J.P. Kooken

How do people learn at the workplace? investigating four workplace learning assumptions

Any software development project is based on assumptions about the state of the world that probably will hold when it is fielded. Investigating whether they are true can be seen as an important task. This paper describes how an empirical investigation was designed and conducted for the EU funded APOSDLE project. This project aims at supporting informal learning during work. Four basic assumptions are derived from the project plan and subsequently investigated in a two-phase study using several methods, including workplace observations and a survey. The results show that most of the assumptions are valid in the current work context of knowledge workers. In addition more specific suggestions for the design of the prospective APOSDLE application could be derived. Though requiring a substantial effort, carrying out studies like this can be seen as important for longer term software development projects.

Context and scripts: supporting interactive work-integrated learning

Computational support for work-integrated learning will gain more and more attention. We understand informal self-directed work-integrated learning of knowledge workers as a by-product of their knowledge work activities and propose a conceptual as well as a technical approach for supporting learning from documents and learning in interaction with fellow knowledge workers. The paper focuses on contextualization and scripting as two means to specifically address the latter interaction type.