Applying Workplace Models of Learning in Social Science Computer Labs

Abstract

Sociologists have made great strides in integrating information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their teaching but have paid less attention to the physical and social settings in which ICTs are often embedded. An increasingly important setting in many social science departments is the computer lab. I present four workplace-based models of learning as a scheme to optimize the learning that can occur in labs. Each of these models is built on a conception of post-industrial work as intensely social and interactive and of learning as “situated, distributed, and activity-based.” The models and the metaphors that these conceptions elicit are formal worker training (the lab as classroom), on-the-job training (the lab as shopfloor), apprenticeship (the lab as guild), and project-based learning (the lab as project setting). I argue for the application of these models in lab settings as a way to prepare students for the changing nature of post-industrial work.