organisational blend


Social support F


Lars Hyland explains how to add social learning to your blend


inding effective ways to support social learning is now a critical component of any effective learning strategy. With 76% of top learning organisations saying they currently use learning communities, (Towards Maturity, 2015) it is more important than


ever to incorporate informal learning into your blended design methodologies. This ensures you have the right tools, skills and culture in place to deliver the significant improvements in performance and productivity that are on offer. But social learning often gets a negative reputation it doesn’t deserve. Some L&D professionals see it as an excuse for spending all day in a chatroom or on a forum and not doing any ‘real work’. However, this is misguided. When it’s done right, social learning can support and enhance a blend, helping establish learning as part of employees’ day-to-day routines and workflow without ever having to think about it.


It’s already part of the blend… This might be surprising, but social learning will already be part of your blend, whether you recognise it or not. Often, learners will turn to their peers for information when they don’t have easy access to formal channels or need specialist information, whether this is stopping by a colleague’s desk, chatting around the watercooler, or sending an email or instant message. So if your employees are already learning socially, what can be done to facilitate this and ensure everyone gets the maximum value from these informal learning opportunities?


… now take control Learning professionals realise that the majority of the training budget is spent on formal learning, whether that’s formal e-learning, face-to-face seminars or structured programmes of learning. The popular 70:20:10 framework suggests that this represents only 10% of where actual learning takes place. So how can learning professionals make better use of the technologies they use for formal learning to support the 70% on-the-job/workflow-based learning and 20% informal learning that takes place in their organisations? The first thing to do is to look at how your people are already communicating with their colleagues. Are they using instant forms of communication, such as chatrooms, instant messaging or phone calls, or are they happy to access collaborative resources online? Are they using company-issued software or tools like Skype or Google Hangouts? Understanding how your people are gathering information from each other now can help you put the right tools in place to bring social learning into your organisation’s blend.


Supporting collaboration and co-creation


There are seven key traits of co-creation, which should be factored into devising any social learning strategy:


1) People offer challenges to others, providing feedback on what they feel and why they feel it


2) The community provides tempo, maintaining momentum in conversations and learning


3) Building a shared vision of the subject, constructed through conversations and reinforcement


4) Communities can provide space for reflection, both internally and communally


5) Building shared values, particularly around subjects like management, leadership and responsibility


6) Refining our understanding of a topic iteratively 7) Editing language as understanding is rehearsed and refined.


It is also worth remembering that this isn’t about policing conversations or taking charge. Learners will always find ways to talk about what they want to talk about, so our role is to provide a place for them to do this efficiently. Many organisations have multiple potential channels for conversation, so consolidating them all into one platform ensures everyone gets the maximum benefit from the discussions taking place.


Mainstream or specialist corporate platform? One of the key concerns learners have about social learning is that the lines between their personal and professional channels will become blurred. You may try to set up a company Twitter hashtag for collaborating on ideas, but will everyone be happy to use their own Twitter accounts for this purpose? Does everyone even have Twitter? If you set up a Facebook or Google Plus group in which employees can ask questions and discuss ideas, will there be concerns about privacy if some people use their personal accounts? This approach can exclude swathes of your employees, defeating the purpose of the social learning in the first place. As well as this, mainstream social media is not really designed for business use, so it is unlikely to have all the features and functionality your learners will need to learn together. It also exposes your organisation to data security and reputational risks. Instead, a specialist enterprise social learning platform, like the one run by my


Understanding how your people are gathering information from each other now can help you put the right tools in place to bring social learning into your organisation’s blend.


18


company, Totara Social, can be a better option. Platforms like these are developed specifically for businesses, and are designed with corporate social learning in mind. This allows employees to keep their work and personal accounts separate, and contains all the features everyone needs to communicate and collaborate efficiently.


Enterprise platforms also enable administrators and community managers


to have more control over the content. This is valuable when it comes to content curation and community moderation, as well as maintaining a consistent look and feel and learning experience across all your learning content.


e.learning age april 2016


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38