In the knowledge economy, many companies are well aware of the vital need to maintain the professional expertise of their workers at a high level. Though there have been a lot of research studies in the areas of professional expertise and workplace learning, few examined the learning pathways novice workers went through to become experts in their professions. Most of the research studies on expertise focused on the nature of expertise and few on its development. As for workplace learning research, most studies focused on the learning resources and methods workers used and the affordances of the workplace in making learning possible. Based on the accounts of expertise development collected from individual information technology (IT) workers in Hong Kong, this paper proposes a four-phase model of professional expertise development in the workplace and discusses its similarities to and differences from extant theories of expertise and skill development.
Copyright of Studies in Continuing Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2014.967347

This paper reported an investigation into the non-response cases in student evaluation of teaching (SET). Data were collected through an online system called COSSET during regular SET exercises and through specially designed questionnaire surveys. Two kinds of response rates were studied. One is sectional (class) response rate which is the percentage of students in a section (class) who successfully complete the SET questionnaire. The other is individual student response rate which is the percentage of SET questionnaires completed by an individual student in a single SET exercise. Results showed that sectional response rates are affected by various factors relating to the data collection process and students' background. Individual student response rates are affected by various factors including students' background and attitudes.

This paper describes a research project investigating the workplace learning experience of information technology (IT) workers in Hong Kong. The research project explored in depth the workplace learning experiences of 65 IT workers from three different work sites. It went beyond the identification of workplace learning methods and resources workers used at work by probing into the complexities of workplace learning processes and the theoretical issues of workplace learning. A qualitative approach was used, relying primarily on data collected via in-depth interviews. This paper reports that (1). IT workers found troubleshooting, project work and installation of hardware and software, the most likely contexts to produce significant learning; and that (2). the rapid pace of technological growth in the IT industry results in a different learning environment to traditional industries such as tailoring, thus raising questions about the applicability of the notion of the community of practice as proposed by Lave and Wenger. Furthermore, by probing into the processes of known workplace learning methods such as learning from colleagues and vendors, this study uncovered many interesting findings about the workplace learning experience of IT workers.
[Copyright of Studies in Continuing Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01580370802097728 ]