Wim Gijselaers

Maastricht University | UM · Department of Educational Research and Development

Communities of Learning (CoL) have been suggested to facilitate the learning process among participants of online trainings. Yet, previous studies often detached participants from the social context in which learning took place. The present study addresses this shortcoming by providing empirical evidence from 25 CoL of a global organization, where...

The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model provides a well-researched theoretical framework to understand how learners and teachers interact and learn together in Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Most CoI research focusses on asynchronous learning. However, with the arrival of easy-to-use synchronous communication tools the relevance of...

Responding to climate change and avoiding irreversible climate tipping points requires radical and drastic action by 2030. This urgency raises serious questions for energy companies, one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs), in terms of how they frame, and reframe, their response to climate change. Despite the majority of ener...

Dutch accounting education has an excellent reputation; yet future-proofing it is challenged by a tight labour market and the continuously expanding societal roles and expectations imposed on accountants. In this article, we share insights on how three other professions – healthcare, law and aviation – have approached challenges similar to those cu...

In deze bijdrage combineren we kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve inzichten over virtueel teamwerk in het accountantsberoep. We illustreren dat hoewel meer virtueel werk de prestaties van controleteams kan verminderen, de controlekwaliteit als hoog wordt ervaren – ook bij een toegenomen mate van virtueel teamwerk. ¹ Verder tonen we dat virtueel teamwerk...

This study explores the potential of a new perspective on research into the impact higher education has on the civic engagement of students. We propose a shift from viewing engagement itself as the key dependent variable to two ‘fundamental constituents’, political interest and agency. Both constituents have been presented as either static or deter...

Many students approaching adulthood often choose high-calorie food products. Concurrently, health interventions applied during this life phase can potentially lead to a healthier lifestyle. Nudge health interventions in experimental cafeteria settings have been found to improve eating behavior effectively, yet research in real-world settings is lac...

Research has identified nudging as a promising and effective tool to improve healthy eating behavior in a cafeteria setting. However, it remains unclear who is and who is not "nudgeable" (susceptible to nudges). An important influencing factor at the individual level is nudge acceptance. While some progress has been made in determining influences o...

Purpose Learning from errors is a complex process that requires careful support. Building on affective events theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore how a supportive learning from error climate can contribute to social learning from errors through affective and cognitive error responses by individual professionals. Design/methodology/appr...

This paper explores the role of learning in organizational responses to sustainability. Finding meaningful solutions to sustainability challenges requires companies and other actors to broaden their thinking, go beyond organizational boundaries and engage more with their stakeholders. However, broadening organizational perspective and collaborating...

Purpose The present study proposes coaching as a pedagogical intervention to prepare students for transitioning to the labour market. Taking a competence-based approach, the proposed coaching practice aims to enhance students' employability competences to facilitate a smoother school-to-work transition. However, what transition coaching looks like...

Introduction: Inclusive educational leaders promote teacher team functioning. To support leader inclusiveness, we designed and implemented a faculty development programme focusing on leader identity formation. We investigated (1) how participants' leader identity developed throughout the programme and (2) how the design principles contributed to t...

Many people do not consume as much healthy food as recommended. Nudging has been iden-tified as a promising intervention strategy to increase the consumption of healthy food. The present study analyzed the effects of three body shape nudges (thin, thick, or Giacometti artwork) on food ordering and assessed the mediating role of being aware of the n...

This study explores how direct supervisors can hinder or enhance how professionals learn from their errors. Extant research has often focused on psychological safety as the main condition for this kind of learning to take place. We expand prior research by exploring which behaviors of direct supervisors effectively facilitate learning from errors i...

Many adolescent schoolchildren portray an unhealthy eating behavior; consuming large amounts of unhealthy food and only small amounts of healthy food. Nudging has been identified as a promising health behavior influencer to increase healthy food consumption in this target group. The present study analyzed the eating behavior of adolescent schoolchi...

University teacher teams can work toward educational change through the process of team learning behavior, which involves sharing and discussing practices to create new knowledge. However, teachers do not routinely engage in learning behavior when working in such teams and it is unclear how leadership support can overcome this problem. Therefore, t...

Lowering professional turnover is of paramount importance for professional service firms, as with each professional, crucial proprietary knowledge leaves the firm. Based on the need to retain this crucial knowledge in the firm, this study explores whether factors that drive learning at work also mitigate professionals' turnover behavior. Building o...

Phenomenon Developing modern medical curricula requires collaboration between different scientific and clinical disciplines. Consequently, institutions face the daunting task to engage colleagues from different disciplines in effective team collaboration. Two aspects that are vital to the success of such teamwork are “team learning behavior” by all...

Introduction Health professions education faces transitions from monodisciplinary to integrated education and from soloist teachers to interdisciplinary teacher teams. Interdisciplinary teamwork has been found complex and prone to conflict. Teachers’ perceptions of why some teams work and learn as a real interdisciplinary team and others do not are...

Organizations have a marked interest in fostering team learning to manage performance and innovation. However, practitioners and researchers currently lack coherent knowledge on which drivers are effective at fostering team learning. Along with team learning, we also focus on the emergent states of psychological safety, shared cognition, team poten...

Reforming professional education into integrated programs such as project-based learning requires teamwork by teachers originating from different disciplines. Shared team leadership behavior may help teams to work on such complex tasks effectively, because single leaders alone simply cannot not provide all answers. However, studies on conditions fo...

The increasing complexity of health care systems creates a growing urgency to collaborate across disciplines. Insight into the underlying processes or, as described in the quote above “the way a team plays,” is crucial to understand how teams synthesise and process profoundly different views of individuals. In successful teams, members think togeth...

Organizations have a marked interest in fostering team learning to manage performance and innovation. However, practitioners and researchers currently lack coherent knowledge on which drivers are effective at fostering team learning. Along with team learning, we also focus on the emergent states of psychological safety, shared cognition, team poten...

Purpose: To explore team learning processes among interdisciplinary teacher teams in the development of integrated health professions education; and to investigate students' perspectives on the quality of the educational courses. Method: Using an exploratory, sequential mixed-methods design, the first author conducted 17 vignette-guided, semi-st...

I tested whether a nudge in form of a pictorial artwork presented on a poster leads to healthier food consumption in adolescent high school students. Additionally, moderating effects of self-control and prior knowledge were assessed.

Business schools face increasing criticism for their one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development. Too much emphasis is placed on knowledge and skills building and the developmental needs of managers while insufficient attention is paid to purposeful student leadership development and to the underlying cognitive components that drive leader...

Learning from errors is crucial for individuals’ as well as organizations’ performance. Yet, learning does not automatically follow from erring: the fear of negative consequences may prevent professionals from learning. These social costs of making an error, receiving negative judgments or experiencing feared punishment, need to be lowered for lear...

Team learning behavior is found to be one of the most effective team processes, as learning behavior at the team level (e.g., sharing, discussing, and reflecting on knowledge and actions) enables teams to adapt existing or develop new knowledge. Team leadership behavior is considered a critical accelerant for creating conditions that are essential...

Teacher team involvement is considered a key factor in achieving sustainable innovation in higher education. This requires engaging in team learning behaviors that should result in new knowledge and solutions. However, university teachers are not used to discussing their work practices with one another and tend to neglect any innovation in their ta...

Introducción. Este estudio examinó el valor predictivo de cuatro emociones relacionadas con el aprendizaje -disfrute, ansiedad, aburrimiento y desesperación- en los resultados académicos de alumnos en primer año de carrera universitaria.Método. Usamos una muestra amplia (N = 2337) de estudiantes de primero de carrera matriculados durante tres años...

Purpose This study aims to investigate how organisations can discourage covering up and instead encourage learning from errors through a supportive learning from error climate. In explaining professionals’ learning from error behaviour, this study distinguishes between espoused (verbally expressed) and enacted (behaviourally expressed) values with...

Personality, emotional intelligence, and learning style are generally considered important success factors and career determinants in hospitality management. This study assesses the influence of these antecedents on the development of expertise in hospitality management. Correlational, ANOVA and hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that (a...

Background Aiming for and ensuring effective patient safety is a major priority in the management and culture of every health care organization. The pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) has become a workplace with a high diversity of multidisciplinary physicians and professionals. Therefore, delivery of high-quality care with optimal patient safety...

Research has identified the importance of knowledge coordination in high performing teams. However, little is known on the processes through which these cognitive structures are developed, more specifically on the learning occurring as teams communicate and interact to build new team knowledge. In a multiple-measures experiment, 33 teams with no pr...

Introduction: This study examined the predictive value of four learning-related emotions-Enjoyment, Anxiety, Boredom and Hopelessness for achievement outcomes in the first year of study at university. Method: We used a large sample (N=2337) of first year university students enrolled over three consecutive academic years in a mathematics and statist...

Recent work suggests that learning-related emotions (LREs) play a crucial role in performance especially in the first year of university, a period of transition for most students; however, additional research is needed to show how these emotions emerge. We developed a framework which links a course-contextualized antecedent - academic control in Pe...

National culture has been shown to play a role in curriculum change in medical schools, and business literature has described a similar influence of organizational culture on change processes in organizations. This study investigated the impact of both national and organizational culture on successful curriculum change in medical schools internatio...

Amid continuous growth in student enrolments, the proliferation of e-learning technology and the global accessibility of vast repositories of information on the Web, higher education (HE) is struggling to keep pace with these changes. The classic response involves adjusting the amount of instructional time to achieve excellence, as evidenced by the...

A strong need exists to connect learner experiences at the workplace with formal training activities. This would improve authenticity of learning, but surprisingly few initiatives have been taken so far. In this project mobile devices (smartphones) were used while students were attending clinical clerkships. We aimed to develop learning practices -...

Amid continuous growth in student enrolments, the proliferation of e-learning technology, and the global accessibility of vast repositories of information on the Web, Higher education (HE) is struggling to keep pace with these changes. The classic response involves adjusting the amount of instructional time to achieve excellence, as evidenced by th...

Communities of Learning (CoL) are an innovative methodological tool to stimulate knowledge creation and diffusion within organizations. However, past research has largely overlooked how participants’ hierarchical positions influence their behavior within CoL. We address this shortcoming and provide empirical evidence on 25 CoL for a global training...

Communities of Learning (CoL) kunnen het leerproces van deelnemers binnen online leer modules bevorderen. Eerder onderzoek heeft echter hiërarchische posities als een drempel voor collaboratieve leerprocessen vaak geneeerd. Dit artikel gaat in op deze tekortkomingen door het uitvoeren van empirische studies over 25 CoL ingericht als onderdeel van p...

This study examines the nature of hospitality managers’ knowledge when solving typical hotel management problems. In a cross-sectional study, data were collected from first-, fourth-, and eighth-semester students and compared with experts who had seven to ten years of experience working as hospitality managers. Three typical hospitality management...

A great deal of work has been generated on feedback in teams and has shown that giving performance feedback to teams is not sufficient to improve performance. To achieve the potential of feedback, it is stated that teams need to proactively process this feedback and thus collectively evaluate their performance and strategies, look for alternatives,...

Facilitating an interpersonal knowledge transfer among employees constitutes a key building block in setting up organizational training initiatives. With practitioners and researchers looking for innovative training methods, online Communities of Learning (CoL) have been promoted as a promising methodology to foster this kind of transfer. However,...

Communities of Learning (CoL) are suggested to facilitate the co-construction of knowledge among participants of online trainings. Yet, previous studies often detached participants from the social context in which learning took place. The manuscript addresses this shortcoming by providing empirical evidence from 30 CoL of a global organization, whe...

With the aim of improving student learning outcomes, we developed a course intervention in the Mathematics and Statistics domain which strengthens collaboration and facilitates the transfer of knowledge by providing structured feedback on tasks jointly prepared by students. Using an experimental design, we found that students who received feedback...

Professional organizations’ performance is heavily dependent on their employees’ ability to make informed judgments. From radiologists who need to detect cancer in mammographies, to auditors who need to judge large amounts of financial data (searching for cues of error or fraud), professionals rely on their experience to make judgments in the workp...

Empirical studies into meaning systems surrounding implicit theories of intelligence typically entail two stringent assumptions: that different implicit theories and different effort beliefs represent opposite poles on a single scale, and that implicit theories directly impact the constructs as achievement goals and academic motivations. Through an...

Preparation for the established professions (law, management, medicine, and engineering) has become increasingly more based in multi-professional settings, requiring training and development in a wide range of disciplines that support professional development (e.g., sociology, psychology, management, law). Over the past decade, many new job special...

The present article analyzes social engagement as an outcome of higher education. It can be conceived as an attitude that by definition only manifests itself over time, and should therefore not be assessed or measured during the years of study or at graduation. The argument is being made that social engagement should be understood in terms of condi...

Students’ learning goals demonstrate much stronger variety than traditional goal orientation models for classroom learning assume, especially when the educational context allows so. In this empirical study we will investigate the richness of students’ goal orientation in a collaborative learning context. We do so with the help of a goal setting fra...

Because successful change implementation depends on organizational readiness for change, the authors developed and assessed the validity of a questionnaire, based on a theoretical model of organizational readiness for change, designed to measure, specifically, a medical school's organizational readiness for curriculum change (MORC). In 2012, a pane...

In the context of the complexity of today's organizations, help seeking behavior is considered as an important step to problem solving and learning in organizations. Yet, help seeking has received less attention in organizational literature. To increase the potential impact of help seeking on learning, it is essential to understand which mechanisms...

Background: Individual disposition of goal orientation and situational factors of the working context, both generate and modulate motives to seek feedback. Aim: We looked for correlations between feedback-seeking and individual goal orientation, motives or concerns of feedback-seeking, working context of medical residents. We focussed on how pro...

With the increased affordances of synchronous communication tools, more opportunities for online learning to resemble face-to-face settings have recently become available. However, synchronous communication does not afford as much time for reflection as asynchronous communication. Therefore, a combination of synchronous and asynchronous communicati...

The aim of this study is to investigate international hospitality management students' beliefs about knowledge and their conceptions of teaching and learning in a problem-based learning environment. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to investigate the relation between epistemological beliefs and conceptions of teaching and learning. Resul...

Background: Earlier studies suggested national culture to be a potential barrier to curriculum reform in medical schools. In particular, Hofstede's cultural dimension 'uncertainty avoidance' had a significant negative relationship with the implementation rate of integrated curricula. Aims: However, some schools succeeded to adopt curriculum chan...

Practical application of newly gained knowledge and skills, also referred to as transfer of training, is an issue of great concern in training issues generally and in Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs particularly. This empirical study examined the influence of the trainees' work environment on their transfer of training, taking into...

Web-videoconference systems offer several tools (like chat, audio, and webcam) that vary in the amount and type of information learners can share with each other and the teacher. It has been proposed that tools fostering more direct social interaction and feedback amongst learners and teachers would foster higher levels of engagement. If so, one wo...

Education has traditionally focused on the importance of content, and has guided curriculum design according to this principle. While content knowledge is important, to excel in the labor market today graduates need to develop procedural knowledge, with greater emphasis on capacity development for transferable skills. This need is amplified by emer...

This book tackles the latest challenges in education in the business sector, outlining how the students of the future must be taught to adapt to a highly fluid business environment in which their ability to acquire new skills and collaborate with others is more important than possessing facts. Taking its cue from the growing body of theory advocati...

Recent findings from research into Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) have indicated that not all learners are able to successfully learn in online collaborative settings. Given that most online settings are characterised by minimal guidance, which require learners to be more autonomous and self-directed, CSCL may provide conditions m...

Purpose – This study aims to examine the effects of using a personal development plan (PDP) on the undertaking of learning activities and the employee's job competencies. Design/methodology/approach – Data from Dutch pharmacy assistants was collected (n ¼ 2,271). Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) as well as regression analyses were conducted on this da...

A large number of studies in CMC have assessed how social interaction, processes and learning outcomes are intertwined. The present research explores how the degree of self-determination of learners, that is the motivational orientation of a learner, influences the communication and interaction patterns in an online Problem Based Learning environme...

S epsis is a life-threatening disease with increas-ing incidence. In the USA, hospitalisation for severe sepsis was 135/100,000 population in 2003, and the age-adjusted mortality rate was as high as 49.7/100,000 population. 1 Patients suffering from severe sepsis and sep-tic shock need urgent diagnosis and treatment; it has been shown that the earl...