The Influence Of Personal And Work Environment Characteristics On Staff Engagement In Informal Learning Activities At Private Universities In The Sultanate Of Oman
Loading...
Date
2018-04
Authors
Al-Araimi, Mubarak Ali Khamis
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of personal and work environment factors on staff engagement in the informal learning at Omani private universities. A mixed method approach has been used to collect data from four selected private universities. The quantitative part consisted of questionnaire developed in Arabic and English languages. The data was gathered from 281 respondents to measure the personal and work environment factors’ influence on the staff’s engagement in informal learning activities. An inferential statistics were used to determine the influential effects. The results revealed that there are influences of different demographic aspects on staff engagement in informal learning and that that work environment and personal characteristics also influenced the employees’ level of engagement. On the other hand, the qualitative results revealed that staff uses different ways to learn informally to support their profession and to progress in their career. For instance, it was found that searching Internet is the most common learning activity used by the staff involved in this study. Furthermore, personal and work environmental characteristics have both positively or negatively impacted staff informal learning and their participation in their workplace activities. Practically, these results support the conclusions that in addition to their educational qualification, staff uses informal learning as a reliable way for progression in their career and that they tend to use knowledge and skills acquired from the engagement in informal learning to meet the desirable levels of work requirement as to progress in their careers, to cope with emerging problems and to prepare for their future profession.
Description
Keywords
The influence of personal and work environment factors , the informal learning at Omani private universities