The state of social learning

The emergence of social media tools in the 2000s has changed the face of the Web; allowing individuals to create content in a variety of formats, make connections with people, share information and experiences and/or collaborate on different activities. It is now clear from the statistics, presented in Erik Qualman's video, Social Media Revolution in August 2009, that a huge number of people are using these tools in their daily lives, e.g.

If Facebook were a country it would be the world�s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia

The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube

Wikipedia has over 13 million articles�some studies show it�s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica

There are over 200,000,000 Blogs

54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily

This year's Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 was also dominated by social media tools; the Top 10 including Slideshare, Wordpress, Google Docs, YouTube, Google Reader and Delicious, with Twitter ranking No 1 on the list. Often those looking at the list remark that "these aren't learning tools - just everyday tools" whilst others ask "how can Twitter (or any social media tool in fact) be used for learning?". As the use of social media for learning - aka "social learning" - becomes a hot topic, is it, as Maish Nichani succinctly put it on his blog posting from the DevLearn conference in the US in November 2009, a matter of just �get social and you�ll learn�?

To answer these questions, I spent some time analysing the Top 10 Tools lists of learning professionals, and identified over 100 examples of the use of different social media tools for learning. I also began to collate documented examples of the use of different social media for workplace learning.

From these two lists it became clear that social media was being used for many different types of learning. Whereas it has recently become fashionable to differentiate learning as either "formal" or "informal", I identified 5 different categories of social learning.

Formal Structured Learning

Personal Directed Learning

Group Directed Learning

Intra-Organisational Learning

Accidental & Serendipitous Learning

Here below is an analysis of these 5 categories of learning, with examples of how social media is being used.

Formal Structured Learning (FSL)
Learning = being taught or trained

For many people, this is how they define "learning". This is formal education and training; classes, workshops, etc - either face-to-face or online which are "pushed" to the learner.   Examples of the use of social media for formal structured learning include:

Building a collaborative library of course links in a social bookmarking tool (like Delicious)

Educators creating course/class blogs and learners writing learning (b)logs (using e.g. Wordpress or Blogger)

Sharing of educator and learner presentations, videos etc on file sharing sites (like YouTube or Slideshare), as well as the dissemination of quick pieces of instruction (often embedded in blog or web pages)

Using micro-blogging services (like Twitter or Edmodo) for disseminating course news

Using wikis (like Wikispaces or Wetpaint) to create collaborative course learning spaces where all learners can participate.

Using social networks (like Facebook and Ning) to create learning communities and enable easy communication and enriched learning experiences.

It is clear that workplace training is still very much focused on the creation and delivery of expert-generated content (albeit more rapidly than before), and any social functionality that exists, is often just "added-on" to an online course. Whereas in education (schools, colleges, universities etc), the social aspect is much more integrated into the course and classroom, and in some cases a fully collaborative approach to learning is employed so that the learner is a full and active participant in the learning.

Learning management systems (LMS) are pretty commonplace in most corporates, however most have little or no social functionality so that this is often provided by externally hosted social media tools. Educational course management systems (CMS) and virtual learning environments (VLE) on the other hand, have more social functionality within them (e.g. Moodle). But, there is also a growing educational trend to move away from systems that manage and control the formal learning process in such formal (see the recent ALT-C debate The VLE is dead), and many educators are therefore heavy users of public social media tools in their teaching and learning.

Nevetheless, social Learning in this context is defined as using social media for formal education and training.

However, in the workplace employees "learn" - that is find out, hear about or discover things in many other ways which have nothing to do with being trained or taught by anyone as part of their daily working lives - in much more informal ways, as described below.

Personal Directed Learning (PDL)
Learning = finding things out for or by yourself

This is where individuals organise and manage their own personal or professional learning, that is they find and make use of both informational and instructional content as well as connect with people to address their own learning and performance problems.

It is becoming clear that many people are making substantial use of social media tools in this respect, for instance:

By joining social networks (e.g. Facebook or LinkedIn) to interact with others, ask and answer questions, start discussions and build a personal or professional network

By using a micro-blogging service (like Twitter), in the same way, to share their own daily information, as well as follow people that share tips, guidelines and tools

By using a social bookmarking tool (like Delicious) to find the best sources of information about a subject ("crowd-sourced learning")

By using an RSS reader to subscribe to blog and web feeds to keep up date with what is happening in their field of interest

Whereas education has for some time now recognised the importance of personal learning, the concept 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 (although they may not refer to this as "personal learning"), 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.

Group Directed Learning (GDL)
Learning = working with a team or other group of people to solve your problems

This is where groups of individuals learn and work together, e.g. in work teams, on projects, in study groups, or a coaching/mentoring activity. GDL is an extension of PDL, where groups use social media tools to build their own Shared Learning Environments to share information, resources and experiences with one another, for example:

The use of group spaces (like Google Groups) or social network tools (like Facebook, LinkedIn or Ning) to store and share ideas, experiences, resources and contacts

The use of collaborative tools to work together on common documents, (e.g. Google Docs or wikis like Wetpaint or Wikispaces) or to brainstorm together (using mindmapping tools like bubbl.us and Mindmeister)

The use of social bookmarking tools (like Diigo) to create group bookmarks.

The use of private micro-blogging tools (like Yammer) to talk (in real-time) about work issues, ask questions of colleagues and join work groups.

Whereas group work is a common educational activity, CMS/VLE generally don't support the creation of group spaces by students themselves, so self-organising groups of students use a variety of public tools to provide the functionality they need to work and learn together. Within an organisational context, those working in teams and on projects also have resorted to the use of hosted group space tools, as once again there are often no enterprise tools to support this type of activity.

Intra-Organisational Learning (IOL)
Learning = learning from everyone in the organisation

For organisations, there is the bigger "organisational learning" picture. This is where employees share information and resources with others throughout the organisation, and generally keep each other up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives and activities. Examples of the use of social media for intra-organisational learning include:

The use of blogging by senior managers and project leaders to provide a perspective on organisational policies or to disseminate information about current initiatives around the organisation, which others can comment and feedback on

The use of a private micro-blogging service where colleagues can keep each other updated in real-time with their news and activities

The use of collaboration tools for all the employees to contribute to, e.g. using self-hosted wiki tools

File sharing across the organisations where employees create, find and view podcasts, documents, etc and discuss, rate and debate the content (using enterprise social intranet)

The creation of an organisational community or network where employees can establish contact with colleagues (who may be remotely located) as well as enable easy communication and collaboration between them.

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.

Accidental & Serendipitous Learning (ASL)
Learning = acquiring knowledge without realising it

This is where individuals learn without consciously realising it, and is also known as incidental or random learning, or even "learning at the water cooler". Although accidental learning can take place in any of the above scenarios as well as in other personal or professional settings, some individuals like to take advantage of possible serendipitous learning that might occur using social media, e.g.

Finding out about new things using:

a micro-blogging service (like Twitter)

a social networking site (like Facebook or LinedIn)

a photo-sharing service (like Flickr), video-sharing site (like YouTube) or presentation-sharing site (like Slideshare)

Finding links to resources in a social bookmarking site (like Delicious) that can help prompt ideas and creativity, using

Organisations don't normally concern themselves with this type of learning as they simply can't measure it.   But it is important to understand that it happens.

Part 2: Some Thoughts for the future for L&D in 2010

Here now are some thoughts for Learning & Development departments and professionals, active in workplace learning, arising from the points made in Part 1.
Where does the L&D Department want to focus its attention
Organisational L&D departments, in the main, focus on TRAINING i.e. creating, delivering and managing formal structured learning (FSL) and it is true there will always be a need for formal learning, e.g. bringing new people up to speed on a body of knowledge.
It has been shown that formal structured learning (FSL) accounts for only a tiny percentage of an individual�s learning within an organisation (estimated around 20%). The fact that social technologies allow self-organising individuals and groups to address their own learning, performance and business problems in their own ways - much more speedily than L&D can normally solve a problem (by designing, delivering and managing a formal course or workshop).
L&D therefore needs to decide whether they want to remained focused on training or play a part in the wider arena of organisational "learning", and be prepared to support all its forms rather than manage solely formal learning.
Note, this does not mean building lots more learning content nor implementing a traditional "command and control" (social) learning (management) system where everyone's learning is tracked, monitored and managed, but rather providing an open, and enabling environment for individuals and groups to support their own learning and performance needs.
New platforms for social learning

(Social) learning activity take many forms within an organisation, as described above, and as the following diagram shows.

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 social learning are largely hosted outside the organisation. This diagram clearly demonstrates that there is, in most cases, 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 AND working within an organisation. A private and secure environment like this ensures that employees are less distracted by the perceived trivial content of public social networks, and addresses many of the concerns organisations have with the use of public social media tools, e.g. the potential risk of embarrassment for both employees and businesses. However some individuals may still want/need to make use of external social media tools to connect with professional colleagues outside the organisation, and of course for their own personal purposes. A diagrammatic view of enterprise learning systems might look like this:

Note this type of environment does NOT track, manage or monitor working or learning, but simply provides an open infrastructure that enables communication, collaboration and information sharing - and hence supports all the 5 types of organisational learning.
Any system that claims to "manage informal learning" is a learning management system, since once you start to "manage informal learning" it becomes "formal learning" as in a LMS the learning of the learners is under the control of the organisation.
Informal learning, is by its very nature under the control of the individuals concerned. So, all you can do is to encourage, support and enable informal learning, and to do that requires providing an open infrastructure that allows individuals and groups to have control of their own learning/working and set up own personal and/or group spaces and use the social tools within that environment as best suits their own needs.
A number of L&D departments recognise the importance of such an open social collaboration platform and where they are driving the implementation within an organisation, it is often referred to as a social learning environment. However, were it is Bus Ops or IT that drive the implementation of an enterprise collaboration platform ,it is generally referred to as Enterprise 2.0 software. But inn essence these platforms are one and the same thing.
New mindset for L&D
Adopting an integrated enterprise-wide approach to organisational learning such as this is not just about the technology, but will require a new mindset for L&D. In particular, it means recognising that self-directed learning is nowadays just as an important part of learning within an organisation as formal learning.
When Harold Jarche, my colleague in the Internet Time Alliance, took my 5 categories of learning (described in Part 1) 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"

When we presented this diagram at a conference event recently, at least one L&D manager's response 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 from Part 1 above, individuals are already organising their own and their groups' learning and this will continue to happen, so L&D needs to take account of this, rather than dismiss it. In fact, a recent article, Agile Learning, Thriving in the New Economy, in CLO Managzine, explains why it should be actively encouraged:

"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."

The authors of the article, Timothy R Clark and Conrad A Gottfredson, go 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.

Harold Jarche recently proposed a new classification system for learning/learners: Dependent, Independent and Interdependent.   So how do all these terms fit together. Here's my mapping:

The consequence of this for L&D is that they now need to concern themselves more with helping employees become dynamic, agile, self-directed, independent and interdependent - what we might also term "smart" - learners and less with creating and managing learning solutions for dependent learners. Helping employees become smart learners includes supporting them acquire a set of trusted resources and networks, using the most appropriate tools; and having the right mix of skills to make effective use of the tools and (re)sources. (See The Smart Learner)

Most L&D departments are also concerned about measuring the success of their work. Clearly success metrics like "course completions" and "test scores" will no longer be appropriate. Although an LMS make it easy to do this by providing such statistics, these tell nothing about whether learners have applied their learning effectively and made a difference to their own, team or business performance or productivity. Organisational learning always has been "a means to an end", so it is now time measure "what really matters". Success measures should therefore be set in terms of team or business performance goals, and it is these things that should then be tracked.

New skills for L&D

These new approaches to learning will also requires a new set of skills for the L&D professional.   A recent press release from LINE following a European corporate forum stated:

"Skills issues among those delivering learning and development within organisations are a bigger block to adoption of new learning technologies than either board-level management or learner acceptance."

The press release went on to say ..

"The delegates reported that learners are generally open to new technology-enabled learning approaches, and top team executives now appreciate and understand the advantages they offer. However, traditional learning and development teams, particularly those focused on face-to-face training, are more resistant and training and change management are required in these areas. The change is a big one for learning professionals, who face a complete upheaval in the way they do their jobs."

Although the skills issue cited in this press release was the use of virtual classrooms and webinar events for formal learning events, the statements above are no less true for the new mindset and skills required towards adopting a new approach to organisational learning advocated here.

The risk of avoiding the issues

If it seems too complex for L&D to take on the "responsibility" for enabling learning across the organisation, then bear in mind that this role will the probably be assumed by others, e.g. Bus Ops, IT or Internal Communications departments as their own interests widen. If this takes place, what is likely to happen to the L&D function?

As the desire and need for formal training diminishes, L&D will probably become more and more marginalized. Or as Karl Kapp and Tony Driscoll put it in their recent book, Learning in 3D:

"The biggest loss in opportunity for the learning function lies in the fact that it has rejected informal learning.

2010 is therefore the year for L&D to change that and take action!

Part 3: How to acquire the new mindset, platforms and skills

Here are some ways we can help you find out more and start to make changes.:

Read more about the fundamental changes needed for L&D

The Internet Alliance comprises 6 eclectic and practical visionaries from around the world - simply mouse over the image below to find out who we are and where we are based. We bring our respective professional lifetimes� experience to bear on bringing structure and focus to the whys, whats, and hows of developing learning strategies that will clearly grow individual and organizational performance.

Throughout 2009, my colleagues have all been writing about the need for fundamental change in the way that L&D needs to operate, e.g.

Jay Cross and Harold Jarche in a February blog posting, The training department of the future,

Jay Cross in his June article in CLO Magazine, More human than human

Charles Jennings is his June blog posting, Making your L&D meaningful and relevant

The Internet Time Alliance is also making available a free whitepaper: A Framework for Social Learning in the Enterprise

Get some bespoke advice on how to do this in your own organisation

The Internet Time Alliance is also available to help with specific requests from organisations for help. Feel free to contact us to discuss your requirements.

Of course, we each have our individual specialisms, which we offer independently. I focus on helping organisations implement social learning approaches and enterprise-wide social learning environment.

Hold a workshop in your organisation to discuss new approaches to learning

I run a couple of standard organisational workshops Using social media for learning and Renovating the L&D department but can run bespoke workshops (online/offsite) as required.

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