Work Intergrated Learning

So, you are tasked with including a Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) component in your module; what do you do? The first thing is to understand WIL and its purpose in any curriculum. So...

“WIL is used as an umbrella term to describe curricular, pedagogic and assessment practices across a range of academic disciplines that integrate formal learning and workplace concerns. The integration of theory and practice in student learning can occur through a range of WIL approaches, apart from formal or informal work placements. (CHE- Work Integrated Learning: Good Practice Guide, 2011, p. 4)

“WIL is primarily intended to enhance student learning, and to this end, several innovative curricular, pedagogical and assessment forms have developed in response to concerns about graduateness, employability and civic responsibility; examples include action-learning, apprenticeships, cooperative education, experiential learning, inquiry learning, inter-professional learning, practicum placements, problem-based learning, project-based learning, scenario learning, service-learning, team-based learning, virtual or simulated WIL learning, work-based learning, work experience, workplace learning, and so on.” (CHE- Work Integrated Learning: Good Practice Guide, 2011, p. 4)

Work-integrated learning is regarded as a modality under Work-Integrated Education (WIE). Please refer to policy underBooks/Guides/Journal Articles

UJ's 2022 Policy on Work-Integrated Education (WIE) indicates that it is “embedded in a range of career-orientated programmes, allows for the acquisition of knowledge, skills and behaviours by means of blended lectures and practical work, complemented by contextualised and well-structured authentic modalities of learning in action.” (p. 1) The UJ Policy further indicates that WIE “is a wide and inclusive concept which embraces different modalities of learning in action, and is commonly referred to as work integrated learning or WIL globally. Some of the main modalities are:

• Work-integrated learning (WIL)
• Problem-based learning (PBL)
• Community based learning (CBL)
• Project-based learning (PjBL)
• Simulations
• Teaching practice (TP)
• Service learning (SL)and
• Internships. “(p. 2)

These modalities which allow for the practice of knowledge in different fields of study, support the ‘learning to be’ philosophy of teaching. The ‘learning to be’ teaching philosophy is defined in the UJ Policy on Teaching and Learning (approved, 2016), as follows:

“Learning to be” A view of higher education that conceptualises learning as becoming a practitioner of a knowledge and professional domain. Learning to be presupposes learning the practices of the knowledge domain (discipline or profession), which include principles, dispositions, attributes, competencies, activities, skills, procedures and values. It also requires learning how to best utilise the conceptual frameworks and/or theories of the domain, as well as the practices of inquiry, to identify and solve problems or interpret and address everyday issues.

• https://webapps.dhet.gov.za/iWIL
• Work-integrated learning to help with graduate unemployment; Edwin Naidu 14 April 2022
• International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning ISSN: 2538-1032

• UJ WIE Policy on Work-Integrated Education (WIE) (2022)Download
• A comparative study of cooperative education and workintegrated learning in Germany, South Africa, and NamibiaDownload
• A multiple case design for the investigation of information management processes for work-integrated learningDownload
• Becoming a teacher Research on the work-integrated learning of student teachers NWUDownload
• Work Integrated Learning for Student Career Prospects Govender & Wait 2017Download