Publikationen

PurposeIntroducing technology at work presents a special challenge as learning is tightly integrated with workplace practices. Current design-based research (DBR) methods are focused on formal learning context and often questioned for a lack of yielding traceable research insights. This paper aims to propose a method that extends DBR by understanding tools as sociocultural artefacts, co-designing affordances and systematically studying their adoption in practice.Design/methodology/approachThe iterative practice-centred method allows the co-design of cognitive tools in DBR, makes assumptions and design decisions traceable and builds convergent evidence by consistently analysing how affordances are appropriated. This is demonstrated in the context of health-care professionals’ informal learning, and how they make sense of their experiences. The authors report an 18-month DBR case study of using various prototypes and testing the designs with practitioners through various data collection means.FindingsBy considering the cognitive level in the analysis of appropriation, the authors came to an understanding of how professionals cope with pressure in the health-care domain (domain insight); a prototype with concrete design decisions (design insight); and an understanding of how memory and sensemaking processes interact when cognitive tools are used to elaborate representations of informal learning needs (theory insight).Research limitations/implicationsThe method is validated in one long-term and in-depth case study. While this was necessary to gain an understanding of stakeholder concerns, build trust and apply methods over several iterations, it also potentially limits this.Originality/valueBesides generating traceable research insights, the proposed DBR method allows to design technology-enhanced learning support for working domains and practices. The method is applicable in other domains and in formal learning.

Sensemaking at the workplace and in educational contexts has beenextensively studied for decades. Interestingly, making sense out of the own wealthof learning experiences at the workplace has been widely ignored. To tackle thisissue, we have implemented a novel sensemaking interface for healthcare professionalsto support learning at the workplace. The proposed prototype supportsremembering of informal experiences from episodic memory followed by sensemakingin semantic memory. Results from an initial study conducted as part ofan iterative co-design process reveal the prototype is being perceived as usefuland supportive for informal sensemaking by study participants from the healthcaredomain. Furthermore, we find first evidence that re-evaluation of collectedinformation is a potentially necessary process that needs further exploration tofully understand and support sensemaking of informal learning experiences.

This paper presents the potential of a social semantic infrastructure that implements an Actor Artifact Network (AAN) with the final goal of supporting learning analytics at the workplace. Two applications were built on top of such infrastructure and make use of the emerging relations of such a AAN. A preliminary evaluation shows that an AAN can be created out of the usage of both applications, thus opening the possibility to implement learning analytics at the workplace.

This paper presents our experiences using a social semantic infrastructure that implements a semantically-enriched Actor Artifact Network (AAN) to support informal learning at the workplace. Our previous research led us to define the Model of Scaling Informal Learning, to identify several common practices when learning happens at the workplace, and to propose a social semantic infrastructure able to support them. This paper shows this support by means of two illustrative examples where practitioners employed several applications integrated into the infrastructure. Thus, this paper clarifies how workplace learning processes can be supported with such infrastructure according to the aforementioned model. The initial analysis of these experiences gives promising results since it shows how the infrastructure mediates in the sharing of contextualized learning artifacts and how it builds up an AAN that makes explicit the relationships between actors and artifacts when learning at the workplace.

Sensemaking at the workplace and in educational contexts has been extensively studied for decades. Interestingly, making sense out of the own wealth of learning experiences at the workplace has been widely ignored. To tackle this issue, we have implemented a novel sensemaking interface for healthcare professionals to support learning at the workplace. The proposed prototype supports remembering of informal experiences from episodic memory followed by sensemaking in semantic memory. Results from an initial study conducted as part of an iterative co-design process reveal the prototype is being perceived as useful and supportive for informal sensemaking by study participants from the healthcare domain. Furthermore, we find first evidence that re-evaluation of collected information is a potentially necessary process that needs further exploration to fully understand and support sensemaking of informal learning experiences.