PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2012 ACEN NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Abstract

Each paper represents a substantial contribution to the scholarship and research around work integrated learning, with the proceedings presenting a collection of world leading research in this area. The aim of this National Conference focuses on the future of work integrated learning and the challenges that lay ahead for practitioners, partners, academics and researchers in this field. Emerging across the papers is a growing focus on the aspects of service learning, ethics in work integrated learning and innovation. These themes are complimented by more traditional foci such as employability, graduate outcomes and quality curriculum in work integrated learning. These emerging trends are evident of the philosophical challenge that lays ahead for work integrated learning as it becomes more embedded in universities. Namely, researchers and practitioners are being challenged to consider how practice-based authentic experiences for students in workplaces, with a significant aim around employment, can also compliment and extend "traditional" notions of the liberal education of universities. Beyond this theoretical problem, it is of no surprise that the future challenge and innovations are often driven by the links and possibilities of technology in work integrated learning. This is being realised in the authentic expeirence of work integrated learning being simulated through the virtual world, and also in support technologies that enable large-scale work integrated learning placements.