social and micro
The new normal L
et’s start by defining ‘social learning’. It’s a term that’s bandied around the learning tech industry and if you paid a visit to the Learning Technologies show earlier this year, you will have seen it pasted on the stands of most of the learning technology companies
that were exhibiting. But what does it actually mean? Social learning is not learning through social media, rather its meaning comes from the essence of the word ‘social’. We have a deep-seated need to connect with each other as human beings. We are ‘social creatures” and throughout history we have learnt from each other, whether that was through stories told around the campfire or the all too familiar and sometimes embarrassing parental birds ‘n’ bees chat. Social learning is learning through each other, learning from each other and learning with each other.
Why are we hearing about it so much today? Developments in technology have really just enabled the knowledge that we used
Could social learning and micro learning become the new learning normal? Yvonne Biggins from Fuse Universal believes they will
to share face-to-face to be amplified and shared across more people, more quickly. Communities that used to gather face to face over a longer period of time can now gather online, across geographies, instantly. This is having a massive impact on learning and the way that we learn. We’re used to learning from each other, rather than being spoon-fed knowledge. We’re crowd sourcing knowledge and it’s the crowd that puts the ‘social’ into social learning.
There are numerous benefits of social learning but we’ve picked out our top
three: n Asynchronous Conversation New technologies allow the course of learning to expand in many ways. The process of acquiring knowledge and skills no longer needs to take place during the work hours and with the learner sitting in a classroom. Platforms like Fuse free the learner from the limits of time and place. Mobile devices are becoming the main device for many workers. Apart from playing games, downloading apps and searching for content these devices are being used more and more by learners spending their time asking others for
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e.learning age september 2015
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