Work-Integrated Learning: Good Practice Guide

Higher Education Monitor 12: Work-Integrated Learning: Good Practice Guide August 2011. A central feature of the HEQC's approach since its inception has been to initiate and facilitate quality-related capacity development activities in a collaborative manner across a range of areas in higher education, including the practice of teaching and learning. The quality promotion and capacity development activities for the South African higher education sector have included the conducting of large dedicated projects in selected areas, workshops, training sessions, seminars, and publications.
This publication, Work-Integrated Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Institutions, is intended to assist those involved in programme development and in the curriculum development and adaptation required by the Higher Education Qualifications Framework (October 2007). It also aims to prompt other academics who are involved in teaching to consider the educational purpose and role of work-integrated learning in teaching and learning. As the authors argue, "University teachers should be concerned to ensure that the students that graduate from their programmes are prepared for the world in which they will live and work." The publication provides a theoretical foundation for work-integrated learning while making use of a large number of local and international case studies for illustration and example.
Conclusion
University teachers should be concerned to ensure that the students that graduate from their programmes are prepared for the world in which they will live and work. The integration of professional and academic concerns in the curriculum will go some way towards addressing this requirement. In South Africa, the recurriculation processes required by the HEQF speak directly to this need. Keeping up with developments in the profession and workplace is a challenge for university teachers, as well as for graduates. Teachers and students need to be well informed about trends and issues that are practised outside the university, as well as inside it. University teachers should locate workplace issues in a wider context. To do so, they should compare the information about the workplace and about new curricular developments. University teachers should think carefully about the relationship between the workplace and the university. A university education is not about job training, and a WIL curriculum should not be dictated by economic or narrow workplace interests. Instead the university must be (as it always has been) responsive to society and responsive to the needs of students to become productive members of society. Beyond that, part of the mission of higher education has also been to look beyond immediate problems and to prepare students to change and improve existing practices, not merely to adapt to the world as they find it.