Abstract:

University e-learning education aim to support lifelong learning for practitioners in the manufacturing industry and strengthen their competence development integrated in work practice. However, traditional higher education courses are usually designed for individuals on campus and do not support work practitioners and therefor are not designed for flexibility, time independence, and collaborative learning. Hence, campus courses traditionally do not regard practitioners work experiences as valuable knowledge contributing to new learning in construction with other peers and teachers. We argue that co-construction of knowledge, between practitioners and research active teachers, can be encouraged within blended e-learning courses through collaborative knowledge exchange. However designing courses integrating practitioners’ workplace experiences, is a demanding process for the teachers in their pedagogical design of blended courses. How is practitioners’ experiences and research teachers’ knowledge integrated as mutual co-construction in case-based methodology within the subject Negotiation Skills? This was studied in a longitudinal joint industry-university competence development project between manufacturing industry practitioners’ and teachers’. First we aimed to analyse content of knowledge co-construction advancing practitioners’ negotiation and communication skills, and secondly we explored user-experiences of mediated discussions in web-conferencing within a Negotiation skills course. The course comprises 2.5 European Credits and includes a Harvard Case designed with a predefined role-play negotiation game, where practitioners interact in a three hour web-conferencing session, oral discussions, written chats and phone interactivity. Data collection consisted of three focus group sessions, one for each course, and through observations of the web-conference role-play comprising 34 practitioners’ from ten companies during 2014-2015. The case-based methodology developed during three iterative design cycles. Qualitative content analysis of data resulted in design implications derived from problems concerning case instructions and web-conferencing (technology, security restrictions, audio/video quality etc.). By applying the cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) we captured practitioners’ manifested contradictory views and problem solving, which emerged as a trajectory of knowledge sharing and constructing new knowledge. This is considered as a process of mutual sideways learning among practitioners and the research teachers leading to expansive transformation of the practitioners work practice (Engeström, 2015). Results show that practitioners’strengthened their knowledge of handling negotiations within work practice through the case-based collaborative and on-line approach. There were problems of using web-conferencing, however problems decreased throughout the three course cycles. Generally, practitioners; 1) strengthened their knowledge on how cultural differences affected negotiations, 2) improved decision making skills, and 3) personally understood how to visualize tough conflict situations meaning they became more reflective of their own actions and communications within practical work situations. The focus group sessions themselves performed as formative interventions made visible the process of co-construction of knowledge, through analysis of discursive manifested contradictions.

Keywords:

Co-construction, e-learning design, web-conferencing, inter-organisational collaboration, activity theory.