In
this series of 3 articles I am looking at different ways of build a
social learning environment within an organisation - for free or at low
cost.
Social Learning can be defined as a collaborative approach to learning
where individuals co-create content in a variety of formats, share
information and learn from one another.
Although it has now become common practice to differentiate learning as
either “formal” or “informal” learning, when analysing examples of
social learning in practice I identified 5 categories of learning that
takes place in an organisation.
-
Formal Structured Learning (FSL)
– within formal training like classes, courses and workshops
-
Intra-Organisational Learning (IOL)
– where employees keep the whole
organisation up to date and up to speed on strategic and other
internal initiatives and activities
-
Group Directed Learning (GDL)
- where groups of individuals working together in teams, on
projects support a group approach to learning
-
Personal Directed Learning (PDL)
– where individuals organise and
manage their own personal or professional learning
-
Accidental & Serendipitous Learning (ASL)
- when individuals learn without consciously realising it (aka
incidental or random learning)
A Social Learning Environment (SLE)
therefore needs to provide an infrastructure that supports all these
different kinds of social and collaborative learning; that is it
needs to offer a secure personal working/learning space for individuals as
well as group spaces for project and formal learning groups, and
a community space for the whole organisation. A SLE will also
integrate key social media technologies to provide the necessary
social tools for collaboration and information sharing across then
enterprise, e.g. social
networking, social bookmarking, file sharing, blogging and
micro-blogging. But more importantly it should provide an open,
collaborative environment where individuals are not “managed” or
“controlled” but rather “supported” in their working and learning.
In the previous articles in this
series, I identified two ways of building such an environment –
the
first by using a variety of public social media tools, and
the
second by using a range of Google apps. However, organisations often
have concerns about using these types of tools, for instance
-
they often feel
they are not secure enough, and worry about the privacy and
security of personal and organisational data which is scattered
over the Internet in multiple sites. They may also be concerned
about how individuals make use of these tools, since their
personal, professional and organisational personae on the tools
might well overlap, which could result in what the organisation
might consider “inappropriate” behaviour.
-
they may feel the
tools are not well integrated, requiring different logins and
interfaces and so causing confusion for users – together with
the inability to share content between the tools.
So in this article I want to look at
the options for creating a secure, integrated social learning
platform.
In fact in the last year or so we
have seen the rise of a number of integrated social platforms in the
marketplace. Many of these platforms are commercial: some are
referred to as Enterprise 2.0 systems as they are often used as
corporate intranets for collaborative working; others are focused
more on providing social environments for formal structured learning
in an organisation. But, there are also a few open source tools that
can be used to build a variety of different types of social
environments (i.e. social networks, social learning environments and
social intranets), and one of these is Elgg –
www.elgg.org
Elgg has been around since 2004 and
is currently in version 1.6. Elgg is a fully customisable,
configurable and extensible platform both in terms of functionality
and look and feel – by making use of core and 3rd party plugins. So
with Elgg, you don't have to rely on cobbling together a mish-mash
of stand-alone social media tools but can provide a seamless
environment where members can access a range of social media
functionality.
At the Centre for Learning &
Performance Technologies we have used Elgg to power our own social
learning environment, called SoLearn. This is a Social Learning
Space for learning professionals to come together and share
resources, ideas and experiences – in both formal social courses as
well as for informal group projects.
Our customised installation of Elgg
at SoLearn provides a number of social media tools that we believe
are key for personal and group learning, so includes the following
functionality
-
Social networking
- to establish and build online relationships with other
learning professionals. Users can create profile pages with
information about themselves, and members can establish
connections
with one another.
-
Social bookmarking
– to store and share links to web resources
-
File-sharing - to
create, store and/or share files in all formats: pictures,
videos, presentations, documents, etc
-
Communication - to
connect with others both in real time and asynchronously – via
email, chat and internal messaging.
-
Collaboration - to
collaborate synchronously or asynchronously with others to work
together and co-create documents,
-
Blogging - to
read, comment on and write blog posts from other group or site
members
-
Podcasting - to
share and listen to audio (MP3) files
-
RSS feeds - to
subscribe to and read blog and web news feeds
-
Micro-blogging -
to send, receive and reply to short messages with others on the
site
-
Tagging content -
to bind related content together from across the site
Members of SoLearn can therefore
create, organise and manage their own personal resources and
contacts as well as work and learn together with others in groups -
co-creating and sharing content and resources – all within a secure,
walled garden.
SoLearn is available at
www.C4LPT.net
During 2009 we have helped a number
of organisations - including universities, training companies,
non-profit making organisations, corporate and public sector
organisations - implement and customise Elgg to provide an
integrated social learning environment for their own specific
requirements. Here are some of the lessons learned from implementing
social learning environments in a number of different contexts.
-
Platform choice – choosing the
most appropriate platform is very important for your SLE. Each has their pros and cons,
so consider these
carefully. See my
Comparison of Ning, Facebook and Elgg.
-
Terminology – the name of the
site and its description is important. Do you call it a "social
network", "social environment" or "collaboration platform"
- or
even use the term "social" at all! The use of appropriate terms within the site, like
“friends” is also important; this might be alright for Facebook, but not for business.
We’ve renamed the term "Friends" to "Contacts" or "Colleagues" on many of the
sites we have worked on .
-
Piloting – if you pilot, make
sure the size is right; community projects require large
numbers; group projects can be smaller.
-
Growth - let the site grow
naturally and organically - tend it and nurture it but don’t
force it. Slow steady growth is better than fast use and then
tail-off. Evolution is better than revolution!
-
Promotion – when promoting the
site, viral marketing techniques work well – i.e. don’t force
everyone on it as a user – work with groups that are
enthusiastic– let them talk about it; sooner or later others
will want to join in,
-
Usability - bear in mind that
when people have used other social networking systems, they will
be influenced by them; users new to social media seem to adapt
faster as they have no preconceived ideas of what a platform
should look like or how it should behave.
-
Success measures - don’t worry
about stats, i.e. the number of users, number of posts, number
of discussions etc. Focus on the value that it brings to the
different groups. Get the groups themselves to say how they will
determine whether their own group space has been successful.
This will probably be in terms of “better communication”,
“easier collaboration”, “increase in productivity or
performance”, etc – rather than how many times X or Y made a
blog posting.
Finally, to summarise, the advantages
of implementing an integrated platform mean that you can:
-
put in place a secure
infrastructure that supports all types of personal, group and
organisational learning; and
-
provide an integrated suite of
social media tools – with one consistent and seamless interface
to use all the tools – and one login.
Additionally, the advantages of using
open source software, like Elgg, means that you can configure the
platform to your exact needs.
There are some disadvantages
associated with implementing integrated platforms, e.g. each of the
tools in the suite probably won't have the full extent of
functionality that sophisticated stand-alone tools have – but they
will certainly provide all the essential functionality.
There are issues with self-hosting
using open source software; it can be complex - to install,
configure and customise - without technical help - although there
are, of course, specialist consultants available to help with this –
e.g. our own
Social Learning In a Box service.
Managed hosting does get round this
problem, but is more costly.
ElggCampus –
- for instance, currently in closed beta, offers a number of pricing
plans, and commercial social platform providers do, of course, also
offer managed hosting services.
In my opinion, providing an effective social (learning) environment
within an organisation is going to become a high priority in 2010.
So for more information
about social learning and social learning
environments, see the C4LPT Guide to Social Learning. You can also contact me at
jane.hart@C4LPT.co.uk if you would like to discuss this further.
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Chart Comparison of 3 different ways
