The work-integrated leanring paradigm offers knowledge workers the possibility to enhance their knowledge and skills directly at their workplace, in the context of their work and by using existing material from within the organizational knowledge base. It is currently being researched in the APOSDLE project, which is an associated project of MATURE.

In many knowledge based domains which are at the same time process oriented (such as engineering) this way of ad hoc learning offers an attractive alternative to class based or more traditional eLearning offerings. The design study targets civil engineers who are acquiring knowledge in a problem situation they encounter in their day to day work activities.

Work-integrated learning covers a stage in the knowledge maturing process which is termed "ad hoc learning". However, the relation of work-integrated learning to the other stages is not well understood. In the context of MATURE, a work-integrated learning environment could be understood as one specific version of a personal leanring environment.

Together with e-learning experts from the civil engineering domain at Structuralia, we will explore the benefits of work-integrated leanring in their domain. Furthermore, we will explore the potential of this approach for use as a Personal Learning Environment by civil engineers, and the further requirements this would entail in terms of knowledge maturing.