social and micro
resources, help with their problems, or solving difficult tasks. If something is unclear they engage in discussions with the ones who help in order to get the explanation, even if that conversation is asynchronous.
n Confidence Through Collaboration Many learners simply enjoy helping their peers with their problems. Some of them spend their free time explaining difficult subjects to others and so it makes the process of learning quite fun. By helping others, users can acquire valuable skills and improve their self-esteem and knowledge. Learners are more likely to enjoy being taught by someone who is equal and does not look down on them or force them to learn. When several learners collaborate on a problem, interesting things can happen. Thanks to the community related functionalities available in many platforms, like Fuse, comments can be exchanged freely and knowledge can be gained from the most unlikely of sources. n Crowdsourcing Content Another aspect of digital learning is the ability to browse through a list of questions filtered by subjects, source, or platform or by topics, tone, community or creator. Tagging and filtering can make the best content visible and immediately accessible for the learner, especially learners who may lack the research expertise, patience, or bandwidth to search for hours. Platforms also enable content to be created quickly and effortlessly, so that
that gem of knowledge gained on the shop floor in London can be shared with other stores across the country or fed back to head office to help with marketing propositions.
Social Learning Is Here To Stay As more Generation Y workers enter the workplace, the need and demand for a more social learning experience will increase exponentially. Workplace learning has to adapt to this mobile generation, who are used to finding and sharing information and knowledge via online social networks, mobile messaging and other technological innovations. The companies who embrace the ‘new learning normal’ will be the companies that succeed. Rhys Giles, learning technologies manager, explains how Dixons Carphone have
created a social and micro learning culture We recently introduced the Fuse social learning platform in our Dixons Carphone business. We chose it because social is integral to the experience, it is built in at the heart of every feature and not a “bolted-on” afterthought. We have moved from the more traditional platform and content models to a micro learning approach wrapped in social learning. We’ve now been live for three months on the new system so here are some observations on what we’ve experienced so far. The main one being: n Social learning is not social media. This is true but one thing that I’ve learnt is that to stimulate conversation and to drive users to content at the right time, you have to think like a social media marketer. Grabbing attention and pointing people to the right parts of the site is absolutely vital. Other observations:
n Answer then ask. Always answer people’s comments, and then ask more questions to keep the conversation flowing.
n Understand your audience. What makes them stick? Why are they on your site in the first place? Make sure you know this and it will make decisions a lot easier.
n Share key content at peak traffic times. Learn about how to share content at the right time.
n Pay attention to analytics. This will show you when engagement spikes and you can see whether you are indeed doing the right things at the right times.
n Identify your experts. If you can identify who is contributing to a high standard, make sure you are in touch with them. YouTube are relentless at supporting their key loggers, you should be the same. Find them, help them, watch it grow.
e.learning age september 2015
It’s already happening, with or without you! If you think social learning is just a trend then I’ve got news for you! It is happening in your business. All around you. Right now. The rise of social media has made it easy for colleagues to connect with each other, form groups, share ideas and answer questions. We know that employees are using social networks to help communicate and share over large distances. Specifically, Whatsapp came out as the number 1 tool. Why? Because it was mobile, and the app’s ability to allow you to quickly create groups and share videos and pictures, then talk about them within that group. We realised that knowledge is already being shared using social networks within our business, but we weren’t able to help. We couldn’t provide the right information, we couldn’t make it searchable for others at a later date and we couldn’t identify who the key contributors were.
You are not in control. This was the biggest shock for me. It wasn’t the realisation that I’m not truly in control anymore, more the realisation that I never really was in the first place! I’ve learnt to really embrace this because what I’m seeing as a result are some great conversations taking place online and lots of informal learning happening every day. For the Carphone Warehouse business, we believe that we will best support our
colleagues in Retail by adopting a learning technologies strategy that focuses on learning at the point of need. To do this, we needed to rethink our approach to both content and how users can access this content.
Micro learning Micro learning is a great way of quickly closing small skills and knowledge gaps. There is always something new to learn in our business, and it’s impossible for L&D to keep up, creating new e-learning modules. Microlearning is creating and/or curating small bite-size pieces of content that can be viewed independently or as part of a larger playlist.
There are a lot of product training materials already freely available on the
internet. We’ve curated the best materials (videos, PDFs, articles, website links, e-learning etc.) from sites like YouTube and GSMA (Groupe Speciale Mobile Associatio, an international organisation for mobile operators) and created playlists of content. Curation allows us to dramatically cut content production times. For example, last year we created e-learning content for the Samsung Galaxy S5 launch. It took us two weeks to create these modules. In April/May, we launched the Galaxy S6 playlist, and we were able to curate content from our marketing teams, YouTube and popular opinion sites. It took us half a day to do so. This has allowed us to support product launches in a way we just haven’t been able to in the past.
User-generated micro learning
Micro learning from external sources and our team provides an excellent range of official content but we have around 6,500 colleagues in Carphone Warehouse Retail who are the experts. We realised we needed to empower them to share their invaluable knowledge, and do so in such a way that we could capture it, index it and make it easily searchable, alongside our content. Search is now the most popular mechanism for younger generations to close those small knowledge/skills gaps and we will take full advantage of that. This is where we’ve come up with the concept of the Learning Google. It’s simply our way of quickly explaining how our colleagues will access need-to-know content through search. Powered by Fuse, the mobile app allows us to give our colleagues a quick and easy solution in the palm of their hands.
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