Virtual Social Spaces for Practice and Experience Sharing

Abstract

Higher education learners are increasingly seeking educational experiences that are directly relevant to their professional interests and aspiration, especially, while aiming at career success and employability. This creates the need for practice-oriented learning approaches that focus on workforce skills. In this paper, we propose virtual social space structures which cluster learners into communities of practice (CoPs) to complement academic pathways with career-specific competencies’ development. Clustering employs social learning analytics (SLA) techniques to predict group together similar career-aspiration patterns into CoPs, and to subsequently track domain-related practice acquisitions. Our approach considers both personal preferences and career predispositions of learners as they join CoPs and thrive throughout CoPs life cycle. We discuss our three-module model: (1) career readiness to assert general professional dispositions, (2) career prediction to identify a targeted domain of employment, and (3) a career development process to raise the skills that are relevant to the predicted domain of employment.