Creating Value from Social Learning

Social learning — namely, the use of social media in the workplace to foster learning, collaboration, networking, knowledge sharing, and communications — has taken on a kind of religious fervor among learning practitioners during the past couple years.  And not without good reason: It often creates more powerful and enduring learning experiences; it helps people establish and leverage social connections to accelerate the distribution and sharing of experiences, content and guidance; and it allows learners to be more productive, learn faster and work smarter.

One of the reasons many learning and development professionals are struggling to secure budget and resources for their social learning proposals is the inability to articulate the value proposition.  What does “good” look like and what are the influencers that create this “goodness”?

Does it all add up? Value Creation from social learning is more likely to take place when the business context and the learning ecosystem are “optimal.”

The Business Context: What sort of influencers in the business context will encourage and help maintain an optimal learning ecosystem?

The (Learning) Ecosystem: What sort of influencers in the learning ecosystem will create an effective social learning system?

Value Creation: What sort of value creation comes from an optimal business context and learning ecosystem?

Assessing the Social Learning Influencers

Organizations are either actively considering or have recently started deploying social media to enable social learning.  Such companies are slowing coming to realize that key to their success is an optimal business context and learning ecosystem.

How “healthy” is your business context and learning ecosystem ?

Is social learning creating value in your organization ?

Would you like to assess the influencers of social learning and determine how to create more value?

You are invited to participate in a study and use a diagnostic tool at no cost.  There is no obligation to buy additional products or services.

The diagnostic tool kit has two parts.  The first part is an online survey that captures information about the business context.  Each organization participating in the study is required to complete one business context survey.  The second part is an online survey for employees.  The online survey has 50 questions and will take about 15 minutes to complete.  All responses are anonymous and results are not traceable back to individuals.

Participating organizations are required to permit the researchers to publish and speak about the study findings.  The researchers will protect the privacy of the organizations and its employees by making it impossible for anyone to trace back the findings to the organization or any of its employees.

Participating organizations will receive a report of the findings from their employees and will be able to compare such findings to the aggregate findings of the entire pool of participating organizations.

Please contact Eric Davidove should you have questions about the study or want to register your organization to participate in the study.

Eric Davidove, Ph.D : I've spent the past 22 years inventing learning and change enablement strategies and programs for Fortune 100 and 500 enterprises that have delivered great business benefits, and leading teams to develop and deliver them.  I recently introduced social learning to British Telecom and helped create Dare2Share, an award winning and very successful platform for social learning, knowledge management and collaboration.  My most recent article for the CLO magazine (March 2010 issue) is about measuring the value of networked learning.  I am dedicated to helping companies and institutions to create efficient and effective learning programs, extract value from social media, and leverage web-based delivery technologies
I have worked across many industries and geographies, with diverse teams, with proven results.  Please look at my blog : Daretoshare .

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