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Background: Degree apprenticeships (DA) help employees gain new knowledge and skills by allowing them to study towards a university degree while working full time. For these programmes to be effective, the learning design should be adapted to the needs of these students, who are goal oriented (i.e. they want to gain only knowledge that can be applied within their workplace), have limited time for studying, and usually have not attended formal education for some time. As these programmes are relatively new, there is limited research on how these students can be supported to achieve the programmes' learning goals by using information and communication technologies. Objectives: This paper aims to understand whether a learning design that combines game‐based learning with online flipped classrooms can engage DA students in their learning and help them develop their reflective skills. Methods: Two focus groups were conducted with DA students that study at a UK Business School towards gaining the Chartered Manager status. The focus groups recordings have been analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results and Conclusions: The three main themes, "change can be helpful and challenging at the same time", "the ideal game", and "the effect of others", show that DA students find game‐based learning and online flipped classrooms useful, with the right support. Simulation games can be more fulfilling to DA students than quiz games, even if they take more of their out‐of‐class time. In addition, instructors are advised to work more closely with diverse teams to enable students share their work experiences and learn from each other. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic?: Online flipped classrooms offer flexibility in learning, but instructors need to find solutions to challenges, like students' limited e‐learning readiness and lack of motivation.Game‐based learning has been found to facilitate learning in general, but there is a need to identify the specific circumstances (i.e. settings, gaming elements) under which it is effective.Degree apprenticeship students need more support with their learning compared to traditional university students, as they face additional challenges in terms of family life‐work balance and connecting their learning to their working experience. What this paper adds?: Game‐based learning can be useful to degree apprenticeship students providing that focuses on the application of knowledge and provides feedback.Despite facing challenges related to maintaining work‐study‐life balance, degree apprenticeship students are willing to complete the flipped classroom's out‐of‐class activities, if they see a clear benefit from doing so.Online group activities can be challenging for degree apprenticeship students, if they are not able to form teams with other learners that work for the same organisation. The implications of study findings for practitioners: Avoid quiz‐like games and select the ones that use real‐life scenarios for degree apprenticeship students to help them link their learning to their practice.Formative feedback should be provided by both the instructor and the game to motivate degree apprenticeship students to spend the additional time to complete the out‐of‐class activities.Students should be reminded frequently of the purpose of any new learning elements (e.g. learning analytics) as they may not have the time to explore them on their own.When forming student teams based on students' workplace is not possible, spend more time in each breakout room to facilitate the online group discussion and help students bring their different working experiences together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationships between firm size and employees' experience of work stress. We used a matched employer-employee dataset (Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2011) that comprises of 7182 employees from 1210 private organizations in the United Kingdom. Initially, we find that employees in small and medium-sized enterprises experience lower level of overall job stress than those in large enterprises, although the effect disappears when we control for individual and organizational characteristics in the model. We also find that quantitative work overload, job insecurity and poor promotion opportunities, good work relationships and poor communication are strongly associated with job stress in the small and medium-sized enterprises, whereas qualitative work overload, poor job autonomy and employee engagements are more related with larger enterprises. Hence, our estimates show that the association and magnitude of estimated effects differ significantly by enterprise size. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate and commercial values are inducing some healthcare organizations to prescribe a customer service model that reframes the provision of nursing care. In this paper it is argued that such a model is incommensurable with nursing conceived as a moral practice and ultimately places nurses at risk. Based upon understanding from ongoing research on compassion fatigue, it is proposed that compassion fatigue as currently experienced by nurses may not arise predominantly from too great a demand for compassion, but rather from barriers to enacting compassionate care. These barriers are often systemic. The paradigm shift in which healthcare environments are viewed as marketplaces rather than moral communities has the potential to radically affect the evolution of nursing as a discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate within radical geography concerned with the trade union response to the hegemony of business interests apparent under neoliberal capitalism. In this paper, I contribute to this debate by exploring recent attempts to renew trade union organisation in the UK following decades of decline. I argue that, despite recent successes in stemming falling membership numbers and signing new recognition agreements, closer inspection reveals flaws in the renewal process that reflect the underlying nature of scale politics within the union movement itself. In particular, centralised strategies at the national level are failing to re-energise local-level union organisation leading to a rather hollow and pyrrhic renewal process. Drawing upon both macro-level analysis and evidence from a particular industry case study, I suggest that unions rethink their organisational geographies and scalar relations if they wish to re-connect with the grassroots and at a broader level remain a progressive force in the changing economic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]