WHAT IS LEARNING ABOUT IN RESEARCH ON E-LEARNING IN THE WORKPLACE?

Purpose and introduction – Workplace learning is an important means of employee’s continuous learning and professional development. E-learning is being recognized as an important supportive practice for learning at work.
This abstract is a part of my thesis outline and concerns my ongoing research project on e-learning in the workplace. The thesis as a whole will contain of two parts: 1) a literature review and 2) interviews with employees and managers from enterprises using e-learning as a strategic part of employee training and education. I am interested in the different discourses on learning that appears in academic texts and when employees and managers “talks” about e-learning. Discourses tell us something about how we construct what we call “the reality” or “truth” and in this particular case, learning, and what we consider being “good” or “valuable” knowledge and learning in a particular workplace setting. I am also interested in what way e-learning can provide new conditions and opportunities for employees as well as for organizational learning.

For this poster my approach is to present a literature review on the topic e-learning in the workplace. Discourse analysis is being used to identify different conceptions on learning in literature and research during the period 2000- 2012.

Findings – As a whole, most research focuses on topics like design, learning –models, effectiveness and employee motivation and attitudes. The primarily results shows that in learning discourses surrounding e-learning, learning is often being referred to as learning just-in time, that e-learning facilitates learning or provide effective learning or flexible learning in time and space. Knowledge and learning from that perspective is at the risk of becoming eroding concept that takes the learning out of the e-learning replacing it with an unproblematized view on the epistemology of learning.