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Proceedings for the European Conference on Reflective Practice-based Learning 2021 Introduction The current digitalisation taking place in the industry, often referred to as Industry 4.0, al- ters the traditional job functions (Moldovan, 2018). To maintain their relevance, industrial employees need to update their skills and competence to fit the industry's future need. However, to fully exploit the new possibilities embedded in digitisation, the industrial em- ployees require skills and competencies beyond the technical domain. These skills have been described as the 21st century skills and can be divided into core and contextual skills (van Laar, van Deursen, van Dijk, & de Haan, 2017). The core skills are the more traditionally technical skills, which have been in focus in earlier technical further education (Nilsson, 1982, 2000), whereas the contextual skills are broader and more general skills like, e.g., collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking (Prensky, 2014). The contextual skills are more comprehensive than traditionally technical skills and com- petences (van Laar et al., 2017). Thus, the educational practice within the technical field needs to adapt to a more complex learning output (Prensky, 2014). To develop and in- crease the learning output, emphasising the contextual skills, both reflection and training outside of traditional technical teaching is required (Merrill, 2015). In 2020, UCN and UCL started a joined research and development project called ‘Prob- lem Based Development of Personal Competences Aim at Technology and Digitalisation (PKK). The PKK project aims to upskill industrial employees from small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) through activities based on a learning factory-inspired ap- proach. These activities focus on facilitating and strengthening the student's reflections and hence strengthening their contextual skills. The learning factory approach was cho- sen because it has been used to target SME companies with success, emulating the complex physical and digital processes within an actual factory in a comprehensible man- ner (Wank et al., 2016). However, the reflection required to obtain contextual skills are most effectively achieved in a mature learning factory. A mature learning factory is as a setting with a well-defined target group that uses reflection as an essential step towards development of competences (Enke, Glass, & Metternich, 2017). The maturity level of a Learning Factory is accessed on three dimensions, purpose, didactics, and operational model. Note that the term didactic in this context is understood under the continental Eu- ropean definition, as the learning factory concept origins from Germany (Abele, Metternich, & Tisch, 2019; Enke et al., 2017). The purpose is the case-specific target group (students) and their upskilling need. The operational model describes how well (the level of details) the learning factory is defined. The didactic dimension describes how and which reflection activities that are planned. Building on the concept of Learning Factory enables the learning activities to have a strong link to the industry workplace practice, creating a setting for practice-based reflection. This corresponds well with the educational approach of RPL, where reflection is a part of the educational design. This is operationalised through six principles which promotes University College of Northern Denmark 146/193

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Proceedings for the European Conference on Reflective Practice-based Learning 2021 reflection: (1) relying on prior knowledge, (2) appropriate disturbance, (3) teaching as ex- ploration, (4) build on a good example, (5) work together on the learning process, and (6) create room for dialogue (Horn et al., 2020). By reflection, the students are enabled to make and take different perspectives. Making perspectives is to define from which per- spective the learner sees a certain theory or practice, while taking perspectives is the ability to see the same theories and practices from others viewpoint (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011). These reflectional activities allow the students to transform knowledge to suit their own practice and hence start using it. In this way, the reflection can be seen as a way to create new ways to use obtained knowledge (Merrill, 2015). In this study, it is investigated how RPL can be adopted in a Learning Factory setting with the aim of strengthen the didactical dimension, improving the maturity. The study builds on the assumption, that improving the maturity will strengthen the students’ learning. The research question of the study is therefore: How can the principles of RPL be used to im- prove the maturity of a Learning Factory setting? The study is undertaken by adopting RPL in the development of two educational designs (pilots) taking a point of the departure in a Learning Factory approach. The two pilots, aimed at further education, are developed as part of the PKK-project. In the following, first the methods and data are presented, followed by the results. After- wards the two pilots are analysed and discussed through a comparison between the pi- lots and the RPL principles, the pilots, and the Learning Factory approach, and lastly, the synergy between RPL and the Learning factory approach. Methods and Data This study is methodologically and empirically based on a case study (two cases) and a supporting interview survey. The two cases in this paper consist of the development of two educational designs (Pilot 1 and 2) developed at respectively University College of Northern Denmark (UCN) and UCL University College (UCL). As a starting point for the development of the pilots, an existing training course for which the designs should be aimed were selected. The training courses were both part of an existing further educa- tional programmes at EQF level 5 and, moreover, targeting the upskilling of industrial em- ployees aimed at Industry 4.0. To support the development of the research design and the development of the two pi- lots, five experienced managers having a direct responsibility for the upskilling of indus- trial employees, e.g., through further education, were interviewed. The managers were all from SMEs located at the Northern part of Denmark. The aim of the interviews was to ex- plore the area further, creating a better understanding of the conditions developing edu- cational designs for further educational activities in practice. Moreover, the interviews were used to scope the specific content of the training courses. The interview was University College of Northern Denmark 147/193

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