Action learning: the link between academia and industry?

Summary

In an ever‐changing and increasingly competitive environment, tertiary education institutions are continually looking at methods to improve their teaching and attract students to their courses. Students likewise are becoming more selective when choosing an institution in which to study and are more focused on the longer‐term employability offered by various courses. This paper looks at this changing environment from both the business and education perspectives, and examines one exercise, an Information Retrieval Exercise, which is attempting to link education closer to the world of work, by providing students with the relevant transferable skills. The empirical research conducted among the students on completion of the exercise gave very positive results, with students feeling that their interpersonal skills had been greatly enhanced and that innovative teaching methods such as these provided them with a competitive advantage when entering the job market. In addition to satisfying students’ requirements, the research results also show that exercises of this type more fully meet the needs of the concept of ‘deep learning’, where students are given a more participative part in their educational process. We conclude that future educational curricula will include an increasing number of action‐based approaches, so providing a more even balance between the theoretical and practical elements of education.

Keywords:

• action learning
• transferable skills
• innovative teaching
• information retrieval exercise