Action Design Research : Design of e-WIL for the Manufacturing Industry

This paper reports on a design process of e-learning courses for competence development of experienced employees in the manufacturing industry. Through a cross- organizational collaborative action design research project the aim was to design e-learning courses at university level to support work-integrated learning. Two design- and learning cycles were evaluated over two years. The first cycle identified challenges that were applied to a pilot course in Industrial automation. From evaluation of this course we derived design principles applied to two further courses in Machining and Negotiation skills. The results from our empirical data suggest general principles as competence mapping work, collaborative manufacturing e-WIL cases and interactive learning technologies for design of e-WIL courses as boundary crossing activities to reach transformative learning integrated in the manufacturing industry