The national imperative to improve postsecondary degree completion has led to various innovations within colleges and universities to improve student retention and academic success, particularly of non-traditional learners. One innovation that has been in use since the 1970s, but is often under-promoted and under-utilized within institutions, is…

Work practices in the meat-processing industry have changed in recent years. The industry has moved away from workers dressing a whole carcass towards a chain-based system, with each worker performing a single task along a moving production line. The nature of the meat-processing workforce has also changed. It is no longer dominated by seasonal…

Conducting a literature review is a vital part of any research. Library and information science (LIS) professionals often play a central role in supporting academics in their efforts to locate relevant publications and in teaching novice researchers skills associated with literature reviews. This paper examines literature review processes with the…

This phenomenological study describes seven stages of learning to teach at the university level. Through the use of narratives, twelve Canadian university professors reveal their beliefs and attitudes about teaching and learning as they struggle to become better teachers within various academic settings. The purpose of the study was to develop a…

Data were gathered from a sample of training professionals of an American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) chapter in the southern United States regarding best practices for supporting training transfer. Content analysis techniques, based on a rigorous methodology proposed by Insch, Moore, & Murphy (1997), were used to analyze the…

This paper was presented in Sydney in September 2008 at a seminar conducted by Skills Australia and the Academy of Social Sciences. It examines the demand for training. It concentrates on the factors that affect individual and employer demand, and points out that accredited vocational education and training (VET) need to be considered in the…

Most work on professional learning opportunities in education focuses on classroom teachers and school principals. In this paper the authors take a broader look at school leaders' opportunities to learn from a distributed perspective. Using one mid-sized urban school district as their case, they examine the opportunities to learn (OTL) of school…

The purpose of this study was to examine the causal relationships between S-OJT trainer preparation, self-efficacy as a trainer, trainers' delivery of S-OJT, and organizational commitment as a consequence of employing S-OJT. This study proposed a theoretical model from the review of related literature and then empirically investigated the fitness…

In this article, the author, a former college president, reflects on his career and the challenges of retirement. He shares his experience from career preparation to on-the-job training to succession planning. The author stresses that the decisions college presidents make define the legacies they leave.

Since its inception, the program has tackled the most challenging issue facing the teaching profession: how to align systems for managing schools' human capital with goals for improving student achievement. In addition to pay, the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) shapes new approaches to on-the-job training, career advancement, and evaluation in…

New Zealand is one of the world's most geographically isolated and least crowded countries. New Zealand organizations are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of training and development as the country becomes more technologically sophisticated, multiethnic and older. The country needs higher productivity, business investment and skills…

This article describes a blueprint for an online learning environment that is based on prominent instructional design and assessment theories for supporting learning in complex domains. The core of this environment consists of formative assessment tasks (i.e., assessment "for" learning) that center on professional situations. For each professional…

Some organizations seek to promote informal work-related learning to stimulate organizational performance. This study focuses on six types of work-related learning in relation to personal, relational, and work characteristics of the workplace practice. A survey was conducted to identify types and levels of work-related learning for executive Dutch…

Purpose: The overall aim of this research is to investigate how aspects of organizational culture enable or constrain the facilitation of learning in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative design was used involving 100 semi-structured interviews conducted with air traffic controllers operating in three centers in Australia. The…

America's community colleges are the brokers of opportunity for a stronger middle class and more prosperous nation. The value of community colleges has repeatedly been detailed in broad brushstrokes. While these broad-brush pictures of the community college contribution are important, the community college is an intricate institution offering…