizational Routines as a Unit of Analysis , 2005 .

[29]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[30]  J. V. D. Linden,et al.  New Learning: Three Ways to Learn in a New Balance , 2000 .

[31]  Yrjö Engeström,et al.  Putting Vygotsky to Work: The Change Laboratory as an Application of Double Stimulation , 2007 .

[32]  Jan van den Akker,et al.  Principles and Methods of Development Research , 1999 .

[33]  Alison Fuller,et al.  Expansive learning environments: integrating organisational and personal development , 2004 .

[34]  Pieter J. Beers,et al.  Computer support for knowledge construction in collaborative learning environments , 2005, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[35]  Elly de Bruijn,et al.  Integrating knowledge, skills and attitudes: Conceptualising learning processes towards vocational competence , 2011 .

[36]  Saskia Brand-Gruwel,et al.  Towards more powerful learning environments through combining the perspectives of designers, teachers, and students. , 2005, The British journal of educational psychology.

[37]  J. Aken.  Management Research as a Design Science: Articulating the Research Products of Mode 2 Knowledge Production in Management , 2005 .

[38]  Terttu Tuomi.  Developmental Transfer as a Goal of Collaboration between School and Work: A Case Study in the Training of Daycare Interns , 2007 .

[39]  David Istance,et al.  Analysing and designing learning environments for the 21st century , 2010 .