Paper presented in the workshop 'SMEs, CSR and employment relations in a global economy' at the USE 2015 Conference, Groningen, Oct 21-23 2015European labour market integration has, unfortunately, also led to attempts at unfair competition on employment conditions s. Competitive pressures to lower labour costs can gradually lure to explore and (un)consciously cross the borders of fair competition into dubious to illegal practices. Next to workers who may not receive all the benefits they are entitled to, one other category of potential victims are ‘fair’ employers, as they may lose market share to ‘unfair’ employers that compete with lower prices based on unfair labour practices. State governance and legal prosecution are currently not able to effectively combat all such practices. In the Netherlands, in some problems apparently became severe enough that employers and other parties joined forces and developed self-regulation initiatives, such as a certification system. This paper explores this emerging field of practice. Section 2 presents an overview of a number of different emerging initatives in the Netherlands based on desk research, Section 3 explores one of those cases – from the mushroom -a bit more in depth based upon desk research and a number of interviews. Based upon this exploratory research, section 4 develops a conceptual framework that can be used to analyse them. Section 1 first discusses the underlying problem of unfair competition, and specifies the research question.
At the conference of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) Niels Bohnen and Suzan van Ierland presented their research about enhancing student self-regluation through prgrammatic assessment. The aim of the current study is to discover to which degree studying within a course program based on programmatic assessment enhances self-regulation of students compared to students in a traditional course program. The results of the study could provide guidelines for the implementation of self-directed learning within course programmes at HAS green academy, inparticular aimed at programmatic assessment.
MULTIFILE
Blended learning environments (BLEs) have become an indispensable part of higher education and an essential part of course delivery. Although teachers need to be active agents in facilitating students’ self-regulation and interaction, little is known to what extent such support is provided. This study investigated the use of self-regulation strategies (SRS) and interactional methods of teachers and students in BLEs. In a cross-sectional design, 171 teachers and 331 students completed a questionnaire on the use of SRS and the application of human and non-human interactional methods. Results showed that, on average, teachers and students pay little attention to SRS and do not or hardly use interactional methods. Results also showed that experienced and inexperienced teachers did not differ in their attention to SRS, although a significant difference was found between teachers with and without online teaching experience. Teachers with more online teaching experience pay more specific attention to metacognitive and management strategies. A positive relationship was also found between the extent to which teachers use both human and non-human interactional methods and the extent to which they pay attention to SRS in the online component of BLEs. Finally, there was a positive relationship between the extent to which students utilize both human and non-human interactional methods and the extent to which they apply SRS. Outcomes of this research provide insight into the design of BLEs and emphasize the importance of teachers' attention to students’ SRS and the use of interactional methods.
Higher education offers great flexibility as students are largely free to decide where, when, and how to study. Being successful in such an environment requires well-developed self-regulated learning skills. However, every teacher in higher education knows that students experience ample difficulty to self-regulate their learning. They struggle to set and plan learning goals, and to gain sufficient depth in learning when preparing for exams. These struggles can negatively impact their learning, well-being, academic achievement, and professional life. On top of the existing flexibility in higher education, a need for more flexibility in what students learn is becoming evident. That is, students have room for flexible learningapproaches (i.e., deciding what learning goals or materials to study and how) and/or flexible learning trajectories (i.e.,choosing what combination of courses to take). This places an additional burden on students’ self-regulated learning skills. We posit that for students to thrive in flexible higher education, practice-oriented research on supporting students’self-regulated learning skills is required. Our collaborative consortium will i) unravel how students can be optimally scaffolded within flexible learning approaches and flexible learning trajectories, ii) examine how to optimize teacher and technological support, and iii) study how student autonomy and motivation can be guarded. We will set up a practice-oriented research program with both qualitative and quantitative methods, including design-based research, action research, pre-post comparative intervention studies, and large-scale correlational research. The findings will impact higher education through (technological) design guidelines and intervention programs for educational professionals, andsupport-modules for students.
