Let’s start with our first definition of Informal Learning – well to summarise formal and informal learning – Jay would probably say that formal learning is “courses, classes and workshops” and informal learning is “everything else”.   But let’s take a closer look. 

I think most people are clear what is meant by formal learning -  for me it is “a self-contained body of event of instruction providing a comprehensive, logical approach to a topic for practise and testing” but with informal learning we are talking about informational content – things like conferences, books, websites etc or informal interactions with people – conversations, discussions, meetings, etc  - and I would also add that these (rather than being one-off events) are ad hoc, on demand or ongoing.

We also know too the  research has shown us that most of all learning in organisation is informal (in fact about 75-80%) – but we also known that it’s the 20% (the formal part) where most training departments concentrate their efforts.

I'll now take a closer look at formal learning in order to make a comparison with informal learning.

Within an organisational context, we see formal learning being provided both by external providers (e.g. colleges, universities and private training providers) who offer generic education and training, whereas internal formal learning is based around company-specific training programmes.  In both cases, the content is written by experts – either in learning design, training  or in the subject matter – or both, and delivered in the form of f2f classes or workshops or online.

However, we are now seeing drawbacks with this approach to learning  – not only does it take time, money and skill to develop courses (albeit there are now RCD tools to help out) , but it takes learners time to work through them and we are also told that the half life of a piece of learning content is about 3 days – in other words if you don’t apply it immediately – you forget it.

So let’s now take a look a look at informal learning – again we see that within a business context our informal learning comes from both internal and external sources  But an interesting difference from the sources of informal learning is that this may come not just from experts but also from other individuals – or users – which is known as user-generated.  Those sources will be both content-based and interactions with people

Taking a closer look at internal content, I can actually see two types of content – informational content  and, what I call, semi-formal content that kind of falls between the two. (I think there is a spectrum of formality - ranging from the very formal to the very informal).  The type of content I am talking about here would probably be in the form of small pieces of semi-instructional content, so it differs from formal learning in that it might only have 1-2 learning objectives.  An example might be a screencast that demonstrates how to achieve a particular tsk with a piece of software AND content one that it is job-embedded – ie it is available to be accessed when/as you need – that is you view the content and then you immediately apply it.

Informational content, on the other hand, could be any materials, briefings, job aid or information in various formats, blogs, podcasts, web pages, documents and so on.

Examples of internal informal people interactions might be -  asking your colleague for some information, holding a meeting or even asking the help desk for some help on a task – using a variety of communication tools

External informal content solutions might be attending professional conferences, reading books or journals, and visiting websites (e.g. of competitors, products, reference news sites) and reading personal and professional blogs. Whereas informal external people interactions might involve interacting with the other members your personal and professional networks (like today) or even using online social networks.

Now think about where most of your learning takes place.  For me it definitely comes from informal external content and people interactions.  For employees within an organisation, it will depend a lot on their role in the organisation, their learning preferences,  the types and sources of their learning, etc..

This leads me on to my 2nd definition of informal learning.  Here formal learning is described as “managed learning” whereas informal learning is described as “self-managed learning”.

"Managed learning" means that our learning needs are managed from the top – i.e we are told what to learn, when to learn and how to learn it , and it is usually controlled by a Learning Management System – that tracks our every view of content, our tests and so forth.  The success of learning is generally measured in terms of the number of courses completed or tests passed.

Whereas self-managed learning, on the other hand, is bottom–up.  We control and manage our own needs – in terms of what we “learn”, when we learn and how we learn it – by “aggregating access to and managing our own use of different formal and informal learning episodes” as we need them – from work, home – whether it be driven by need to solve a job problem or motivated by personal interest.  Learning will take place in different context and situations – and will not be provided by a single learning provide.

So how do we manage our own learning? Well we are now seeing the concept of Personal Learning Environments.  Let’s be clear these are not software applications – but rather a set of tools that we use to access and aggregate these learning episodes and share them with others as we desire.  A PLE might involve using

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Each person’s PLE will be different – it will meet their own job and personal needs.  But the important thing to realise is that this is nothing new - this is already happening – people are using blogs, podcasts, bookmarking, social networking – they just don’t think it’s learning – and that’s the beauty of it.

So if the Training Department continues to concentrates on the left hand side, they will miss out – so how can they make sure that they get involved on the right hand side?

Slide 6

1. They need to advise on the best approach to solving a business or learning problem.  Bearing in mind that 20% of our learning is informal, this would suggest that only 2 out of 10 projects should be in the form of formal courses.

2. Where a formal or semi-formal  learning solution is considered the most appropriate, then the L&D will need to support its design and development

3. However, they need to be able to advise and support the development of informal content as well as interactions between individuals to address problems

4. Finally, they will need to help individuals with a self-managed approach to learning, by identifying valid and reliable sources of learning and appropriate tools.