Abstract:

Employers are often less interested in qualifications of their employees rather than in their high performance. The aim of the Erasmus research project “WBLQUAL – An Approach to Qualification Through Negotiated Work Based Learning for the EU” is to produce a more effective way of improving skills and behaviours of employees through the use of academic work-based learning (WBL) programmes.

The research tools used included:
a) Country Specific Reports, focusing on
- Overall situation related to WBL
b) Online Questionnaire addressed to work based learners.
c) Case Studies that aim to highlight already existing WBL best practices within companies.

This standardized tools ensured a quantitative and qualitative perspective, allowing the basic statistical processing of the data and information received into illustrations using graphs and tables.
The presentation will discuss the main findings of the research, particularly one of the biggest challenges in WBL – alignment of academic assessment and performance monitoring in the workplace. It is a challenge because three participants involved in WBL have different expectations from the learning process and these expectations should be aligned not only through appropriate learning content, but also through negotiated awareness of learning outcomes and usage of adequate assessment methods and quality criteria. Moreover, HEIs must engage with employers in order to enable their effective contribution to the assessment process.
The paper presents the tripartite view of assessment or, in other words, all three participants’ perception of assessment in work-based learning. Therefore, the paper seeking to answer the main research question: how assessment needs to be modified to support WBL in more effective way.
Qualitative and subjective approaches to measuring of ‘value added’ performance lead to critical analysis and conclusions regarding the current state of academic assessment and its ability to measure the skills and behaviours required by employers.

References:
An Approach to Qualifications through Negotiated Work Based Learning for the EU Project Number: 510022-LLP-1-2010-1-UK-ERASMUS-ECUE - www.wblqual.com
Behn, Robert D. "Why measure performance? Different purposes require different measures." Public Administration Review, Volume 63, Issue 5, pages 586–606, September 2003
Elliott, B. “Assessment 2.0 Modernising assessment in the age of Web 2.0”, retrieved at 10.07.2012 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/461041/Assessment-20

Keywords:

Work-based Learning, performance measuring, learning assessment.