Personal technologies and the teaching of professional dispositions in information technology

The teaching of professional disposition within the IT curriculum has traditionally involved the use of work-integrated learning, cooperative education and careers counselling. Whilst programmes employing these techniques can often present valuable and authentic learning opportunities to students, their coordination can place limitations on their overall scalability. Furthermore, the difficulties of coordination are not only practical, but pedagogical, presenting challenges for effective scaffolded teaching interventions within a highly individualised workplace setting. This paper explores the possibilities of emerging personal technology, and the ways in which such technologies could be harnessed to offer learning opportunities in IT professional practice in a way that affords the authenticity of industrial placement, but which also provides opportunities for scaffolded intervention by teachers. In addition, they also provide a scaleable solution to the organisational problem. The paper details a programme in IT professional development at the University of Bolton and discusses how the technologies pertaining to the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) have been deployed to give access to learning opportunities which afford an authentic and structured engagement with professional practice. In conclusion we argue that such personal technologies are part of an ongoing socio-technical process which is gradually blurring the boundaries between work and learning: a process which in turn is presenting new pedagogical opportunities.