Introduction

This book provides a practical guide for designing and managing learning programmes that occur in the workplace. It focuses on workplace learning programmes that are implemented as a formal aspect of higher education curricula. The term growing in popularity for such programmes is work integrated learning. One of the major issues at the moment is the diverse range of programmes that fit this definition of this term and the variety of terms used to describe them. The programmes include cooperative education, collaborative education, learning in the workplace and the community, clinical education, field education, service learning and more. These terminologies are defined in the Glossary and the differences and similarities are described in Chapter 2. For the purposes of this book, what unites them is that they are an intentional aspect of a university curriculum whereby the learning is situated within the act of working, whether that work occurs within a recognizable workplace or a community. The term integration is significant because the principal purpose is the nexus of work and learning; each informs and critiques the other.