CONTENT OBJECTIVES
You will understand, evaluate and apply...
• seminal theories of professional learning to practical learning & development cases across a range of contexts.
• mechanisms of learning for individuals, teams, and organisations to solve learning & development cases.
• theories and models of learning to better understand and improve your own learning.

SKILLS OBJECTIVES
You will be able to...
• create conceptual models to frame new and complex learning & development challenges in existing knowledge and theory.
• synthesise and discuss academic findings through structured and effective academic writing.
• derive well-founded implications for practice and future research based on your conceptual model.
• create an effective learning environment to lead a tutorial group in a reflective, critical, and professional manner.

How do individuals, teams, and organisations learn? How can learning be fostered in a way that is evidence-based and context-specific? In this course, we explore these questions from a learning sciences perspective, introducing you to learning theories on expert performance and expertise development, the theory of reflective practice, experiential learning, team and organisational learning, and the organisational learning chain framework.

Together, we will study how chess players, musicians, athletes, managers, doctors, engineers, pilots, artists and software engineers learn through a series of case studies. To frame and solve these cases, you will learn to build conceptual models, a structured way to diagnose a case, search for relevant evidence, and to formulate specific suggestions for L&D practice.

To help you transfer the different learning theories you will study to practice, you will complete your own learning project: you get to choose a skill you've always wanted to learn, and through weekly learning challenges, you will experiment with your own learning, making the different learning theories personally relevant, leading to your own personal learning model that represents the activities and conditions that help you to be the best learner possible. At the end of this course, you will then compare your personal learning insights with insights from research. You will write a short research paper, reviewing evidence on insights you gained from your personal learning project, making your learning more evidence-based, and preparing you for your master's thesis.


At the end of this course, you will understand, evaluate and apply...
- seminal theories of professional learning to practical learning & development cases across a range of contexts.
- mechanisms of learning for individuals, teams, and organisations to solve learning & development cases.
- theories and models of learning to better understand and improve your own learning.

And you will be able to...
- create conceptual models to frame new and complex learning & development challenges in existing knowledge and theory.
- synthesise and discuss academic findings through structured and effective academic writing.
- derive well-founded implications for practice and future research based on your conceptual model.
- create an effective learning environment to lead a tutorial group in a reflective, critical, and professional manner.

All required interactive modules, articles and book chapters can be accessed online via the university library and/or the Canvas course environment.

This specialized course requires a basic understanding of cognitive psychology, research on human information processing, and the social nature of learning. As foundation literature the following handbook is recommended:
Sternberg, R., & Sternberg, K. (2016). Cognitive Psychology, 7th Edition. ISBN-10: 1305644654, ISBN-13: 9781305644656.