Workplace learning
An opportunity to examine the workplace as a learning environment, understand current practices, and consider how learning leaders might facilitate change across a range of professional Health disciplines.
Opportunity
Gold Coast Health aims to provide excellence in sustainable and evidence-based healthcare that meets the needs of the community. To help achieve this goal, Gold Coast Health sponsored a professional development program focused on practice-based learning, which was designed to develop a critical mass of learning leaders who would advance effective inter-professional practices for more integrated health services through practice-based learning. It was an opportunity to open dialogue and increase collaboration between the disciplines that operate in the organisation to improve workplace practices.
Action
The Professional Vocational and Continuing Education team at Griffith University drew on cross discipline sources from both Gold Coast Health and the wider university to develop a micro-credential in the form of a professional development program that would provide participants with the opportunity to earn credit into a post-graduate qualification. Through a blended program delivery consisting of a series of face-to-face workshops, four self-paced online modules and project based assessment tasks for participants to complete over a six month period.
Impact
Participants built an understanding of the ways that employees learn within a workplace environment and developed strategies to enhance learning and improve work site practices and processes. Participants were asked to develop and implement an authentic practice-based project tailored to the specific needs of their work environment with the aim to enact positive change. Each project was then presented to a panel consisting of peers, academic staff and Gold Coast Health executives to highlight the immediate impact of each project across the organisation. Opportunities for further investment to expand the scope and impact of each project were then identified. A number of participants have progressed this learning by enrolling in a postgraduate qualification.