A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO SOCIAL LEARNING
Things to consider

As described in the Introduction, social media can be used to support 5 categories of learning.

1. Formal Structured Learning
2. Personal Directed Learning
3. Group Directed Learning
4. Intra-Organisational Learning
5. Accidental & Serendipitous Learning

When considering the implementation of social learning, it will depend on your role and perspective on this subject.

• If you are a teacher, trainer or other educator you may only be interested in implementing social learning strategy in your own course or class.
• If you are a education manager (in a school, college or university) or a learning and development manager in a corporate or non-profit making organisation you will be looking to provide a strategic approach to social learning across the organisation.

From the detailed look at social media in learning within the different contexts, here are some of the factors that learning and development managers need to bear in mind:

Formal Structured Learning - Need to recognise that FSL is only a tiny part of people’s learning. Although there will always be a need for formal learning – e.g. bringing new people up to speed on a body of knowledge, it is not the only solution to a business, performance problem.  When appropriate, need to re-think approach to formal learning – not just providing instructionally-designed content but also the social aspects of community – allowing learners to discuss, collaborate and sharing. UGC content can also be as valuable as expert generate content.  Also need to consider "team learning" approaches rather than personal learning - that is training a whole team together rather than individuals and hope that collectively they will be more productive.

Intra-Organisational Learning - Although it seems obvious to state that employees need to be kept up to date with what’s happening both inside and outside the organisation, "training" is often used to patch up issues of poor communication of strategy, projects, processes etc. However, some organisations are beginning to put in place internal platforms for employees to share news, resources etc with other another, as well as improve communication between employees. These enterprise systems are generally either hosted internally or managed by providers to ensure privacy and security.

Personal & Group Directed Learning - Whereas education has for some time now recognised the importance of personal learning environments and networks, it is not generally encouraged or supported within workplace learning for a number of reasons that will be discussed later.  Nevertheless, a large number of employees are making significant use of (free) public social media tools to do just this, particularly as (a) the resources they access and the people they connect with, are often outside their own organisation and (b) because there are generally no enterprise tools to support this type of activity.

When Harold Jarche, my colleague in the Internet Time Alliance, took my 5 categories of learning and built the diagram below to make sense of them for potential clients, he noted: "What jumped out at me after the fact, and I’ve highlighted in red, is that social media for learning requires a lot of self-directed learning, either individually or as a participant in a group/organization"

One L&D manager's response to this diagram was: “We can’t let people direct their own learning.  How do we know they are learning the right things?”  However, as as can be seen in Part 1 above, individuals are already organising their own and their groups' learning and this will continue to happen so that L&D needs to take account of this and support it.  In fact, a recent article, Agile Learning, Thriving in the New Economy<in CLO Managzine, explains

"As competitive environments increase in speed, complexity and volatility, organizations and individuals are compelled toward a dynamic learning mindset. Dynamic learning is defined as rapid, adaptive, collaborative and self-directed learning at the moment of need."

and goes on to say

"It may be time for learning organizations to take a step back and offer new “learn how to learn” solutions. Even millennials, who are natural swimmers in social networking and digital media, don’t necessarily know how to learn in the digital domain.

L&D therefore need to concern themselves nowadays as much with helping employees become dynamic, agile, smart learners to direct their own learning. 

Platform choice

In terms of the systems in use within an organisation, the picture often looks like the one below, where the tools and systems that support learning are largely hosted outside the organisation and demonstrates that there is no cohesive approach to tying the different types of learning together.

However, some organisations are adopting an enterprise-wide integrated, social, collaboration platform or environment, which supports the different types of learning within an organisation in a private and secure way, and one that ensures that employees are less distracted by public social media and networks, and avoids the risks of embarrassment for employees and businesses.

Choosing the most appropriate platform is very important for your SLE. Each has their pros and cons, so consider these carefully. See Technology options

Piloting

If you pilot, make sure the size is right; community projects require large numbers; group projects can be smaller. There is even the question of whether you should pilot social learning.

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,

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. See measuring success of social learning