Methodologies in practice based projects as used by work based learning students in the former School of health, biological and environmental sciences

Learning through work has long been a central tenet in the training and education of health care professionals, particularly nurses, and so transference of the principles of Work Based Learning (WBL) to the Health Campus has built effectively on previous structures. As the structure of WBL programmes have become increasingly embedded into the health curriculum at Middlesex University, the use of the Research and Development toolkit and application to project work has had increasing appeal to both academics and practitioners alike. This paper will review the variety of forms project work has taken and will consider the professional and organisational factors that have influenced the use of projects. It will consider the restraints that the Health environment inevitably imposes upon practitioners in terms of ethical access to patients and the need for effective mentoring of staff. The use and application of project work within the health field will inevitably influence the choice of methodologies and research tools and these influences will be outlined. It should be clarified from the outset that the term experiential or work based learning is different to the traditional apprenticeship learning as used in past nurse training, which would have been termed ‘clinical placement’. Currently, practitioners often confuse the term Work Based Learning with the opportunity to have teaching delivered in the work place rather than teaching that occurs in a distinct academic environment. The type of WBL that these WBL project activities refer to, are those which aim to capture the learning opportunities within the health care organisation, rather than the delivery of taught subject matter.