The Future of Learning

3 simple tips for setting up online communities

On Wednesday I spoke at the World Of Learning 2011 conference in the session on Harnessing the potential of social learning.  My message was the same as usual (and you can see my presentation here) that social learning is not about forcing people to participate in online learning communities as part of formal training, but about encouraging and supporting teams to build their own group spaces to support one another more informally in the workflow

Nancy Ouma, from the VSO was on the platform with me and she showed how such social learning approaches had grown organically outside of mandated online courses – in Facebook and LinkedIn. She explained that at first she had been very wary of these groups, but was now so convinced of their value for volunteers, that she wanted to support more initiatives of this kind.

Our message was the same, L&D needs to let go and encourage and support teams to set up their own groups.

After our session, we had a few questions about setting up such communities.  The following three questions I think are worth repeating here – as indeed our united response.

Read the rest of this article on my Learning in the Social Workplace blog

2011 Social Media for Learning Report

Yesterday, the E-Learning Guild announced the release of this report, in which Jane Bozarth  analyzes eLearning Guild research on the latest trends in adoption and usage of social media for learning.

“Weaving connections between data and individual interviews, Jane also discusses organizational challenges and concerns about social media, and offers suggestions to overcome them.”

This report is free for all paid members of The eLearning Guild.  You can download it here.

via www.c4lpt.co.uk

Key social learning resources: Part 4

The fourth and final instalment of my weekly articles curating key social learning resources for TrainingZone’s social learning month can be found here on my Learning in the Social Workplace blog

 

Quiz: Have you got the New Workplace Learning mindset?

Following my recent posting, Social learning is not a new training trend, I’ve had a few comments from readers that suggest they were not able to see the difference between the two workplace learning approaches I described –  in particular the difference in the “mindset” involved.

It seems to me that there are 5 key differences (probably more) but before I discuss them in more detail, there are 5 questions to test you as well your organisation’s mindset.

Find the questions and the answers on my Learning in the Social Workplace Blog

Social Learning is NOT a new training trend

I’ve written a few postings recently (notably Social Learning doesn’t mean what you think it does) where I have tried to show how the fundamental changes in how businesses are operating, require a fundamental change in how the L&D function needs to view workplace learning.  I suggested this means a move from a “Command and Control” approach to an “Encourage and Engage” approach to Workplace Learning. Read the full posting here:

via Social Learning is NOT a new training trend

Key social learning resources: part 3

You can read the third part of my four-part series curating key social learning resources for TrainingZone’s social learning month on my Learning in the Social Workplace blog.

 

Saturday Surprise: Google Gravity

For some fun today, visit the posting on my Learning in the Social Workplace blog

 

Key Social Learning Resources: Part 2

During social learning month  I am writing some weekly articles with some key resources about social learning.  This is the second instalment.

This article first appeared in TrainingZone on 9 September 2011, but is reproduced here for those who don’t have a TZ account, I've reproduced it on my Learning in the Social Workplace blog

From “Command & Control” to "Encourage & Engage”: the presentation

Today, I am speaking at LearningLive in Birmingham.  The topic of my session is “From managing and controlling learning, to enabling and supporting learning”. I am going to be talking about the ideas in my last two posting: Social learning doesn’t mean what you think it means – Part 1 and Part 2.

Here’s the presentation:

via www.c4lpt.co.uk

Social Learning doesn’t mean what you think it does: PART TWO

Yesterday, in my first posting on this topic, I showed how “social learning” is not just about a new training trend or about adding social media into the “blend” or acquiring the latest Social Learning Management System, but a fundamental change in how we need to view workplace learning.  And that in order stay in tune with new ways of working and learning, the L&D function needs to move from a “Command and Control” approach to one that I called “Encourage and Engage”.  To highlight the differences between these two approaches I then compared the “Command and Control” response with the new ”Encourage & Engage” response for each of the 8 features of how Smart Workers are working and learning today. But  I closed by saying that one  of the important questions that people  have about this new approach to Workplace Learning, is how they measure employee “learning” as well as L&D’s involvement.  So that is the topic of today’s post.

 

Let’s first take a look at managing and measuring employee “learning”.

The traditional approach to measuring learning in the workplace, has been to monitor and track course attendance, or online test and course completions, and report success in quantitative terms – i.e. the number of courses each individual has taken and/or completed.

Some who have begun to introduce social approaches into the organisation, still think it is about measuring quantity; i.e. tracking the number of active participants and posts and comments people are making.

But both of these approaches are just about measuring “activity” and say very little about how individuals are actually “learning”.  In fact it is quite clear that even those who are socially inactive – (aka “lurkers” or “legitimate peripheral participants“) may still be learning.

In summary, as the recent article about social media marketing, The inconvenient truth about social media, puts it

”Quantity is an antiquated way of measuring success”

So how then do we measure learning in the workplace?

Find out by reading the rest of this posting on my Learning in the Social Workplace blog