I am often puzzled by the way organizations and agencies tackle social media, as if conversational marketing and Enterprise 2.0 were living in separate worlds, addressing totally different issues, pursuing irreconcilable goals. Do they?

Of course, when considering the ‘media’ part of Social Media, open Innovation, co-creation, social CRM, have very few to deal with Facebook campaigns or multi-millions views viral videos. But the ‘social’ part, a word which deeply unsettles more than a few from my Enterprise 2.0 colleagues, tells us a completely different story, made up of conversations, insights, and exchange of knowledge. More than ever, I see a whole continuum taking place in the Social Territory, setting the customer’s experience at the center of business and harnessing all those conversations to get things done in a better way and gain decisive competitive advantages. Social Learning, which involves leveraging knowledge gained through informal networked flows, appears to be the necessary link between Social Media and Social Business.

More on that in the presentation below:

OK, so here’s the deal – if learning is work and work is learning, why is organizational learning controlled by a learning management systems (LMS) that isn’t connected to the work being done in the enterprise? Learning is no longer what you do before you go to work, never having to learn anything else in order to do your job. In the 21st century networked economy, learning and working are becoming one.

As Robert Kelley showed over a 20 year study of knowledge workers, we need to keep learning in order to get our jobs done – “What percentage of the knowledge you need to do your job is stored in your own mind?”

1986 ~ 75%.
1997 ~ 20%
2006 ~ 10%

In a networked economy, social learning is how we get things done. Training, based on solid documentation of processes and procedures, works well at lower levels of complexity and we can develop best practices. As complexity increases, we need more tacit knowledge, which cannot be documented. Conversation is a prime medium for the sharing of tacit knowledge and is the foundation for collaborative work. We need to communicate in order to collaborate. This is why organizations need to manage what matters – collaboration.

The LMS framework is being challenged for its supremacy over organizational learning much as heliocentricity showed European civilization that we were not the centre of the galaxy. Jane Hart says that, “what is needed is an organisational system that SUPPORTS and ENABLES this informal approach to learning.” That system is one where the LMS is nothing more than a node in the network, which means that the LMS has to play nice with others (which most do not). The centre of universe has shifted for training & development professionals and they can ignore this shift, as the Catholic church did, or they can become part of the Learning Reformation.

Is it me or does it seem that most vendors in the LMS/LCMS market still believe that with some smoke and mirrors, you won’t realize that social media actually must be integrated into social learning for it to exist? Or do they just drop the word, “social media”, and rather say, “social learning and web 2.0″?

After all, many have a blog, wiki, rss feed, a Facebook like page, with profile, inc. an image, friends can connect and see comments – sort of like a Twitter and the end user can tweet within the LMS”. See, it is social learning. Not!!!

Brief Background

Tim Berner-Lee, Founder of the World Wide Web and coined the term “Web 2.0″

”Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along. And in fact, you know, this ‘Web 2.0,’ it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0.” — Tim Berner-Lee

It’s all about Hype

Web 2.0 is still being hyped in the market, as the upcoming Web 2.0 expo clearly shows and some argue that social media some grew up within the web 2.0 process.

Nevertheless, social media has overtaken its Web 2.0 buzz, now standing and expanding on its own. The expo? Features social media solutions.  When people scour the job markets, employers post seeking social media experts. Social media covers over 15 categories and grows as more offerings slide in there.  With APIs and mashups, who knows where it can go.

Social Learning & Social Media

Can one exist with out another? The answer is no.  Social Learning = Learning, Collaboration & Communication. To achieve this and move forward, social media must be integrated into the platform or mechanism.

I often see vendors in the e-learning space that believe that social learning is similar to what I listed at the beginning of this article.  While some vendors in the LMS/LCMS space will argue that they offer similar “real life” social media offerings in their solution, the key here is “similar”.

Real life social media, is just that – real time, real life. Open sharing of information, collaboration and communication.  Does this exist in your system? Can you tweet in real time in your LMS and people outside of your system see your tweet? Then, people outside of the LMS tweet and you (as the end user) can see the tweet in real time in the LMS?  This goes beyond just your “friends” within the system, and extends to the outside real world.

I know of only one LMS that does this, just one.  The others who offer the “similar”, offer just that “similar”, but not the full open sharing of information.  A counter argument for not offering the “real life” experience is the fear or someone saying something, or security issues, but for most companies, it is really the former. After all, if you are enabling your employees to read their internet emails, surf the web or even Tweet during company time, security is not the concern.

One vendor created a “filter” system so the administrator would type in words that were unacceptable, thus when the end user typed them, in real time, they appeared as *** or not at all. Sadly, they do not offer it as an open sharing of information – internal to external system, rather just for end users in the LMS, when writing on a blog, wiki, etc.  At least it is a start.

A filter system could be created tied to any open sharing of information – internal LMS to real world and back again and work.

Hello?

End users want the ability to open only one window and have everything contained within it.  If you could have your real time Twitter, Linkedin feeds, Facebook and some other social media capability, and your end user did not have to open any other screens, what is the likelihood, that your system would increase in sales?

An Emerging Trend in Social Media: Geolocating

While it has been around for awhile, you are really starting to see traction on it.  You sign up an account online, select some options, and you are able to see where your friends are in real time on a map or as it says “location”.

Download the solution’s app to your smart phone or tablet, and now on the go – you can see in real time where all your friends are located (those who signed up for the service). The social media solution utilizes your built in GPS with your smart phone, tablet or ties it into your IP address via your laptop, netbook, etc, regardless if you are at home or in the coffee shop.

Social Media LMS or Virtual Communities or Portals – Ultimate Learning Experience

I want the ultimate learning experience, so not only do I want to select and have friends follow me within my LMS and chat with them or have them read my feeds, but I want to know where they are and vice versa, so if we want to meet up we can.  We want to take that next level of collaboration and communication. We wish to expand on another social media form – “events” – see meetup.com as an example;  and intertwine them.

So, what can we do?  Add geolocating as part of our social learning services.  Now, I want an even greater experience, so  I will add a virtual world.

Toss in scheduled webinars, real time livecasting, real time video streaming, avatars that have the face image of your end user and not Sigmund the Sea Monster,  communicate in real time – with mini video screens between learners – beyond just texting, and while you are at it… track it..everything, full analytical data. Yeah, you can toss in e-commerce, APIs, Mashups, and add any social media you can think of – slideshare presentations?  You bet.  App Sharing? Simple.

How far are we away from such a real world application?  Not that far away, especially as technology, access speed (for the end user) and the on-going growth of social learning continues.  5 years? Easily.

New term:  Social Learning 3D  – Learning, Communication, Collaboration, 3D experience

Your LMS is your hub, a virtual learning community truly exists – to/from your LMS.  Eliminating a piece here or there and a patchwork of odds and ends.

It would require a lot of capabilities in one solution to tap into various learners’ tastes, wants and companies training goals; something LMS/LCMS vendors always seem to be one step behind.  It would be something someone hasn’t seen before, which for most vendors is unacceptable, but it could be done.

Now where did I put my Ipad?

Maintenant, où j'ai mis mon iPad?

Craig Weiss has been in the e-learning (web based) space since it began in the nineties. He has an extensive background in all aspects of e-learning, including LMS/LCMSs, learning communities, emerging technology and social learning/social media.  He has been identified as one of the new voices in social learning.  Craig is an analyst with Brandon Hall and provides independent consulting services to companies worldwide.  His blog is www.elearninfo.com.

Telling people that we can “formalize informal learning” is a not so subtle way of saying, “it’s OK, you don’t have to make any fundamental changes to the way you’ve been been doing training & development for the past half century”.

I asked the question in February’s eCollab Blog Carnival, with tongue very close to my cheek, because I knew it would stimulate discussion on the role of informal learning in workplace performance. I never thought anyone would seriously adopt it, but on viewing Jay Cross’s slides yesterday, it seems many have.

Here is an excerpt from an interview I did with Jay on the subject:

When asked if we should try to formalize informal learning, Jay responded by saying that it’s the wrong question. It would be like asking if we should “informalize” formal training. A key understanding that Jay wants to get across to everyone in the workplace learning arena is that it’s not an either/or proposition, but rather how much informal and how much formal learning should we support and who is determining what’s to be done. All learning is a bit of both. His promotion of informal learning is not to replace formal training but to open up the possibilities of supporting the other 80% of learning that has been ignored for far too long.

Two core themes in supporting informal learning are control and trust. Managers and supervisors need to give up some control and organizations must learn to trust their people, says Jay. Embracing, encouraging and supporting informal learning is part of a greater workplace cultural change.

Aye, there’s the rub – our organizations actually need to change.

We need to change from this:

To this:

This kind of change is not just adding another “blend” to the training bar-mix. It is a fundamental change required to move from a command & control pyramid to a network. It means a very different training department, if it’s even called that any more, as well as a new framework for informal, social learning in the enterprise. The required role for supporting workers is connecting, communicating & collaborating.

Jim McGee summed up the difference in yesterday’s conversation on a world without KM, the “best argument for Social Networks over Knowledge Management is shift in perspective from static content to dynamic interaction“.

It’s the same for training. Informal learning is dynamic and social (on the fly, just-in-time, self-directed, group-directed, serendipitous) while formal training is static (designed, directed, evaluated). What about a world without ISD (instructional systems design)? The best argument favouring informal learning over formal training is a shift in perspective from static content to dynamic interaction. It also means a loss of control for training departments everywhere. Tough.

Don’t try to formalize informal learning. Just help people do their jobs.

Here’s some final advice from @mneff during yesterday’s KM conversation: “Focus on connection & collaboration. The management of assets is mostly obsolete by the time it is stored.”

There’s been much justifiable excitement about social media recently; are you on top of it?  The recognition that learning is 80% informal suggests that we need to support natural connections between people who can help one another.  And that support can be between employees, partners, or customers.  You can see real benefits, but you’ve got to have a way to think about them!

There are lots of social networking tools with weird sounding names: blogs, wikis, Twitter (also known as micro-blogs), Ning, Facebook, and more.  Similarly, we hear some buzz phrases: learning 2.0, social media, co-creation, user-generated content, and so on.  The question is, what are the real opportunities?

The case for informal learning.

Things are not getting slower: we are seeing decreasing time to market for products and services, more information coming in, and fewer resources with which to cope.  The rate of disruption in industries is increasing to the point that it’s almost continuous. The days when you could plan, adapt, and then execute are mostly behind us.  

What we need, going forward, is the ability to take a continuous read on the environment and adapt quickly.  The nimble organization will be the one that thrives.

The ability to adapt comes from both a good background of theory and the ability to problem-solve and innovate.  You need to support learners in communicating and collaborating.  That’s where social learning comes in.  The new ideas, the collaborative problem-solving, can be augmented with tools that provide value even with co-location but when geographic reach is added in, the value is even higher.

I’ll first explore the informal learning roles for social media tools, and then make the case that social media tools skills make sense.  Then I’ll explore the formal learning applications of these tools, concluding that using the tools for formal learning provides a valuable “onramp” to their use more broadly. I’ll focus on five particular tools, but the arguments extend.

Informal learning payoffs in real life

Think of the way people work together in the workplace; they pop over the cubicle to ask a question, they sit together at a document, they brainstorm around a whiteboard, they hold meetings, and give presentations.  Now, can we support, and augment, that?  
Let’s turn it around, let’s think of some particular activities.  We’ll go through several cases, and for each we’ll look at the benefits, and then see the social media tools that support this.

What’s the value of a discussion?
Making it possible for a group of people able to converse means that they can cover issues, solve problems, debate approaches, ask questions, get thoughtful responses, and more.  Someone in the group can schedule specific topics, or the group members can call for discussion as needed.
Email forums are just such a discussion forum.  Group members receive questions, and their responses go out to the group.  Before the world wide web, Usenet was an internet based email discussion list that was quite popular and very useful.

We often overlook discussion forums in the excitement of new technologies, but the simple capabilities of an email list are quite powerful.  And anyone interested (and appropriate) can become a forum member, or opt-out, while no one has to figure out just who to send it to.  For over 10 years, ITFORUM has been a way for those interested in instructional technology to discuss current topics, as well as to get and provide help.

What are the benefits of collaboration?
Having people work together to shape understanding, document an approach, or generate a response can be a powerful tool for developing a shared understanding.  A team can develop their ideas, others can review, add, and edit; ultimately the best ideas can coalesce.  Managed properly, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Wikis are collaboration tools.  In essence, they are shared editable spaces, where individuals can access and edit a document in an ongoing process.  A wiki can track contributions and history, so who does what is known, and participants can revisit previous versions.  Wikipedia is the poster-child for wikis, but organizations from Intel to the CIA have used them. Collaborative document services, like Google Docs, are essentially the same as a wiki.

What are the benefits of having one place to go to find tools and resources?  
In the old days, this “one place” might be a manual or a library.  When users can find the tools they need in a reliable place, they don’t waste time searching, or making things up in lieu of the answer.  The estimates are that people spend 15-20% or more of their time searching, and up to 40% of that unsuccessfully.  People do prefer to self-help, if they can, but if they can’t find what the need easily, or there are too many places to search, they’ll use more costly resources such as phone calls, or worse, just wing it and make mistakes.

The modern-day equivalent of the manual is the portal.  A well-configured portal provides a place for people to stash look for the resources they need. Note that “well-configured” is a rare quality, and it’s all too common to hear “we’ve got hundreds of portals”, just to find that they’re organized in only one way.  You can’t let someone handcraft a portal; it requires the same information architecture that other online resources need. So, doing it by role or task makes much  more sense than doing it by, say, department.

When done right, however, portals are powerful resources for self-help and performance.  IBM has taken it a step further, and actually created custom portals, based upon employee roles and tasks.

What is the value of knowing who knows what?
The person nearest to you, or your boss, may not  be the best person to ask!  If you have met folks in the organization, you might know who to go to. If you don’t, you could waste time asking around.  Being able to identify people based upon their knowledge and expertise is powerful for getting answers, and for getting collaboration when it’s a new problem. (And the latter is increasingly going to be the case!).

In knowledge management, the usual way to identify people based upon their knowledge and expertise is an employee ‘yellow pages’, and personal profiles are a common tool to provide this. Granted, having a system auto-troll for people’s expertise by parsing their email or documents is going to be more accurate than what they self-describe, but it’s also part of building a culture of trust, and it’s much easier.  There are additional benefits in allowing people to express not only their expertise, but also their personality (for instance, the customization of avatars in virtual worlds).

Personal profiles are a way for individuals to present themselves to the organization.  They can use officially sanctioned tags, but they can also add personal characteristics or interests.  This combination creates a richer picture of the individual, supporting communication and a sense of support of self-image.

What’s the value of a journal?
Typically we think of journals as personal, but there can be benefits from sharing reflections.  Recording your thoughts is a valuable way to make them concrete.  You probably have experienced the situation where, by writing something down, you had to work out some details that were missed when the idea was pure conjecture. Keeping a journal forces you to take some time for reflection.  Moreover, if you share your journal, you can get feedback on your thoughts. If a leader keeps a journal and makes it available, then that person’s employees or peers can follow the leaders’ thoughts, and keep in better touch with where the leader is going.  It’s a form of virtual mentorship, or thinking out loud (an important aspect of learning).

A blog is just such an online journal.  It’s a way a person can write their thoughts down and easily publish them for all to see.  Better yet, others can add their own thoughts as comments.  It provides a simple and useful way to share thoughts, progress, etc.  Blogging has proved valuable both internally and outwardly to customers.  Similarly, a project, or a product/service team can update the progress with a blog, and solicit feedback on new ideas.  Sun and Oracle are among the companies exploring blogs.

There are more tools we could discuss, including IM (Instant Messaging) and “micro-blogs” (read: Twitter and Yammer), but the goal here is to point out some more common business goals and how these tools augment and/or accelerate them.  Some of the emerging tools provide capabilities that are truly new, and it’s worth getting on top of the old ones to truly comprehend the opportunities to fully comprehend the opportunities of both.

The reasons why adding social learning to formal learning makes sense.

I hope that you see the tangible benefits of making such tools available to your employees.  A rich ecosystem of tools supporting communities to share thinking, solve problems, and innovate new solutions is a fountain of new value to the organization.  And we haven’t even talked about the relative cost-benefit tradeoff here. Social media is relatively inexpensive, and the payoff is huge.  Jay Cross has talked about the value proposition of informal learning, and these tools provide a concrete step to reap those benefits.  It’s no longer reasonable to ignore the 80% of learning that happens informally! (See Jay’s blog post: making the  business case for informal learning).

However, getting such a system to “critical mass”, where these activities are ongoing, is not easy.  There have typically been challenges in getting these community tools to a self-sustaining level.  Nancy White, one of the gurus of social learning, has cited an 18-month process of getting a particular community going.  On the other hand, the Defense Acquisition University found a number already in existence, and spent resources finding a common way to support them.

Consequently, ways to foster the use of such tools are to be encouraged. One of the most successful ways to encourage use is to demonstrate value.  To carry this story forward, we need to survey the development of people through their job-related learning.

Consider the traditional expertise by learning mode graph (Figure 1). At the novice stage (regardless of whether it’s an experienced employee moving into a new area, such as a technical employee being moved to a managerial role, or a new hire), employees need support not only for basic knowledge, but often in motivation as well.  We largely direct formal learning at the novice learner.  At the practitioner stage, employees typically know what their goals are, and what they need to know, so we can strip down much more content. At the expert stage, they’re looking for collaboration to advance their joint understanding.

Social network tools typically help the practitioner and the expert, although the novice may benefit from virtual mentoring.  In cultural terms, novices move from the periphery of a culture of practice towards the center, where practitioners and experts are in active dialogue defining and advancing the field.

However, to separate out the novice practices from those of the others doesn’t communicate an elegant segue from the outside in.  So, one of the powerful ideas is to start the social networking activities at the periphery. The question is, are their legitimate reasons to engage social learning for formal learning?  And the answer is a definitive yes.

The formal learning benefits of social learning.

To consider the reasons social learning is beneficial to formal learning, it is useful to review what learning is.  Our goals are twofold: retention and transfer.  We want learners to retain the information from the learning experience until the time they have to perform, and we want them to transfer that information to all appropriate situations (and no inappropriate ones).

Given the ways our brains work, tools to hand include reactivation of the relevant material, elaboration of the learning, and application to particular situations (the latter is critical).  When we face a problem, the context triggers other relevant associations. The more associations to information that’s relevant, the more likely we are to bring useful frameworks to bear.  Consequently, we want to make associations between our understanding, knowledge, and contexts.

We also know that social learning facilitates learning.  Working together helps unearth different views of what’s happening, and allows negotiation of shared understanding.  It’s about dealing with misconceptions, ambiguity, and learning together.  When done well, learners work together to share their understandings, and to develop their ability to apply it to meaningful problems.

Several meaningful goals that accelerate learning including connecting conceptual knowledge to personal experience, elaborating conceptual knowledge to other ideas, and applying that knowledge to solve problems. Our social learning tools do just that.  Here I’ll relate several activities I have used successfully in teaching both in the classroom and online that demonstrate the principles.

Personalize learning with journals
Journals have been a time-tested way for individuals to personalize their learning.  By either connecting their learning to explain past events in new light, or indicating how they intend to change their behavior as a consequence, they’re making connections to prior knowledge and their expected patterns of behavior.  By having a requirement to regularly blog personal revelations about how this information relates to their experience, as well as how they anticipate applying the information in the future, learners are performing powerful cognitive processing.

Making those thoughts available to others, and receiving feedback from mentors or peers, is a real opportunity to explore and benefit from not only the reflection, but from the feedback that can help refine and shape understanding.

Use discussion questions to stimulate elaboration
Creating discussion questions is a time-tested way to ask learners to elaborate their understanding of the concept.  Discussion forums provide a useful channel for learners to each pose their answer to the question, and then respond to others.  Even a simple requirement that learners post a thoughtful response to a thought question, and then comment in a relevant way to another (not just saying “great”), constitutes the valuable additional processing that leads to retention.

Provide problems for application
One of the most important ways to process information is to apply it to relevant problems.  And doing so in a group facilitates articulating thoughts and comparing and refining them.  Requiring a group response to a problem, particularly if there is more than one group, is a great technique to force learners to work together to create a unified understanding.

A deliberate amount of ambiguity in the problem statement will facilitate the necessity of working together to understand.  Obviously there are issues in managing the effort and learning of each member, but these techniques are not new, and wikis now track contribution and schedule to facilitate that task. Having to produce the response closely resemble tasks they already must execute, whether responses to proposals, engineering designs, or patient prescriptions, and increases the likelihood of useful transfer.

Social learning in a social context
In addition, the learning should acknowledge the resources that will be used in performance, and they should be “to hand” as they will be outside the learning experience.  Having one place to go for additional resources around the topic, and to have that portal incorporated into the learning, anchors the learning in the real world, and provides scaffolding both in the task and to performance beyond the task.

Having the ability to learn about your fellow learners, and get to know them as people and not just as learners, facilitates learning.  Knowing their background and interests can help explain the way they perform in group assignments, and help develop the skills to tolerate diversity and communicate to other cultures whether near or far.  Having profiles supports that in concrete ways, and helps develop the social bonds that form some of the basis of the informal social learning network. In addition, the language and categories used can convey the values and language of the organization.

Combining these techniques is additionally powerful.  Even one has its benefits, but adding them together provides different forms of reactivation that increase the benefit. Realize that the benefits here are double.  First, they’re conducting meaningful processing on the original content.  In addition, however, they’re gaining fluency in using tools that can continue to be valuable, as are the connections they’re making to individuals.

Beyond the formal: enculturation into a community

Once learners have used the tools in their formal learning, the question is how to transition them to the larger community Several models are possible: they could switch to the new community using different tools, they could be using separate categories within the tools used by practitioners, or their contributions could be part of the community.

It’s likely that the latter is an unfair burden to the practitioners and experts, though if you could get them to provide feedback as well it would be an elegant introduction into the community.  Switching tools would actually have a positive benefit of decontextualizing the tool from the task, so that learners could generate more transferable skills in the social media.  However, the downside is the extra cognitive overhead.

The ideal may be to introduce them to new communities in the social learning tools. One possible role of the instructor, ideally a member of the community of practice, would be to introduce the learners into the community, maybe even drawing upon ancient traditions and having a “rite of passage”.

The important point is that using social learning tools for formal learning serves as a useful social skill development role for introducing learners to the online learning tools. As social tools become more part of everyday culture, that role may diminish, but currently it is still relevant.

Issues

The discussion above raised some issues that we should address.  Successful collaboration requires several cultural factors, including the need for safety to contribute, openness to diverse ideas, and shared commitment.  You won’t get contributions if it’s not safe or individuals don’t care, and you won’t get full input unless you tolerate all viewpoints.  Introducing such tools will quickly point out whether these factors are available or not.

The second requirement is for individuals to have the skills to successfully participate.  It’s unfair to expect that your learners are fluent in using the tools, or in working collaboratively.  If there aren’t clear guidelines for how to contribute successfully, what are appropriate ways to behave, and how to learn in these environments, the outcome may not be ideal.  Consequently, identifying the necessary skills, providing support, and modeling by the leaders will likely be necessary.

The final requirement is organizational support, so that there are concrete rewards for contributing.  If it’s touted, but not valued, the disconnect will be obvious.  Note that in most cases, some nurturing is required for communities to come to life.  Organizations have taken steps including providing incentives for recognized leaders to participate, and providing rewards for contributions.  A rating system for comment usefulness can be helpful, too.

That latter brings up the tools that weren’t discussed.  Such ratings are part of some of the new tools, as are profiles, and other tools have other capabilities, such as instant messaging, and micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter, or it’s corporate cousin, Yammer).  We didn’t cover them here, but the principles extend.  Instant messaging provides quick access to someone discovered via a profile search. Micro-blogging can leave trails of thought and similarly can quickly bring an answer from a broad population.

Conclusion

The informal learning reasons alone are enough to justify investing in social learning. The benefits for formal learning similarly suggest independent value.  The two together, along with the transition path to support adoption and enculturation, make a compelling case for social media in the organization.  There are nuances and details about what to emphasize, what tools to choose, and how to get there from where you are, but the point is to get going.  
Organizations are getting real value from some or many of these tools, possibly including your competition.  I reckon you surely want to empower your people to work together as effectively as possible.  Fortunately, most of these tools are quite inexpensive. Getting it right is more difficult, but you can do it if you can marry an understanding of learning with a comprehension of the fundamental capabilities of the new technologies, all in the context of organizational goals and processes.

Get help if you  need it, but get going!

Originally published in Learning Solutions Magazine (http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/57/social-networking-bridging-formal-and-informal-learning), February 23, 2009. Used with permission.

Clark Quinn earned a PhD in applied cognitive science at UCSD, and brings a deep understanding of learning as well as experience designing technology solutions to ensure that the learner, learning, and user experience are integrated into a successful performance solution.

http://blog.learnlets.com/

The last few days in Hong Kong have been incredible -- I saw some great sights, participated in some interesting activities and backed all of it up with some great food. Talking of food, I very quickly realised that its kinda tough to get by without using chopsticks in Hong Kong. Now I'm sure that some upmarket restaurants offer forks and knives for food. Food for me however, spells 'cheap and streetside'. The only cutlery I got at these places were chopsticks and soup spoons. Thankfully I know how to use chopsticks, so I had no trouble. Its interesting how I learnt to use chopsticks though. At one point I decided that eating with chopsticks was cool, since I'd seen some of my friends do it and it was kind of a distinctive thing to do. So I read up a "how-to" for using chopsticks, which since I had no opportunity to use, I forgot in a few days. So when I actually did get the opportunity to use chopsticks, I fumbled for the first ten minutes and actually messed up my shirt! It took me about an hour to finish my meal, but by the end I had found an inelegant way that worked for me. As time passed and I visited more oriental restaurants, I gradually perfected the art -- often I'd get little tips and hints from my friends and that helped me get better. Now, I can eat a complete meal with chopsticks and pretty quickly too!

People learn iteratively, over time

Now why am I telling you this story? I think my story about learning how to use chopsticks is quite representative of how we learn. Information that we can't apply immediately at our job fades away into irrelevance and soon enough recall of this information is close to zilch! We remember learning that we can apply immediately and the things that we remember the most are the ones that we learn when performing a job i.e. in a performance context. Most importantly, we learn iteratively and over time. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers - The Story of Success, explains how strong amateurs accumulate about 2,000 hours of practice by adulthood. Future music teachers build up about 4,000 hours. Really good students amass about 8,000 hours and “elite performers” invest about 10,000 hours of practice. If we take even the point of reaching competence from the absolute novice state, that's about 2000-4000 hours of work! That's got to take several iterations of learning. One of the reasons I support social media and bite-sized learning, is because it gives learning professionals the ability to help learners across this iterative learning journey.

You learn iteratively too, irrespective of your 'learning style'

One of the objections that I've heard from trainers about social media very often is, "But that's not my learning style..." or "I don't learn that way..." or "Have you considered that it may not be someone learning style to learn this way?" I have a tendency to snap back at these objections, but as I think this through more pragmatically, there are a few things I'm realising:

We're all social learners

Some of us may take time to realise this. If we look back at our experience, there will have been several occasions when we would have asked a question on a discussion forum or looked up Wikipedia or searched on Google. If we haven't done either of these, we've at least learnt something over a coffee table conversation or over drinks or while working alongside someone. In fact I can bet that most of us learnt how to do our jobs more as a consequence of such informal activities than as a consequence of some heavyweight training. You ARE a social learner, regardless of what you think!

We need to 'learn to learn'

One of the key developments of this age is the amount of information that's out there in the wired world. Its fascinating how much relevant information even a poorly constructed Google search can throw up. The ability to stay connected with friends and colleagues through social and professional networking tools such as Facebook and Linkedin gives us the ability to leverage weak ties in a manner we never even imagined before. Add to that the plethora of other social media; Wikipedia, Twitter, Yahoo! Answers, Digg, blogs, etc and there's a wealth of intelligence to exploit. People who don't leverage this phenomenon are missing out on something really big. If you truly don't learn this way, then you must learn to learn this way. Otherwise my guess is the world will soon pass you by and you'll be of decreasing value to your organisation.

Social media is 'more facilitative than facilitation'

If as learning professionals we choose to stay fixed to just one mode of learning then we're holding our organisations back. I say this for both instructor led training and elearning. In fact I feel its important that every formal learning experience includes a larger mix of informal learning opportunities as compared to formal ones. That's where the real value is and that's how we support the iterative nature of learning. In fact after working for a firm that practices Agile, I'll go to the extent of saying that "A single mode of education sans informal learning, is the waterfall of the learning world." Purely formal learning opportunities attempt to help learners solve tomorrow's problems with yesterday's wisdom. Most importantly they adhere to a design that's decided in advance as against being just-in-time, and designed to purpose. Informal learning on the other hand, is contextual and flexible.

Here's where you can start your informal learning journey

Learning professionals need informal learning too and believe it or not, there's help to be had in all sorts of places. I'll list some of my favorite places to learn. Please feel free to add more in the comments section - I'm sure there are heaps.

Blogs

elearning Learning is a collaborative effort started by Tony Karrer and is a collection of blog posts and articles all around eLearning. You can subscribe using your email ID to get free article recaps.

Tom Kulhmann's blog for some reason isn't aggregated on eLearning Learning. That said, its a great resource for people to learn simple, yet effective ways to rapidly produce high quality learning. I've learnt heaps from Tom's blog. He's a true guru.

Online Communities

There are various communities online that you can use to connect with other practitioners and to get help, share ideas, have discussions and what not. Here are some that I find really useful.
The Learning and Skills Group is a UK based community on Ning, that's really active and has about 1800 members on it. Its invitation only, but I guess you can talk to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to get on the group.
There are a few Indian groups that are really active too, and very useful:

• KCommunity is a community of Knowledge Management professionals in India and is a very active group that does a lot of social stuff.
• Instructional Designers Community of India (IDCI) has a lot of members from the learning community, though I must say I have serious criticism for some of its leaership. (YMMV)
• The Learning Solutions group also has some interesting discussions, though the traffic isn't comparable to other groups. Some really interesting members on the group though.

Twitter Hashtags

Its amazing how much information you can find through Twitter. Its difficult to keep up, but not if you combine search and hashtags. Here are some of the hashtags I tend to follow on Twitter. You name a luminary in the field of social media/ elearning and that person's tweeting, so I'm not going to list individuals here.
#elearning
#e20
#socialmedia

In addition (how can I miss this?) #lrnchat is an online chat that happens every Thursday night 8:30-10pm EST over the social messaging service Twitter. I've put these up on iCal as recurring events, every Friday morning (India), so I never miss them!

Other Resources
Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (a.k.a C4LPT) of Jane Hart fame, offers a range of free resources about learning and about social media.

ScreenR is screencasting for Twitter! You can use the free screencasting application, under the constraint that you say what you want to say, in 5 minutes. You can find heaps of tutorials created by the huge community and you can create your own with almost zero effort!

Lastly, the recently launched Learning Solutions Magazine, and the very recent LearnTrends virtual conference are a great source of absolutely amazing knowledge about organisational learning.

Sumeet Moghe has 9 years of experience in Training and Development and has a passion for devising and talking about new training methods. Sumeet works with ThoughtWorks Technologies Pvt Ltd, India and heads Workplace Learning for ThoughtWorks Globally. In the last couple of years, Sumeet has been particularly interested in observing the synergy between Agile and Learner Centered Training methods, built around the values of Respect, Communication, Feedback, Courage and Simplicity. At ThoughtWorks, he has had the opportunity of seeing these in practice and actually inventing a few practices of his own. Sumeet is deeply passionate in bringing Agile principles to non-computer science arenas as well and has taken a step by applying these to the fields of Workplace Learning, Enterprise 2.0 and team collaboration.