Virtual placements to develop employability skills for civil and environmental engineering students

This project work addresses the crucial need to encourage undergraduate civil and environmental engineering students to gain employment skills and training right from the start of their studies so that their overall employability increases; their confidence level in networking with industry and within the workplace increases; and so that they are successfully able to obtain employment after finishing their studies. This initiative is a stepping-stone employability exercise which focuses specifically on first year students to help them engage with industry right from the start of their course. It is proposed that they would gain some realistic work experience both individually and as part of group within a virtual work environment using an action learning approach. The virtual environment used was based on SecondLife, a popular virtual reality programme. A pilot scheme was set up and run at Brunel University during the summer of 2014 using eight self-selecting first year students. The scheme’s outputs were extensively monitored and evaluated to assess its impact on the development of employability skills. This approach may prove a cost effective way of letting students gain an insight into the workplace whilst improving these skills. It may also prove a way for employers to select from a large range of students the best to actually undertake their real work-based internships

Developing transferable management skills through Action Learning

There has been increasing criticism of the relevance of the Master of Business Administration (MBA) in developing skills and competencies. Action learning, devised to address problem-solving in the workplace, offers a potential response to such criticism. This paper offers an insight into one university’s attempt to integrate action learning into the curriculum. Sixty-five part-time students were questioned at two points in their final year about their action learning experience and the enhancement of relevant skills and competencies. Results showed a mixed picture. Strong confirmation of the importance of selected skills and competencies contrasted with weaker agreement about the extent to which these were developed by action learning. There was, nonetheless, a firm belief in the positive impact on the learning process. The paper concludes that action learning is not a panacea but has an important role in a repertoire of educational approaches to develop relevant skills and competencies

Ion acoustic waves in the plasma with the power-law q-distribution in nonextensive statistics

We investigate the dispersion relation and Landau damping of ion acoustic waves in the collisionless magnetic-field-free plasma if it is described by the nonextensive q-distributions of Tsallis statistics. We show that the increased numbers of superthermal particles and low velocity particles can explain the strengthened and weakened modes of Landau damping, respectively, with the q-distribution. When the ion temperature is equal to the electron temperature, the weakly damped waves are found to be the distributions with small values of q.Comment: 9 pages,22 reference

To Act and Learn: A Bakhtinian Exploration of Action Learning

This paper considers the work of the Russian social philosopher and cultural theorist, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin as a source of understanding for those involved in action learning. Drawing upon data gathered over two years during the evaluation of 20 action learning sets in the north of England, we will seek to work with the ideas of Bakhtin to consider their value for those involved in action learning. We consider key Bakhtin features such as Making Meaning, Participative Thinking, Theoreticism and Presence, Others and Outsideness, Voices and Carnival to highlight how Bakhtin's can enhance our understanding of the nature of action and learning

Initiating e-learning by stealth, participation and consultation in a late majority institution

The extent to which opportunities afforded by e-learning are embraced by an institution can depend in large measure on whether it is perceived as enabling and transformative or as a major and disruptive distraction. Most case studies focus on the former. This paper describes how e-learning was introduced into the latter environment. The sensitivity of competing pressures in a research intensive university substantially influenced the manner in which e-learning was promoted. This paper tells that story, from initial stealth to eventual university acknowledgement of the relevance of e-learning specifically to its own context

Revans reversed: focusing on the positive for a change

The classical principles of action learning, based on the work of Revans, usually include working with problems as the core. This article aims, by contrast, to show how a recent project of change has incorporated principles of appreciative inquiry (AI) based on social constructionism and positive psychology into an action learning process involving a wide range of participants. The concern for problems is considered showing that the process of diagnosing a problem can reinforce a deficit orientation. The key ideas of AI are presented, highlighting the purpose of finding out what is going on in terms of what is working well, and in doing so, it becomes possible to build a picture of the strengths and virtues of what is happening at work. Based on findings from a recent project of culture shift in a design and production company, a process of positive action learning is considered

After Wilding: exploring environmental futures through place-based, speculative documentary filmmaking

In 2021 and 2022, we engaged in a collaborative filmmaking project at Maple Farm, a rewilding site in Southeast England. The project resulted in After Wilding, a speculative documentary film that explores different perspectives on rewilding and the future of Maple Farm and natures in the United Kingdom more broadly. After Wilding envisions what it would be like to visit Maple Farm in June 2042; to do so, we used 360° imagery of the present site and computer-generated visualisations of possible future landscape features. These visualisations were underscored by three narrative vignettes reflecting on different interventions and perspectives on the site. This article describes creating After Wilding as a three-part process – attunement, perspectives and synthesis. We then reflect on the potential opportunities that digital technologies offer for collaborative speculations between researchers, artists and practitioners for geographical praxis and conservation activities

Psychological climates in action learning sets: A manager’s perspective

Action Learning (AL) is often viewed as a process that facilitates professional learning through the creation of a positive psychological climate (Marquart, 2000; Schein, 1979). An psychological climate that fosters an environment in which learning set members feel psychologically safe enough to reflect upon both the successes, and failures in their professional life without any form of repercussion. However, there has been little attention given to the ways that that psychological climate develops, and the differing facets that create that climate. In response to such deficit, this paper reports the outcomes of interviews with eleven managers, all of whom are former AL set members on their experiences of action learning set membership. Drawing upon an interpretivist philosophy, the paper explores the key themes that emerged from the analysis of those interviews. The analysis serves to illustrate the differing facets that collectively contribute creation of a positive psychological climate that is conducive for learning. Analysis points to the relative importance of such facets as: trust, honesty, vulnerability, reciprocity, confidentiality and personal disclosure, all of which have the capacity to lead to a positive psychological climate in action learning sets. This paper is useful for developing an understanding of the differing facets in AL sets that create a psychological climate conducive for learning. As such, it has utility for action learning facilitators, set members, academics and educational consultants