Transforming Education – Transforming Lives: Reports from a special session on Current Issues in Work-Integrated Learning (CIWIL) in Europe

The international outreach of CIWIL (KAM AIL in English https://www.hv.se/en/research/research-environments/area-of-strength-work-integrated-learning/) was impressive at the ICERI 2024 conference. This world-wide conference attracted 780 attendees from 70 countries. CIWIL (KAM AIL) among others organized the special session Current Issues in Work-Integrated Learning (CIWIL) in Europe chaired by Ulrika Lundh Snis, Anna Karin Olsson and Kristina Areskoug Josefsson. […]

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Building bridges between theory and practice at the NEON conference, Part 1.

The Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) community represents a growing field within social science, characterized by diverse and intersecting research interests. This year’s NEON conference (https://www.neondagene.no/), held in Tromsø, Norway, features a theme highly applicable to WIL: “Bridging Theory and Practice: Possible, Desirable, and Useful?” The primary objective of the NEON conference is to serve as a […]

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“The ultimate way to build knowledge!” – industrial PhD Education Bridges Academia and Industry

PhD education is undergoing a significant transformation to meet the needs of society, particularly in industry. There is a growing demand for researchers who can apply their expertise within and beyond academia. Industrial PhD education is emerging as a key solution to this demand with PhD students employed by a company while completing their PhD […]

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WIL as a tool for work-life relevance in Norway

How Work-integrated learning (WIL) is understood and used in higher education varies. This variation is often context-dependent, and therefore the development of WIL is interesting to follow in different contexts. A recent opinion piece from Norway discusses the well-known (in Norway) importance of work-life relevance in higher education and how higher education institutions fail to […]

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Work-integrated learning in action – How do women entrepreneurs in small businesses learn and develop digital skills?

Entrepreneurship and innovation are the main local, regional, national, and international development drivers. However, there are gender differences as a majority of entrepreneurs all over the world are men. This gap has generated research interest and different perspectives have been studied and analyzed. Contemporary digitalization of society affects all sectors and industries generating possibilities and […]

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Work-integrated learning and engaged scholarship: Bringing universities closer to the real world

Universities are critiqued for being irrelevant and not contributing to solving real-world problems. Work-integrated learning (WIL) and engaged scholarship are ways to bring universities closer to practice and communities. When reflecting on what it means to engage with society as an academic, there are several potential paths to consider. Through our research collaboration, we reflected […]

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The problem with WIL is that it’s basically quite easy, and this is hard to understand

The starting point for the reflections on WIL in this blog post is the idea that what makes WIL – here defined as a strategy for developing new and useful knowledge in-between people with different competences and interests – difficult is that it basically deals with something very simple. In order for collaborations between academics […]

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Towards a quality framework and a vocabulary for WIL 

Have you ever watched any of the popular TV-shows about food and how to prepare for a dinner? Like Hell´s Kitchen, Next Level Chef, Kitchen nightmares or Master Chef? As wannabe chefs we tend to follow this type of series for both inspiration and learning some new tricks of the master chef trade. As the […]

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‘Anything Goes’ with Work-Integrated Learning?

‘Anything goes’, the central slogan of the Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism, is perhaps the most notorious phrase in 20th-century philosophy of science. Since it first appeared in 1970, it has provoked a largely critical response. Influential commentators have called Feyerabend’s view ‘inapplicable’ (Agassi[AHB(1] , 2014), ‘nonsensical’ (Nagel, 1977[AHB(2] ), ‘difficult to take seriously’ (Worrall, 1978[AHB(3] ), […]

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Alternatives to supervised placements: Work integrated education in action

When work integrated education (WIE) is discussed, the archetypal examples of supervised placements for medical, nursing, physiotherapy, and teacher education students are usually referenced. They comprise students engaging in authentic work activities and interactions, closely supervised by qualified and more experienced practitioners. Ideally, those supervisors identify and select students’ work activities and support and guide […]

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