Presented at the Learning at Work Seminar: Practical Responses to the Future Skills Challenge National College of Ireland, 15 May, 2008

1. INQUIRY-BASED
LEARNING AT WORK
Bertram (Chip) Bruce
National College of Ireland
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Presented at the Learning at Work Seminar: Practical
Responses to the Future Skills Challenge
National College of Ireland, 15 May, 2008

2. 19TH-CENTURY
LEARNING
Solve well-defined
problems
Read one (printed) source
Follow directions
Work independently
Rely on fixed procedures
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3. WHO SAID?
Innovations in transportation & communication
Relaxation of social discipline & control
Growing need for knowledge in all affairs of life
Need for lifelong learning
Transform learning & teaching

4. John Dewey, “The School as Social Centre,” 1902

5. 21ST-CENTURY
CHALLENGE
Find problems
Integrate knowledge from
multiple sources & media
Think critically
Collaborate
Learn how to learn
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6. People have to adapt to the work, habits, and values of
the machines. People are generally regarded as the
sources of problems, while devices are considered as
means to solutions
...also eliminates the opportunities of developing those
human skills that are fundamentally different from the
skills of machines: abilities such as listening, interpreting,
instructing, and working out to mutually acceptable
accommodations. But it is the skills, more than anything
else, that the global village needs. –Ursula Franklin

7. INQUIRY CYCLE
Ask
Reflect Investigate
Discuss Create

8. INQUIRY-BASED
LEARNING
Questions: arising out of experience
Materials: diverse, authentic, challenging; two-way
Activities: engaging. hands-on, creating, collaborating,
living new roles
Dialogue: listening; articulating meaning
Reflection: from concepts to action
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9. ASK
Teachers saw the enormous pedagogical difference
between solving problems and formulating them,
between answering someone else's question and
generating your own. –Schwartz, Olds, & Willie, 1980

10. INVESTIGATE
Blogs Internet radio
Online video Mobile devices
Web resources Simulations
Digital libraries E-learning
Social networking Virtual reality
Second Life Ubiquitous computing

11. CREATE
Constructing a third
space at the computer
in a first-grade
classroom – Christine
Wang

12. DISCUSS
Water cooler learning
privacy
propinquity
social designation
–Anne-Laure Fayard &
John Weeks, 2007

13. REFLECT
We always live at the time we live and not at some other
time, and only by extracting at each present time the full
meaning of each present experience are we prepared for
doing the same in the future. This is the only preparation
which in the long run amounts to anything.
–John Dewey, Experience & Education
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14. ENGINEERS
novel
situations
lifelong multiple
learning sources
budgets,
experiment
marketing

15. ACTIVITY
Think about your own workplace setting (or refer to the
examples from this morning, the video cases, ...)
You’re a consultant. What can you do to promote learning
at work?
How would you encourage: Ask – Investigate – Create –
Discuss – Reflect?
What would you say to workers? to management?