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Top1. Introduction
In contrast to expert-led, institutionally-driven formal education, the “co-creation of knowledge” is a term that has gained popularity in recent years as an educational approach which privileges peer-based support and communication, educational facilitation (rather than teaching) and learner self-efficacy. Technology plays a central role in these conceptions of co-creation by providing a medium for communication, transparency of engagement, empowering of learner self-organization and integration of disparate fragments of experience. Unsurprisingly, enthusiasts for technology have argued for its potential to break down barriers between personal and professional life and between learning episodes within institutions and within workplaces (García-Peñalvo, Colomo-Palacios, & Lytras, 2012). However, the challenges for realizing these ambitions range from the need to establish new patterns of personal practice (and overcome existing normative behavior) to transforming institutional practices within both the workplace and within educational establishments.
Arguments in favor of approaches to ‘informal learning’ have had political, sociological, educational and technological motivation. Politically, arguments around the personalization of learning and transformation of institutions, for example (Illich, 1971), has given ‘informal learning’ specific recognition within the Bologna process in the European Union (1999). This political recognition acknowledges the broader sociological concern for the nature of the knowledge economy, and the increased need for reflexivity in a post-industrial society (Giddens, 1986; Beck, 1992). Educationally, such initiatives are framed by long-established discourse on the social and experiential nature of learning in pedagogical theories going back to Dewey (1938) and Knowles (1950). Technologically, the Internet and the rise of social software have been seen to provide a vehicle for social learning and personal organization which has widely been seen as at least a complimentary (if not a competing) medium for educational development (Attwell, 2007; Ajjan & Hartshorne, 2008; Casquero, Portillo, Ovelar, Benito, & Romo, 2010; Fielding, 2000). The political, sociological, educational and technological discussion has typically been brought together in the subject of the ‘Personal Learning Environment’ (PLE). However, for all the rhetoric of the PLE, the integration of formal educational processes dominated by curriculum and expertise with the real competence requirements of professional life presents significant organizational challenges.
The relationship between the workplace and education has traditionally been structured around institutional certification of competency where certification is gained through formal learning. For specific competencies relating to a business’s requirements, specific training opportunities are usually provided. The raising of specific competencies is both the product and a fundamental element in the internal reflexive operations of the business: in order to remain viable, businesses must ask themselves questions about their operations in order to identify their competence requirements and devise means to acquire them. However, socialization within the workplace and appreciation of individual strengths, interests and enthusiasms of the workers also play an important role in the internal reflexivity of an organization (Dale & Bell, 1999; Halliday-Wynes & Beddie, 2009). Richer communications and deeper interpersonal knowledge can provide an important means of kick-started reflexive and creative organizational processes, which further increase the business’s viability.