by Thomas Carey
Many of the higher education programs and instructors who are partnering with us want to incorporate Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) options into their development of student workplace innovation capability. In this post, we describe three different work-integrated learning opportunities in which initiatives are currently underway.
1. Helping students to become more effective as innovative employees, which increases their potential value to employers in a wide range of work placements. We are now referring to that adaptable curriculum as Understanding & Applying Workplace Innovation. Modules from that curriculum are available to educators online in the eCampus Ontario Open Library.
Some of the programs and instructors working with us in our Academic Collaboratory have incorporated those resources directly into their offerings for students, as either required or elective resources (e.g., in the Applied Creativity and Innovation graduate certificate at Sheridan College in the greater Toronto area and the Liberal Arts Passport to Innovation at the University of King’s College in Halifax).
Others have made adaptations to the current resources to align with their own contexts. For example, the Arts and Science Internship Program at the University of Toronto adapted the Job Crafting module from the eCampus Ontario Open Library as part of their program to prepare students for ‘sandwich year’ work placements (twelve or 16 months between third and fourth year of their B.A. or B.Sc. degree programs) and have in turn contributed their adaptations to the Open Library.
In their work placements in 2023-24, those students developed opportunities for Job Crafting as part of the work-integrated learning at their host organizations. This illustrates the first level of contribution to work-integrated from application of workplace innovation capability. One of the adaptations in the ASIP modules was a set of scenarios of work placement students engaging in Job Crafting as part of their placements. Those scenarios were based on student personas from various disciplines within the Faculty.
We also want to develop more case stories from professional work domains, which could replace the current illustration and practice cases for students interested in particular professions. We reported in a previous series of posts on a pilot test of such case stories for Accountancy, and in a subsequent post this Fall we will report on another example from a summer student intern this year, who has curated case stories to illustrate workplace innovation for students studying for Science degrees.
2. Helping Workplace Partners to adapt and integrate Research Insights on Workplace Innovation. Beyond the "every employee" level of capability for innovation projects developed in our Understanding and Applying Workplace Innovation resources, there is a second level of capability in which students aid in adapting and mobilizing research insights into workplace innovation practices and programs within a workplace. This opportunity was identified in our 2023-24 applied research project on Inclusive Workplace Innovation and Quality of Work Life, sponsored by the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre.
You can see an example of this kind of knowledge integration and adaptation activity at a Calgary-based Engineering Services company, where we were able to help them integrate research insights and exemplary practices into their existing workplace innovation programs for employees (Idea System, Innovation Challenges). In a WIL placement (or a preparatory in-course Experiential Learning opportunity), students can support such integrations of research knowledge and practice knowledge, intermediaries between the available research knowledge and the specific challenges and contexts of the employee innovation programs in the workplace. You can see a description of this process as it might occur in a WIL setting in this blog post and more examples of research-to-practice adaptations here.
One of the other relevant observations from that applied research project was the apparent link between the absorptive capacity in a particular workplace for such research-to-practice adaptations and the presence of one or more employees with a professional identity that included the emerging role of Workplace Innovation Catalyst at the program or organizational level. The value proposition here works in both directions:
a workplace innovation catalyst is the ideal host for a professional-grade experiential or work-integrated learning experience, and
capable students who take on some of the work of research-to-practice adaptation, including serving as intermediaries to the research community, can make that process more feasible and rewarding for their workplace hosts.
We will be building strong links between the higher education programs and instructors collaborating with us and the parallel initiative to enable and sustain a professional community of workplace innovation catalysts.
3. Enabling Inclusive Innovation in the Workplace There is also a third level for students’ capabilities in workplace innovation to create value in WIL placements: engaging with workplace partners in enabling inclusive innovation in Canadian workplaces. This opportunity also emerged in our applied research project with the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre, when one of our workplace partners pointed out the links between their programs for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace and the European notion of engaging a broader range of employees as both participants and beneficiaries of innovation.
We had already been using research on engaging older workers in workplace innovation to help one of our workplace partners to think more innovatively about retaining older workers with extended careers, and one of our team was also working with a social service agency to apply research on engaging neuro-diverse young people with workplace innovation projects.
One of our new higher education partner programs is planning to develop a capstone course in which students engage in an experiential learning opportunity with organizational partners supporting Equity, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives; their focus will be on Inclusive Workplace Innovation. The current shorthand form of the value proposition for these WIL placements is that students will be “helping to make your innovation initiatives more inclusive” and “helping to make your inclusion initiatives more innovative”. We plan to explore the links between these two types of activity by working closely with teams in Human Resources Management (such as our partner HR Services manager who won a 2024 Award of Excellence as Workplace Culture Innovator of the Year for her project work with us).
We have begun to develop new adaptable online learning resources and activities on Enabling Employee Innovation in the Workplace this year, and an initial draft instalment is now available in the eCampus Ontario Open Library (in both English and French).
We think the relationship between Inclusive Innovation in the Workplace and broader initiatives around Inclusive Innovation at regional, national and global levels (illustrated by the United Nations’ initiative highlighted in the adjacent text box) could be especially appealing to Liberal Education students.
“Innovation is not neutral: it has both a rate and, crucially, a direction. The style of innovation frequently touted as the answer – the ‘move fast and break things’ Silicon Valley version) is often not inclusive at all – it can increase existing social and economic inequality and have unintended environmental consequences.”
Canada is particularly well-positioned to develop Inclusive Workplace Innovation, including partnerships between initiatives to help workers become more innovative and organizational efforts to promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. There are more details on some of the potential activities here and on the links to the larger research and practice of Inclusive Innovation here.