This monograph is the culmination of a three-year research program undertaken by the University of South Australia's Centre for Work+Life. It considers the barriers, support and benefit of vocational education and training (VET) for workers in the low-paid occupations (that is, those earning around $17 per hour). The research considered a wide…

The best kind of learning is that which never ends--and a culture of training means that staff will be more flexible and responsive to new ideas and strategies, imperative in today's libraries. In this practical resource, leading workplace trainers Reed and Signorelli offer guidance on improving the effectiveness of training programs. Their book…

This article describes and analyzes actors' experiences of distance learning systems in a wide variety of cultural and organizational contexts. In line with the project of this special series of issues, results of research, much of which is longitudinal, allow us to suggest answers to the following questions: Who are the actors of distance…

One of the great concerns of the business community involves the workforce pipeline: employers want to be sure that new entries into the labor pool, whether from the K-12 or postsecondary systems, are prepared for the jobs that await them. In Philadelphia, business and community leaders have joined forces to give students workplace learning…

This executive summary provides background information on unemployment rates, the need for new jobs, and the role community colleges have in securing opportunities for a stronger middle class and more prosperous nation. The summary is the introduction to the "Community College Contributions. Policy Brief 2013-01PB." [For the full report,…

This book explores the perspectives of experienced practitioners, sharing ideas about building and sustaining organizational strength through workforce development practices and systems. As the saying goes, a company's greatest resource is its people. When managers really believe that and work to develop organizational capabilities, productivity,…

This deliverable reports the technical and research development performed until M36 (January 2009) within tasks T5.2 and T5.4 of WP5 in the KP-Lab project, per the latest Description of Work (DoW) 3.2 [DoW3.2]. The described components are included in the KP-Lab Semantic Web Knowledge Middleware (SWKM) Prototype Release 3.0 software that takes…

There is now much awareness of the symbiotic relationship between workplace learning, the organisation of work, level of employee involvement, organisational performance, and the broader economic, regulatory, and social context within which organisations have to operate. This article argues that we have to identify and take serious account of the…

In March 2008, the Federal Government initiated a Review of Australian Higher Education. The Report (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent and Scales, 2008) highlighted the fact that Australia has reached a key stage in its history with respect to higher education. It states that Australia is falling behind other countries in performance and investment in…

The purpose of this paper is to outline government online training practice. We searched individual research domains of the human-dimensions of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), information and communications technologies (ICT) and instructional design for evidence of either corporate sector or government training practices. We overlapped these…

Ontario's colleges share the provincial government's belief that apprenticeship must play a greater role in addressing skills shortages and contributing to innovative, high-performance workplaces that enhance Ontario's competitiveness. Given the severity of the economic downturn, Ontario faces an immediate, serious challenge as apprenticeship…

The purpose of this article is to provide researchers and, in particular, practitioner-scholars of e-learning curricular designs and instructors with one conceptual model that supports more involvement and interaction within on-line courses. The "On-line Curriculum Interaction Model" posited by the author is informed by the foundational…

The Sloan Pillars have set the standard for university-wide online learning program assessment for more than a dozen years. In this paper, the authors propose the extension of the Pillars to corporate e-learning, offering an alternative to traditional enterprise learning assessments. Claiming that conventional methods stress individual courses or…

Over the past four years a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners in learning research across Northern Australia have identified many of the issues that underpin the implementation of training and investment through enterprise development to improve economic and community outcomes of Indigenous partners. This paper provides an overview of…

The 5 year KP-Lab project funded under the FP6 of the European Commission's Programme for Research and Technological Development is about developing theories, tools, practical models, and research methods that deliberately advance the ways in which knowledge is created and which help to transform knowledge practices in education and in the…