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Land Acknowledgement

We respectfully acknowledge that the work of ACE-WIL takes place across the unceded territories.

The province of BC includes 198 distinct nations, with 30 different languages and 60 dialects.  We further acknowledge that ACE WIL extends into the Yukon territories, which is the home to 14 diverse nations and 8 distinct language groups. 

We encourage you to find out whose land you are on and engage with your WIL units in the process of decolonization.

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Welcome

Welcome to the ACE-WIL Practitioner’s Professional Development: Supporting the WIL Student Journey. This professional development opportunity can be explored in a self-directed manner or facilitated by a guide, undertaken individually or with a group of colleagues -- the latter always providing more learning opportunities through the added discussion and diversity. The overarching goal is to help you, the WIL Practitioner, delve a little more deeply into WIL as an educational model and better understand yourself as a WIL educator.

The WIL student journey, from prospect to graduate, will serve as a theme as you explore various work-integrated learning theories, models, and practices.  You will be invited to consider several of the ideas presented in the context of your work with WIL students and you will be prompted to examine examples from your own practice to see how any new insights might be usefully integrated. Your role as a WIL Practitioner is multi-faceted and often includes employer relations, program management, assessment, and reporting to name a few.  While this professional development opportunity may touch on some of these many roles, its primary focus in on the important educational role you play in optimizing the WIL student learning experience.

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Throughout this resource, we provide:

  • some important contexts for your exploration,
  • lenses to consider when reflecting,
  • learning theories and models that inform how one learns by doing,
  • design implications grounded in those theories and models, and
  • reflective prompts to help you see what might work in your specific WIL environments. 

Three Sections

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This professional development opportunity is presented in three main sections:

      1. You as a WIL Educator/Practitioner: here you will reflect upon something in your WIL professional role you wish to examine a bit more closely and to consider the perspectives (lenses) you bring to this work and what questions or issues you might like to know more about.
      2. WIL as an Educational Model: here you will consider the WIL theories and models that help you more deeply understand the underlying principles of experiential education
      3. Your Professional Practice in the Field of WIL: here you are invited you to test any new knowledge or insights with a real issue or questions arising from your work. 

This professional development opportunity uses a Practice-to-Theory-to-Practice (PTP) approach meaning your own experiences and practice provide the reflective content.  The PTP approach places your experience at the core as no one WIL program or context is exactly the same as another. This approach also mirrors the approach you will take with your students as you support them in reflecting deeply on their WIL experience. It allows you to select the professional issues you want to learn more about and see how they can be modified for your needs. 

Thank You

ACE-WIL is delighted you have taken this time to help develop your own practice and is pleased to provide this opportunity to facilitate that journey.  Taking the time for reflection and learning is commendable, as it is something that so often gets lost to the "busy"ness of doing the job. Making the time to step back and take an informed look at what you are “doing,” and why, can be very enlightening and gratifying.  With a better understanding of how and why you do what you do, it will be easier to modify, add, delete, and re-direct your practice in ways that put the student learning journey at the center and situate you as a more intentional WIL Practitioner. 

Thank you for undertaking this reflective and practical journey!

Acknowledgement

It is with gratitude that the authors (see the More About page) thank the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skill and Training for funding this project and for their sustained support of provincial initiatives. We also thank the many ACE-WIL Practitioners that expressed interest and informed the design of this professional development opportunity. 

Copyright

The intellectual property of the suite of resources in ACE-WIL Practitioner’s Professional Development: Supporting the WIL Student Journey remains with ABLE Consultants and NJ Consulting and may be used with proper citation by all ACE-WIL BC/Yukon members and the post-secondary system in BC. Contact ABLE Research Consultants, Andrea Sator, email ableresearchco@gmail.com, should you wish to adapt the course content from its original form.