Engineers' Situated Use of Digital Resources to Augment their Workplace Learning Ecology

Abstract

This Research FULL PAPER extends recent scholarship on the role of technology in workplace learning in professional engineering and computing settings. Digitization of work practices has made a noticeable impact on how engineers gain expertise and solve problems they encounter at work. In this paper we use a workplace learning ecology lens to examine engineers' situated information seeking to identify practices associated with the use of online resources. Building on a previous qualitative interview study, we developed and administered a survey consisting of 16 items to assess use of online resources across learning experiences. We found high use of online resources but with variations among the use of specific resources by field, problem, and learning goal. LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, and technology vendor websites were the primary online platforms used by respondents for both learning and problem-solving. Respondents placed different levels of trust in online resources. Social media, especially Twitter, was trusted least across all sources. The highest trust was placed on websites of technology vendors. Findings from this work can help create better educational content as well as pedagogical interventions that use online resources for training the future workforce.

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