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learning 2.0
the Best of social & informal learning
2007-2009
Editors Note
Social Reality
At some point, amidst the fading gray noise of the dial-up modem, the future came crashing down on desktops around the world with a booming, decisive *tweet*.
Granted, for some, Web 2.0 and social medias status as the next-big-thing may have passed its expiration date. For some time now, the advertising and marketing potential of sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and most recently, Twitter, has been explored to great effect across an array of industries. But in the last few years, learning professionals have begun to examine how social media can benefit development and training and how it can add value to a range of organizational initiatives. In addition, professionals are faced with figuring out how the technology can be molded to deliver learning on the go, on the fly, and on the learners own time. These are questions that organizations have begun to answer in innovative ways. In part one of this installment of The Best of T+D, you will read about companies who successfully implemented Open Source wiki technology (The World According to Wiki) and harnessed the power of blogs (Skills 2.0) to keep employees conversing and sharing both inside and outside the company firewall. You will also read about one firms strategy for building a customized, social mediadriven network of employee experts (Letting Go). In part two, you will get a glimpse into that sometimes shadowy world of informal learning. In large part powered by Web 2.0 and social networking tools, the informal side of learning is still a subject for debate and ongoing investigation. What we do know, however, is that it is possible, and desirable, to harness the power of informal learning to achieve results that can be measured (Contradiction or Paradox). We also know that its presence in the business world is no aberration. In Informal Learning: Overlooked or Overhyped? ASTD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) report that more than 40 percent of companies are witnessing informal learning among their employees to a high (34 percent) or very-high (7 percent) extent. So the mission for todays training and development professional is clearprepare yourself to help shape the future of workplace learning by integrating social learning technology into your businesss learning initiatives and goals. In his article Learning Gets Social, ASTD President and CEO Tony Bingham declared that a powerful forceunlike any in historyis altering the learning professions landscape. We hope that this collection of articles will motivate and inspire you to lead the charge for this force in your own organization.
6 Skills 2.0
By Harold Jarche Web 2.0 gives learning professionals tools to compete in an increasingly digital environment.
By Marjorie Derven In todays economy, organizations are searching for ways to do more with less. Combined with the rapid pace of change and complexity in organizations, there is an increased need for justin-time learning solutions that cannot wait for the discipline and rigor required by traditional instructional design.
By Marcia Conner Think Twitter is just for narcissists with too much time on their hands? Think again. Workplace learning professionals have begun to realize a learning return. If youre not part of this social networking phenomenon, you risk getting left behind.
By David Wilkins Social media and formal learning meet face to face as new learning communities take shape.
By Tony Bingham A powerful forceunlike any in historyis altering the learning professions landscape
By Pat Galagan Instant, anonymous, and addictive, social networking is catching on as a performance appraisal tool.
38 Letting Go
By Pat Galagan Some examples of social media used successfully for informal learning do not come out of learning departments.
48 Contradiction or Paradox?
By Irving H. Buchen Can training and informal learning join forces and find happiness in the classroom and beyond?
By Andrew Paradise Informal learning represents a unique and somewhat mysterious method in workplace learning and performance, and its time to address a few key questions.
By Aparna Nancherla Informal learning, with its reach into every part and aspect of the organization, is here to stay. Increasing numbers of learning professionals are taking steps to shore up support and harness the strengths of this dynamic and flexible information movement.
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as being almost unlimited. While the familiar online encyclopedia Wikipedia created awareness of the term, their wider acceptance is contingent upon organization leaders learning about them and thinking creatively about their use. Because wikis look much like a raw webpage or a simple blog, they are often easily misunderstood. The low cost is a double-edged sword as the simplicity of the wiki is dismissed in some quarters as unprofessional or inconsistent with a corporate image. Beyond the legions of directories carrying old files, the emergence of email as a primary communication tool created another trove of information that is not easily retrieved, especially when an employee leaves an organization. Cindy Rockwell, CEO of Customer Vision in Des Moines, says the corporate world is still in the early adoption stage of wikis. Before wikis became trendy, the buzzword was knowledge management, according to Rockwell. Wiki, which is Hawaiian for rapid, sounded like the name of a childrens game. For the last two years weve had to explain what it is, Rockwell says. Now organizations are exploring whether its viable for them. Wikis allow for creation of a knowledge repository that can be used for training or for response to customer queries. One of Rockwells clients is MWA Bank, which uses a wiki for customer service. Instead of the typical contact us page where people simply dump routine questions into an email for an answer sometime in the distant future, the bank uses wiki technology as a tool where users can search for the answers to common questions. The bank uses a traditional website so the wiki technology is invisible to the end user. As a result, the bank is able to reduce the number of customer service personnel who are required to respond to repeated questions. For sales-driven organizations, wikis are a boon because common questions about products or customer exchanges can be answered once but stored for future reference. Likewise, not-forprofits benefit because supervisors can preserve an answer to a common question in the wiki. Some wikis include a supervision feature so managers can keep tabs on staff members who are answering queries and those who are not. The wiki allows not-for-profits to buy back an experts time, Rockwell says. discussions might discourage open debate. So far she has noticed that discussions on the wiki are spirited but careful as users tend to police their own accuracy.
Early adopters
Not surprisingly, the smaller technologybased companies are among the earliest organizations to embrace wikis for multiple tasks. Harish Rao, CEO of EchoDitto, a Washington, D.C.-based online communications company, says his employees have been using an internal wiki for just eight months. Building momentum and use in stages, the company is entering the third phase whereby all staff members are encouraged to use and add content to the wiki regularly. For organizations considering a wiki, Rao advises they should not focus initially on its appearance. The emphasis should be placed upon building awareness throughout the office. Two staff members at EchoDitto were charged with generating interest for the wiki. They promoted its use during staff meetings. Theres no need to force a great design because it doesnt matter to initial users, Rao says. Encourage early adoption. Once you reach a critical mass then invest in the design. Turning the wiki into a universal tool requires a cultural change whereby staff members adopt a habit of entering content regularly. Any kind of shared content, such as notes from a staff meeting, should be put on the wiki, he says. If someone solves a vexing issue with a client, the solution should be entered into the wiki as well. Its not natural to write in a wiki, Rao says. You have to encourage use. Most clients he encounters have heard the term wiki, but their leaders could not describe its functions. Rao says his task is to demystify the wiki technology for potential clients. Most of the initial fears can be addressed because the wiki can incorporate some kind of password-protected access.
Intelligence gathering
Even within the contested field of intelligence, wikis are beginning to catch on. The Defense Intelligence Agency has Intellipedia, which permits users to post comments about a range of issues from language training to ongoing debates regarding intelligence gathering. The wikis and blogs are only accessible to individuals in the intelligence community who can access the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System network. Their use reflects the familiar divisions along generational lines about technology and learning styles. We have a culture that is comfortable dealing with facts, says Jenna Kuhns, the agencys branch chief for performance improvement. There is a fear among some that wikis and blogs are wrought with bias. Kuhns says many of the more devoted wiki users are under the age of 35. Senior employees tend to be skeptical about its productive value, viewing such activity as frivolous. She is attempting to reduce the anxiety some supervisory level intelligence officials have regarding their value. The entire organization will need to recognize its value. No one is ready to embrace the idea of citing any kind of comment or finding that is posted on a wiki. I dont know that anybody is sure how to present its value, she says. Agency leaders have yet to establish an official policy for using wikis and are unlikely to do so, a decision Kuhns welcomes because she believes that placing any kind of restraints on
Not too long ago, office workers looked with trepidation at rows of file cabinets full of documents. The overflowing manila file folders were too numerous to organize and too valuable to discard.
Today organizations face the same hardship when navigating the voluminous directories on their hard drives. So much information exists, but reviewing the content to determine its value is almost impossible. For many organizations, the information buried in the hard drives might as well be deleted. Whatever value those files might contain for training or reference is lost. The wiki, a website that can be edited by the end user, is emerging as the new do-it-all solution to what ails
the workplace. Beyond their service as a substitute for dreaded hard drive files, wikis are gaining momentum as training tools and as an open forum for the exchange of ideas among colleagues. The real bonus for workplace learning and performance professionals is the price some wikis are free while others only require a minimal monthly hosting fee.
Knowledge management
Wikis are not a full-fledged training tool yet, but analysts cite their potential
Photo by istockphoto.com
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Most organizations with a wiki only have a six- to 12-month head start. Rao says one consumer products company is preparing to launch its internal wiki, which utilizes flash animation. The wiki includes a typical navigation tool and a Did you know? prompt that informs users of new updates. The company has used a wiki for about a year. Another client in the household cleaning products field developed a wiki for creative management tools. Rao says the company wanted to share ideas about reducing everyday costs. He cautions that wikis are ideal for organizations that have collaborative teams who interact with clients on a regular basis. Organizations that are broken into individual units would not be well suited to the technology. Nigol is both surprised and amused by the level of fear expressed by some companies that proprietary information could somehow leak out into the public domain through a wiki. He responds to such fears by explaining that simple security features could be added to prevent the wiki from becoming publicly accessible. He consulted a number of not-for-profit organizations that have purchased expensive learning technology but failed to invest in staff or expertise to design an effective curriculum. They spend a fortune on learning technology and then theres nothing left for human capital, he says. What they end up with is a curriculum that is just a static content dump. ing an external wiki to handle customer inquiries. The company employs about 100 staff members in its main office. Its searchable, and its easy to create articles, Minkoff says. The cost is cheap, so its easy to sell to management. Instead of writing white papers, which must pass through onerous reviews, staff members can simply add content to a number of different channels such as client support. Access to some documents is controlled so some documents are read only. Mistakes can be edited by experts when necessary. The company is gradually consolidating all of its internal communication into the wiki. For Minkoff, there is no concern that it may soon become a burden or outdated to staff members. Theres so much momentum the other way, Minkoff says of accelerated use. Adoption is so fast. In the past, we had to create an incentive to write an article. Even for organizations that are far advanced in their use of a wiki, no one expressed a desire to eliminate disk drives as they can still be used for individual or functional tasks that do not require collaboration. If wikis gain wider acceptance as a collaboration tool, it will require a change in perspective from management. If an employee devotes a specified number of hours to adding content to a wiki, such tasks must be considered part of the work flow and not a freelance activity. Measuring productivity in most organizations is often based upon the volume of reports produced or units sold. The promise of the wiki is the ability to consult a single source for questions that seem to be asked repeatedly year after year. A lot of organizations struggle with getting all of the collective knowledge of a group into one place, says Bob Rice, product designer for Achieve Global in Tampa. Instead of relying on the break room, we can rely upon the wiki.
Skeptical eye
Many analysts cite resistance to the use of wiki technology because of lack of knowledge about its capability. Rick Nigol, a learning consultant with Vancouver-based eLearn Campus, believes that within just one year, wikis will be widely accepted to the point where organizations will consider them routine, forgetting altogether about their initial resistance. Adoption hasnt been great, Nigol says. There is a little bit of paranoia if the technology is not purchased software that is securely loaded. Most wikis only require an Internet connection and the ability to type. In fact, the simplicity of the wiki often works against greater adoption. As a simple page with text, it appears unsophisticated to the untrained eye. Some clients who lack understanding about the wiki dismiss it as a useful tool. When Nigol describes its capability, a common response he hears is, That doesnt sound very professional. Organizations are concerned that wiki technology, if allowed to grow, might not be consistent with the companys goals. Yet Nigol insists that the wiki can be custom designed. The barrier is no longer the technology, Nigol says. The barrier is teaching and engaging people in the new environment.
4 | T+D | may 2007
As a simple page with text, a wiki appears unsophisticated to the untrained eye.
Accidental wiki
The initial buzz of trendy outlets such as blogs and discussion boards quickly dissipates as contributors grow weary of posting regularly. It is too early to tell if wikis will follow the same trajectory. Yet in organizations where the wiki has taken off, users say they are racing to build greater capacity. Just two years after launching it for internal use, Blackboard, a Washington, D.C.-based online software course management company, is expanding its wiki to keep pace with staff use. Jason Minkoff, Blackboards manager of client support, says the company stumbled upon wiki technology by accident when technical staff purchased a licensed wiki. Initially Blackboard did not emphasize design, but in its current format, the wiki is much more sophisticated. Users of the companys wiki are aware that it is a company site because it includes logos and other corporate symbols. New employees are even trained with the wiki and are encouraged to use it regularly. The company is on the verge of launch-
From the December 2009 T+D article The Web 2.0 Police
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are like actorsonly as good as our last performance. For a fleeting time, we may be viewed as experts, but for not much longer. This erosion in perceived and conferred expertise means that professionals have to become learners themselves and follow the flow of the everexpanding bodies of knowledge related to their fields. A couple of comments from David Williamson Shaffer, author of How Computer Games Help Children Learn (a book not really about children), are pertinent to the issue of professionalism. He defines a professional as anyone who does work that cannot be standardized easily and who continuously welcomes challenges at the cutting edge of his or her expertise. Given the rapidly changing tools of Web 2.0, coupled with advances in the neurosciences, much of the work in the learning field is not easily standardized. At least the valuable stuff, which clients and employers are willing to pay for, fits that description. Shaffer also talks about creativity, a quality that is necessary in nonstandardized work, saying, Creativity is a conversationa tensionbetween individuals working on individual problems, and the professional communities they belong to. That conversation is an essential part of being a learning professional today. One person cannot know everything, but can add to, as well as benefit from, the knowledge of others by engaging in various online conversations. Web 2.0 lets anyone join in the professional conversation, and conversely, may isolate those who do not. Professionals immersed in communities of practice, or those continuously pushing their informal learning opportunities, may have a larger zone of proximal development (the gap between a learners current development level and the learners potential level of development). They are more open to learning and to expanding their knowledge. For example, I have had considerable growth in my professional network since I started blogging. These professional conversations may not be possible offline, especially if you live outside a major urban center. Today, active involvement in informal learning, particularly through web-based communities, is key to remaining professional and creative in a field. Being a learning professional in a Web 2.0 world is becoming more about your network than your current knowledge. tools to share it. In a knowledge economy, the individual is the knowledge creator, and relationships are the currency. It is getting easier to set up alternative systems if you know who to connect with to get things done. Democracy is subversive, and so is Web 2.0. In an interconnected global society, every learner brings his own network to an engagement. Learners no longer have to integrate into an educational system; if they choose to, they can connect their networks to it. How relevant then is any educational system that does not allow learners to connect their personal, professional, or vocational networks to the system? Enabling learning is no longer about just disseminating good content, if it ever was. Enabling learning is about being a learner yourself, sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm, and then taking a back seat. In a flattened learning system, there are fewer experts and more fellow learners on paths that may cross. With practice, one can become a guide who has already walked a path. As fields of practice and bodies of knowledge expand, a challenge for learning professionals will be to change their toolsets from prescriptive to supportive.
Open Source
Look at the advancements that community-developed open source software has made in the past few years. We are beginning to see the tide turn away from proprietary software, despite
Skills 2.0
Also known as the twoway web, you could say that Web 2.0 is the Internet being used as it was originally intendedfor sharing and collaborating.
Web 2.0 tools are based on the concept of the Internet as a platform, and include blogs, wikis, podcasts, micro-blogs, social networks, and a raft of new implements every week. For this discussion,
In a knowledge economy, the individual is the knowledge creator, and relationships are the currency.
the current market success of a few large vendors. There is now a general acceptance of Open Source software such as Firefox, and even Open Source content such as Wikipedia, as viable options. We are also witnessing the subversion of institutional software systems via quick and dirty web applications (free IP telephony, free blogs, tagging as our own semantic web, and a multitude of social networks) that can be set up in minutes. Its not just Open Source that will change our institutions but rather the realization that individuals now own the means of knowledge production and the
Tools
Fields of knowledge are expanding, new tools are constantly being introduced, and 1 billion people are connected via the Internet. However, blogging currently stands out as nearly ubiquitous, especially for professional development. Varieties of blogs include text, video, and audio, but all blogs are simple, give individuals voice, and enable conversation to flow. Think of a blog as a professional journal where you can record your thoughts and ask questions of your peers. Each blog post has a unique identifier, called a permalink, which can be referenced by others. Blog posts do not need to be perfect essays. Blog posts can help make sense of your learning process. Comments can be made on another persons
By Harold Jarche
these structures to find what we want and connect with others. For example, expertise is being eroded in many fields. Medical doctors are confronted daily by patients who have researched a disease, using reputable sources, in greater depth than the doctor has time to do. Patients are becoming co-managers of their health. It is getting difficult for anyone to be an expert other than in a very narrow field for a short period of time. Bloggers can quickly get the scoop on professional journalists. As knowledge workers, we
Photo by Photos.com
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network becomes all-important. That means embracing an attitude of openness and collaborationjoining others on a journey of understanding. Giving up control is a first step on this journey. Even reading on the web is quite different from print. Digitally, we have opportunities to engage the writers and make our thoughts known, whether through comments or by linking to the original article from our blog. Having a blog, a permanent presence on the web, becomes the jumping off point for deeper professional discussions. Producing a blog also opens a person up to criticism, so once again, an open attitude to learning is essential. Learning. Learning professionals can no longer rest on their past accomplishments while the field changes and grows. They should be testing Web 2.0 tools so that they can develop optimal processes to support their organizations. If learning professionals are not setting the example of learning online, who is? The example of putting your own learning process out in public or on your intranet shows that you are willing to learn from others. As new tools are introduced, learning professionals should be early adopters, leading the way in testing them out. We are in an age of walking the talk. Collaboration. Through sharing and exposing their work on the web, learning professionals can connect to communities of practice and get informal peer review. There is no way to stay current with the technology, the neuroscience, or the pedagogy all by ourselves. With blogs and other collaboration methods, each of us can become a participatory node in various communities of practice. The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts, and knowing who to call becomes more important than having the right answer. But we are all humans and we relate on a human level, which means that we first have to get to know others and develop a level of trust before real sharing can happen. Collaboration is a two-way street, and a blog can get you moving.
Critical Thinking
A part of critical thinking is the questioning of underlying assumptions, including our own. There are several Web 2.0 tools that can help develop critical thinking in the four areas of:
1. observing and studying our fields; 2. participating in professional communities; 3. building tentative opinions; 4. challenging and evaluating ideas.
source: David Pollard; blogs.salon.com/0002007
From the December 2009 T+D article The Web 2.0 Police
blog, or you can discuss it on your blog and then connect with a link to the other one. This creates a network of the conversations around an issue or topic.
Skills
With a blog as home base, there are certain skills that are must haves for learning professionals: Attitude. Accepting that we will never know everything, but that others may be able to help, is the first step in becoming a learning professional. This is an acceptance of a world in flux, and that knowledge is neither constant nor fixed. Instead of trying to know everything in the field, we can concentrate on knowing with whom to connect. The
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media is to turn learning into a more participatory activity, she says. Learners use social media tools to ask and answer each others questions, and as Hart maintains, Micro-blogs can support collaboration and understanding. Many educators already use microblogs to create community around a class or an activity. Instructors whove used Twitter say it is a useful back channel during and after class. As an instructor, you can have immediate feedback on the relevance of your class, Hart says. After class, instructors can encourage micro-blogging to support relationships among the people from the class and to further their learning. Teachers post tips of the day, questions, writing assignments, and other prompts to keep learning going. Some believe that Twitter is even more powerful as a social learning tool
Heres a scenario to give trainers pause. Youre presenting at a conference. Minutes into your session, a number of people are tapping furiously on their phones or reading incoming messages. Most of these people get up and leave the room, while another bunch trickles in. At least a third of the audience continues tapping out short bursts of text throughout your presentation. Its as if you arent there.
10 | T+D | march 2009
Though it may not be apparent to someone unfamiliar with Web 2.0 behavior, these people arent simply multitasking while you teach. Theyre twitteringor as they would put it, twitting out information about you, your session, and what they are thinking and doing in real time. Its like getting the scoop on sessions that might be better than yours. And their fellow Twitterers are talking back in the staccato bursts of the 140 characters or fewer that Twitter requires. Twitter is a free micro-blogging service. Users sign up, create a profile, and begin sending short messages, known as tweets, about what they are doing and thinking. All other users may read their updates unless the sender gives access only to specific people. You may ask other users for permission to follow them (meaning that you will receive all of their updates), and other people may ask to follow you. More than 100,000 people followed
President Barack Obama on Twitter throughout his campaign. As a user, you can send and receive updates through the Twitter website, or by SMS, RSS, email, and a host of other applications with too-cute names such as Tweetie and Twinkle. By some estimates, Twitter receives more than 5 million visitors every month. More than 700 learning professionals have Twitter accounts.
@WriteTechnology - Michelle Lentzs Twitter address. @TweetReport - A list of Twitter resources compiled and maintained by Sarah Milstein.
outside the context of the classroom. In a corporation, micro-blogging can be a way to augment behavior modeling, says Sarah Millstein, author of the OReilly Radar Report, "Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution: Communication, Connection, and Immediacy140 Characters at a Time." To model good workflow, for example, a person who excels at it would send out frequent updates about what they are doing. The company might formalize the process to the extent that it would select exemplary performers to post regularly, and pick those who should follow their posts. This is an
easy way to prompt conversation and questions with role models, says Milstein. Another popular use of Twitter and other micro-blogging sites is the building of professional networks. Michele Lentz, a technical writer and professional blogger, began using Twitter to get to know other learning professionals. Within months, she was posting regular updates about her work, getting help from experts, and attracting followers of her own. Currently, Lentz has 1,000 followers on Twitter and teaches courses on how to use micro-blogging as a learning tool.
The besT of social & informal learning | T+D | 11
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Teachers post tips of the day, questions, writing assignments, and other prompts to keep learning going.
She recently polled her followers via a Twitter polling application, about why they like Twitter. The top reasons were It accelerated my learning curve. It helped me with personal learning. It expanded my circle.
So far, only a minority of firms are actual power users of Web 2.0 technologies for the purpose of enhancing learning. Just 9 percent of learning professionals surveyed said Web 2.0 technologies play a major role in the learning function in their company.
From the December 2009 T+D article The Web 2.0 Police
A growing number of companies use Twitter to foster communication among employees and customers. Southwest Airlines tweets first-time customers with the message, Hope you enjoyed your first-ever Southwest flight! Cant wait to see you onboard again. Employees and customers of Zappos, the online shoe seller with an intentionally unstuffy culture, use Twitter extensively at the urging of the CEO, Tony Hsieh. In a public directory of Zappos employees using Twitter, ranked by numbers of followers, Hsieh is first. As a public site, Twitter is not for every company, but there are micro-blogging services that will set up internal corporate sites. Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting has created a list of internal micro-blogging services (pistachioconsulting.com/ services/research). Compared to instant messaging, which requires you to address people individually, Twitter broadcasts to a persons entire group of followers. People who use it to get expert advice on the fly say it usually returns results immediately. Sarah Milstein predicts that micromessaging will be as common as email in a few years and may replace email for certain kinds of information, such as client and customer relations.
A first visit to Twitter may not convince you of its potential as a professional networking and learning tool. Many of the tweets are not only personal but trivial what someone is having for breakfast, or where theyre headed next. Its not unusual for a new user to post an update and be completely ignored. Michelle Lentz likens Twitter to a large party. At first, youll be talking to yourself until you get involved, she says. She advises following as many people as possible. For example, a search on e-learning will show whos talking about it. Or use Jane Harts list of learning professionals on Twitter. Lentz recommends that you follow your choice of interesting people for a while, and then send a direct message to a few of them, using the @username format, to introduce yourself and join a conversation. Before long, you can begin building a support group. Twitter is not for everyone, says Lentz. Its good for mobile, on-the-go people who can learn anywhere, she says.
file sharing, mindmapping, writing, and editing capabilities can support more complex collaborative learning than Twitter. But for the moment, nothing else is as immediate or growing as fast. As Milstein points out, micro-blogging is taking off because it fits how people work and think. But, cautions Lentz, Think before you tweet. Each tweet is a webpage. It can be Googled. Its forever.
The future
Micro-blogging is only one kind of social media tool with the potential to support learning. Those that offer collaborative
Pat Galagan is editor-at-large for ASTD; pgalagan@astd.org.
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formal learning that happens through courseware, curriculum, and certifications by embedding social media inside formal content or wrapping social media around formal content. These same ideas also can be applied to virtual classroom technology. While most virtual classroom solutions are already fairly social through features such as public and private chat, video conferencing, desktop sharing, and the like, these features could be further extended through deeper social networking capabilities. Visualize a solution that not only allows you to chat with other participants, but also enables you to view their social profiles and friend them. Imagine a solution that also lets you add your own links and related information, which then become part of the final archive. These approaches might further extend the existing social aspects of virtual classroom tools and drive even more impressive return-on-investment.
Embedded model
The embedded model involves introducing social media inside formal learning content, such as WBT courses or virtual classrooms. Moving from instructor-led training to WBT has saved organizations significant amounts of money by reducing travel and training facility costs. WBT has also made it possible for learners to access course content at a time of need, which has improved performance. While these benefits are well documented and provide undeniable organizational value, there are two major downsides to WBT. First, WBT removes all of the social networking and interaction with colleagues, and second, WBT dramatically reduces the social learning benefits that come from diversity of perspective and sharing of real world experience, reflection, debrief, and the general ebb and flow of live training. Embedding social media within WBT courses reintroduces these social exchanges without sacrificing the cost savings or WBTs time-of-need replay capability. Imagine a WBT course with embedded comment areas that enable learners to share their reactions to particular course concepts or their perspectives and ideas around new best practices and procedures. Imagine a course in which learners can write embedded blog posts to share their own best practices, techniques, or insights directly inside the course for other learners to see. Imagine a course in which learners could participate in live discussions or rate ideas and see the ratings of others. These social and dynamic interactions are a large part of whats missing in traditional WBT approaches, but they can be easily incorporated through Web 2.0 technologies.
Imagine a course in which learners could participate in live discussions or rate ideas and see the ratings of others. These social and dynamic interactions are a large part of whats missing in traditional WBT approaches.
Wrapped model
Another way to socialize formal learning approaches is to wrap social media around existing learning resources. Think of this as the Amazon model, where social media and social networking are wrapped around a piece of more formal content, such as learning objects, instead of books. Learners have always discussed and commented on the courses and classes they are taking. And learners are usually quick to tell other learners what they think of a given class. If learners are attending an instructor-led event, they may try to network with other learners before, during, and after the event. Learners also expect updates about changes to a course or training session. Today, most of these interactions happen through ad hoc, unstructured, unsearchable exchanges between individual learners. Imagine what might happen if we formalized these exchanges through social media. If learners want to discuss formal learning events or curricula, we could provide them with discussion forums and comment capabilities. If they want to network with other par-
Photo by istockphoto.com
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Embedding social media within WBT courses reintroduces these social exchanges without sacrificing the cost savings or WBTs time-of-need replay capability.
ticipants, we could offer social networking features and let learners see their virtual classmates even when taking WBT or asynchronous learning. If they want to share their opinions on a certification class, we could design a rating capability so that their opinions are shared with their fellow learners. By providing a common infrastructure for these exchanges, this content becomes searchable and can be included in reports and analytics that provide more insight into the meta-discourse around formal content. Learners with real expertise and unique perspectives have a chance to be heard and recognized. This in turn may lead to new forms of talent identification and expertise location. Enabling user-generated content in this way may also reduce turnover by providing a voice for individual employees and validating that they are heard and recognized for their contributions. not have these same options in the workplace. Yet, according to research by both Jay Cross and the U.S. Department of Labor, the vast majority of learning in organizations happens socially or informally. Today, none of these exchanges is tracked, monitored, or influenced by organizations in any way. Given this information, it seems natural to provide infrastructure to support these exchanges. No matter how effective a training department might be, it will never have the scale of an organization whose entire employee base actively contributes ideas, expertise, and knowledge through vibrant social learning and workplace communities. A workplace community captures the sorts of exchanges that happen outside of formal training and provides mechanisms to moderate, monitor, and report on these interactions. This provides invaluable insight into the real issues faced by employees. Formalizing informal communication within an organization can make employees more efficient and productive, reduce support costs, improve sales, increase retention, and provide better mechanisms for talent identification. While this approach requires more organizational buy-in than either the embedded or wrapped models, it also provides the greatest impact and ROI. Many learning professionals are struggling with how to approach social learning, but the models are not really that complicated. In the embedded model, were simply reintroducing the social elements that used to be part of a typical instructor-led classreflection, debrief, sharing of opinions and perspectives, and discussion of best practices. In the wrapped model, were providing a social platform for the interactions that already happen around formal courseware. And in the community model, were providing a broader platform to capture social exchanges and social learning across any topic, not just those addressed in formal learning. These three social learning models are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they are quite complementary, which means organizations can begin implementing social learning wherever they are most comfortable. These models also nicely complement organizations existing investments by extending and broadening the scope of current formal learning initiativesand, in the process, they elevate the training function from the realm of the tactical to the strategic. Someday, we may have a standard name for these social learning/learning 2.0/workplace learning initiatives, but in the meantime, we have an occupational obligation (and more than enough information) to begin implementing them. Through an embedded, wrapped, or community model of social learning, we can improve organizational efficiency, productivity, and flexibility by establishing a true learning culture where all employees are actively engaged in both the teaching and learning processes.
David Wilkins is senior director of social learning products at Mzinga; dave@mzinga.com.
From the December 2009 T+D article The Web 2.0 Police
Community model
There are clearly real benefits in socializing formal learning models, but what about providing social media and social networking capabilities in the absence of formal learning? This is yet another model. Think of this as a community model, in which social media and networking provide their own value, independent of formal learning content. Many of us now reference blogs, wikis, discussion forums, and social networks for information in our personal lives, but many of us do
trends //
Organizations that promote open cultures are more likely to use social media than those that feel the need to control and monitor performance from the top down.
Howd I Do?
Instant, anonymous, and addictive, social networking is catching on as a performance appraisal tool.
By Pat galagan
How did I do? Its a common question from Gen Y and younger employees to their bosses and peers. These pragmatic people want feedback on their performance in real time and know how to get it using social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook. Instead of waiting months for a formal review from their bosses, theyre asking people in their online networks to help them learn how to improve right away. Perhaps to the chagrin of training professionals, these social networkers have figured out how to shorten the learn and do loop and are surging ahead using tools that are part of their daily lives. Most Facebook users are 18 to 24 years old and make up just over half the sites 200 million members; however, that picture is changing. Facebook statistics show that the number of 35- to 54-yearold users logging in during the first six months of 2009 grew 276 percent. And the number of users in that age bracket doubles every two months. Twitter, a free social networking and microblogging service popular for short text-based posts, is also expanding. In March 2009, Nielsen.com ranked Twitter as the fastest-growing site in the member communities category for February 2009, with a growth rate of 1,382 percent.
Photo by istockphoto.com
Dude,
As the use of social media spreads to a wider pool of users, so does its potential to update many work practices, including performance reviews. Using networking software for performance feedback seems to be an idea that should have come to training and HR departments a long time ago. But according to Marcia Conner, co-author of Creating a Learning Culture and a social media analyst and commentator for Pistachio Consulting, this is a grassroots movement. Organizations arent choosing this. Employees are using social media to work around existing systems. Some supplier companies, such as Accenture and Rypple, are catching on to the fact that employees go to trusted friends and advisors to get what they consider real feedback. So suppliers have designed tools that make it quick and easy to collect input from the bottom up. Rypple positions its products to fill gaps in formal performance management systems that focus on performance scores and calculate compensation, but dont deal with development. With Rypple software you can import contacts from Outlook, Gmail, and other lists, and query them on your performance. A typical question might be, What did you find useful about my presentation and what can I do to improve it? Twitter, which facilitates short, realtime communication via computer or phone, was not designed as a feedback tool, but many people use it that way. Twitter networks are popular at industry conferences where you will see attendees tweeting feedback to presenters
and sharing their reviews of sessions with everyone on the network. Wikis are being used with great success to move performance reviews beyond monologues, says Conner. Performance review forms, posted by managers or HR on company wikis, are available for input from many sources and are open for all contributors to see. Wiki technologies also help streamline the review process. Many include workflow tools that automatically remind people to do their part.
Fear factor
Still, there is a fear factor at work. Social media connects people to a vast community (some call it a collective brain) inside and outside the company. And it fits seamlessly into daily work routines that involve computers and cell phones. But bosses who see employees frequently checking for LinkedIn updates may wonder, Is it really work? Some employers prohibit the use of social media, fearing that employees may be Twittering away company secrets, says Conner. Companies that are skittish about using mass market networking tools such as Twitter or Facebook can install microsharing systems that only employees may access. Companies are using these tools to make regular checks on what people are learning and how they are progressing toward their objectives. Employees share their measureable goals with a group of people selected to provide input. They may also ask members of the group for help. Organizations that promote open cultures are more likely to use social
The besT of social & informal learning | T+D | 19
trends //
NET KNOW-HOW
Introducing social media to an entire company presents some challenges. Management wants to direct its use while employees may expect to communicate freely about any old thing just as they do in their nonwork lives with Twitter or Facebook. So how do you keep conversations focused on work? And how do you make social media newbies feel comfortable while also engaging the people who tweet and friend as naturally as they breathe? Here are some tips from a selection of companies already using social media to foster networking among employees and connect people with questions to those with answers. Foster accountability and build trust by having people use their real names instead of aliases and allow all employees to view every communication if they choose. Keep the system simple and easy to use. At Sabre Holdings, employees ask questions of each other by posting virtual stickies on virtual bulletin boards. When starting a new network, temporarily appoint some people, including company leaders, as superusers to make the site active from the start. Follow usage metrics to see where employees may need more encouragement or assistance. Communicate early and often about good things the system has made possible.
Facebook statistics show that the number of 35to 54-year-old users logging in during the first six months of 2009 grew 276 percent. And the number of users in that age bracket doubles every two months.
media than those that feel the need to control and monitor performance from the top down. But policy makers come around when they use the tools themselves, says Conner. They see the potential for fostering new ways of working that encourage informal learning. Some tech companies already use networking among employees to improve products and processes. At Google, software engineers use an electronic peer review system to vet their code before its published and to locate other engineers who have attained reviewer status. This helps reduce bugs and increase code quality, but it also provides useful performance feedback to the engineers, according to one.
More mindful
The value of a collaborative platform for performance reviews is readily apparent to David Nour, social networking strategist and author of Relationship Economics. Most performance reviews are myopic, giving you one or two perspectives at best, he says. But to use feedback effectively from a broad base requires it to be linked to evaluations and development. All it takes to use social media is a pulse, he says. Using it as a business tool requires a plan for being more intentional in the relationships you choose. Conner suggests that microsharing of regular updates encourages people to reflect on what theyre doing and learning and makes them mindful of sharing with people they work with or serve. Performance reviews have been an event, not a reflective process, she says. Social networking tools make it more mindful.
Pat Galagan is editor-at-large for ASTD; pgalagan@astd.org.
From the December 2009 T+D article The Web 2.0 Police
In todays economy, organizations are searching for ways to do more with less. Combined with the rapid pace of change and complexity in organizations, there is an increased need for just-in-time learning solutions that cannot wait for the discipline and rigor required by traditional instructional design.
By Marjorie derven
Social networking can address this issue and support the need for learner involvement by narrowing the gap between learning and application.
A learning solution
Social networking, the broad term that encompasses wikis, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other tools, is ideal for facilitating interactions between people who cannot easily meet in person, whether due to geographic distance or difficulty identifying needed skills, resources, or other information. With just a few clicks, technology facilitates such connections. With its unique abilities to connect people and provide realtime interaction, social networking offers exciting potential for learning solutions. Cost pressures and the availability of a multitude of social networking tools are other compelling factors. Further, with the presence of four generations in the workplace today, technological solutions that address different learning styles deserve consideration. Social networking can promote decentralized decision making and collaboration. And the relationships and connections formed can help build engagement. Additionally, finding ways to improve the implementation of new skills on the job is an issue that the training profession has long wrestled withtraining and development professionals acknowledge that most learning takes place not in the classroom, but as work is accomplished.
Photo by istockphoto.com
company, we have a proclivity to use these tools, as well as a technical comfort level, Hoff says. Moreover, as the most global company in the worldwe operate in 170 countries and two-thirds of our workers are outside of the United Stateswe need to learn from each other. We find that the learning is reciprocal and doesnt flow in one direction; we learn a great deal from our emerging markets as much as they learn from us. Hoff emphasizes the benefits that IBM has realized from these tools. Discussions are focused around serving clients; for example, individuals will search for one another based on whether you have experience in a particular industry or with a particular client, such as helping a healthcare system navigate reimbursement. You will find IBM employees asking, send me the proposal; what kind of business did you get from this; and what did you learn? It becomes a peer review system, and we hold one another accountable for providing useful information. Organizations known for using corporate social networking effectively are often in consulting, technology, or other knowledge-based professions. Sun Microsystems and Ernst & Young are also part of this growing list. Social networking tools may also be used to help the learning function. Matthew Valencius, manager of sales learning design and development at IBM, explains, Within learning we have EXCaliber, our patent-pending Web 2.0 service. It provides an easy way to surface experts on a webpage while allowing those experts to manage their instant messaging availability. We have this on more than 100 intranet sites, and it enables our site visitors to quickly get answers to questions, such as how to enroll in a particular course or how to best engage with some contentsimilar to how good online retailers provide their chat functionality. We also use EXCaliber to add vibrancy to our pages by displaying pictures of the last people to visit them. This creates a sense that a page is popularmuch like you can see people in a physical conference roomand provides an opportunity for visitors to expand their personal networks by showing who is interested in the same content.
As most IBM employees are actively engaged with this technology, the learning function leverages the tools to involve learners as well as to market their services internally. There is greater transparency into the learning organization, and it provides opportunities to expand personal and professional networks, Valencius says. Clearly, these technologies are helpful in terms of delivering information and content virtually, which cuts out travel costs.
Link learners before or after a formal training event. Social software can help employees locate others who are applying new skills and share best practices, discuss obstacles and solutions to application, and foster collaboration. For example, at IBM, the intranet-based Blue Pages help employees to connect around business issues. Engage next generation learners. Gen X and Millennial workers currently comprise 22 percent of the workforce, and this number is expected to grow to 46 percent by the year 2020. These generations enjoy the interactivity of the technology and tend to be plugged in, so social networking is an effective way to involve them. As Jeanne C. Meister, founding editor of New Learning Playbook describes, Organizations that want to effectively reach out to this group, whether for recruiting or learning, have to use the tools that they are already comfortable with. Social networking is a natural way for people to learn, especially among the Millennials. Provide content before a face-to face learning event. Use technology to establish a baseline of common knowledge and information before a training session, so classroom time will be spent on application. Clearly, these technologies are helpful in terms of delivering information and
Provide links to resources related to new learning content. To reinforce learning, provide links to articles, webinars, and on-the-job examples of the desired skills being applied. This can be a highly effective way to refresh and expand knowledge and reinforces the importance of using the new skills. Paula Patinella, of Capability Center Lead, Managing the Business from IBM, explains how she leverages online communities that span all business units and geographies across the organization by promoting connectedness to all levels of expertise. We use intelligent tagging to link multiple threads of ideas together and assess ideas in so-called innovation circles, she says. We also hold minijams or online discussions covering myriad topics from healthcare, energy, and green solutions to our IBM values promoting innovation. Determine future training needs and issues. By using tagging capabilities, learning organizations can search for emerging training needs, such as communication problems related to new organizational structures, or a pattern of searches related to new policies. Such online discussions may serve as the new electronic water cooler, where attentive learning professionals can identify skills gaps that need solutions. Reinforce and sustain learning. Meister is a proponent of Twitter, the free social networking tool that uses tweets limited to 140 characters to share information. She envisions Twitter being used to provide an archive of team communications and progress remind participants of upcoming training events provide links to articles, webinars, and other resources related to training create follow-up webcasts share different points of view and best practices among training participants send reminders about key learning points. The functionality of Twittershort,
Use as a coaching and mentoring tool. It is axiomatic that most learning takes place on the job; coaching and mentoring helps individuals understand how to apply newfound knowledge and skills from others who have the experience. With the new economic realities, young professionals are finding that mentoring becomes an important aspect of career development, with fewer opportunities in the short term to move, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal called Finding Anchors in the Storm: Mentors. Technology can be used to match up mentors and mentees. These relationships may be quite fluid and form and dissolve around specific issues, such as helping younger people to build their professional networks. As the Wall Street Journal article also points out, such relationships are likely to be most effective when there is a degree of reciprocity involved. For example, a vice president of marketing may help a young professional to understand
the organizations pricing models, and in turn, learn from the mentee about how to use Twitter. Of course, peer-to-peer coaching may take place without the use of technology; high-touch approaches offer many benefits. Pat Baxter, an executive coach, used a low-tech approach in her former role as organization development director for a global customer service organization to define what coaching looked like for her organization. We found it to be less expensive than hiring external consultants for developing people, Baxter says. Following training of peer coaches, it was very easy to implement and access. We used peer coaching in a variety of applications, from onboarding, to developing high potentials, to dealing with performance problems without discouraging people. The advantage of peer coaching, according to Laura Mindek, president of MindShift Solutions, is that its a nocost development strategy that can be implemented before any other tools are launched, with a built-in measure
Issue
Loss of institutional knowledge
Churn of survivors who are less loyal and engaged (estimated to be between 13 and 30 percent) Need to communicate a positive organizational vision for the future to reassure employees Loss of valued networks as colleagues have been let go Need to do more with less
Use employee blogs to take the pulse and determine corrective actions
Build and synchronize new collaboration Use social networking as an efficiency tool
of success common to cross-functional groups, rather than as an add-on to other processes. It is an elegant solution to development, because all that is needed is a mindset, or should I say, a mind shift, Mindek says. Once the feed forward methodology (based on Marshall Goldsmiths techniques to provide feedback before an event, rather than after) is introduced via a
Some managers will complain that use of social networking tools will eat into productivity, but the reverse can also be true; they can be a tremendous boost to productivity, allowing people to get answers to work-related questions, as well as to build social connections, collaboration, and innovation.
Ted hoff, vice president of ibms center for learning and Development
If something needs to be done faceto-face, dont try to accomplish this virtually, says Valencius. Deliver the content that you can online, but if face-to-face is the best way to learn something, that should drive the solution. In addition to considering factors such as the need to have in-person interaction as part of the training, quality control is another consideration. How can you ensure that the ideas, content, and recommendations that are exchanged are in fact high quality and reflect corporate priorities? IBM has solved this dilemma. We have an expertise assessment tool where all employees conduct an annual selfevaluation that defines their skill levels and ability to serve clients along five tiers, and these are manager-verified, Hoff explains. The first three levels of expertise within IBM are entry, foundational, and experienced. Then level four is expert, and level five is thought leader. These rankings help individuals access others who have the knowledge, experience, or resources that they need for a particular skill or capability. If you state that you are at the expert or thought leader level, then this [ranking] needs to go through another level of verification by a second line manager and subject matter experts. Without a system such as IBMs, the next best approach is some kind of monitoring. Baxter suggests that it is important to use an editor for online postings to be sure that the content reflects how the organization wants to be perceived externally and used internally. There is some degree of blind faith that the information sharing will be at a high level. The tradeoff is to limit the possibilities for innovation, collaboration, and networking.
Select the type of learning. Clearly, not all training is appropriate or relevant for social networking applications. The technologies have limitations, and you need to make sure that you are getting the right value.
26 | T+D | july 2009
Identify risk factors and how these may be mitigated. Certainly, these technologies have become almost mainstream in terms of their usage. However, they do present risks related to competitive threats, loss of control of information, and privacy issues. Social networking has served to blur the line between the public and the private. In the past, it was extraordinarily difficult for private citizens to express
Photo by istockphoto.com
ideas in a public forum; today, this can be accomplished in a few clicks. Without a corporate firewall, and once data is available on the Internet, it may be used for purposes that are different, or even contrary to their intended purposes. Information that seems benign may actually be of great interest to competitors in ways that may not be anticipated. People are rightfully apprehensive when they dont know how to interact online and are concerned they may divulge proprietary information and say something inappropriate, says Meister. There have to be guidelines, and people need training. When email was introduced, there were similar concerns, but we have adapted. Meister emphasizes that these risks, while real, need to be managed rather than avoided, because the train has left the station, so it is important for organizations to figure out how they can harness the power of these tools, rather than try to block usage. She points out that people can easily access the tools on their cell phones and BlackBerrys, so trying to block access is ineffective. Some managers will complain that use of social networking tools will eat into productivity, but the reverse can also be true; they can be a tremendous boost to productivity, allowing people to get answers to work-related questions, as well as to build social connections, collaboration, and innovation, she says. Hoff is such a strong advocate of these tools that the risk-benefit issue is not a factor. We dont see this as a highrisk endeavor. Our employees know that they need to use IBM assets appropriately and in an ethical manner, and that includes social networking tools. We have our business conduct guidelines, and once a year employees must certify that they have read them. We also provide social networking guidelines. The way that people need to conduct themselves online is truly no different from the way they need to operate face-to-face. We have a culture at IBM that was established 100 years ago, and it still guides our actions: to behave in an ethical manner and put our clients first.
For organizations that do not have Enterprise 2.0 tools, it may be more problematic to monitor and control information and content, because employees may also be blogging and interacting online in their private lives as well. Just as social networking will undoubtedly yield new benefits, unanticipated risks are likely to emerge.
Lessons learned
As a new and emerging set of tools, social networking requires a degree of experimentation. A limitation of social networking tools for learning is that it can be hard to predict what kinds of connections people will make, says Valencius. You have to try different things, see what pans out, and not become overly invested in one particular approach. Use a layered approach, with multiple technologies and limited investments. Enhance what works and weed out the other ideas. Meister also recommends being proactive about trying the technology. The biggest issue is overcoming a mindset of fear. Instead of taking the approach that I am too busy doing my job to use LinkedIn, figure out how to make this part of your job. Get your hands dirty by first using these technologies for something you care about personally. Say you have a passion for wine tastingbecome a contributor to a blog and then see the power of being connected. Encouraging social networking involves not only trial and error, but also visible support from senior management, according to Hoff. First of all, you have to foster usage of these tools and engage senior leaders around this. Social networking is a powerful way to build teamwork, so its important not to fight it or fear itsubmit to the process. T+D
ibm is a member of the asTD benchmarking forum.
Marjorie Derven is managing partner for HUDSON Research & Consulting; mderven@hudsonrc.com.
INTERESTED IN ORDERING E-PRINTS? Would a digital version of this article be a great fit for your next course, presentation, or event? are you interested in e-prints of several T+D articles on a specific topic? email us the specifics at eprints@astd.org to learn more.
technology //
Twitter is for smart people, too
Hart isnt the only one who at first thought Twitter was pointless. Even experts refer to it as a dumb technology. When people expect Twitter, in itself, to be deep, meaningful, or complex, they often dismiss its microsharing outright, never looking back. Type 140 characters into a little box in the wee free moments you have? Yet people across the globepeople smarter and busier than youuse Twitter and its enterprise-strength counterparts including Yammer, Present.ly, Socialcast, and Socialtext Signals. They may doubt its value at first, but when they wade into the stream, they find it invaluable and a complete surprise. What are your doubts? Youlike many learning professionals who have yet to try Twittermay think you have too much to say, nothing to say, or not enough time. Perhaps you believe Twitter was not designed for the training department but for young people who like to waste time. Maybe your company blocks its use, you find it too overwhelming, or you dont know anyone else who is using it. Or, is your excuse simply that you dont know how to use Twitter?
for their jobs than any organization provides. Learning happens between people, while doing their jobs, and in the context of groups and interpersonal communication. As Tom King (@mobilemind), an interoperability evangelist for Questionmark, says, Twitter provides a means for learners to update learners before trainers can update training. Twitter also helps trainers prime the conversation in the days leading up to a course or e-learning rollout. No way to reach participants beforehand? Create and collect Twitter usernames during your program and use the medium for follow-up and culling examples of practical applications. Your Twitter exchanges after events establish a social support network, ensuring that learning doesnt stop. You can also use Twitter to point people to updated materials and related interactions within social media blogs, podcasts, wikis, and topic-based online communities.
A week later, a dozen people had signed up to read his posts. In Twitter parlance, they followed his tweets. Some repeated ideas he had posted originally. They told him they followed him because he provided thoughtful messages that affected their work. He began to follow some people back. Their updates introduced fascinating notions and lively exchanges. He realized Twitter wasnt simply about blogging and posting thoughts online. It connects people around shared interests. His perspective began to shift.
illustration source by Veer
technology //
organizations, throughout enterprises, and with potential customers. By responding to a few words and a question mark, people provide expert testimony, gut-level hunches, and a field view that organizations might never capture otherwise. Are senior leaders telling their Twitter followers what they had for lunch? Probably not. Are they distributing observations while waiting for a delayed flight? Maybe. Do they believe microsharing offers business value? Certainly. My professional network of more than 2,000 collaborators helps me learn about industry innovations and promising enterprise practices, and puts them into context on a schedule that works for me. a weekly online chat using Twitter technology, focused on learning. Hundreds of people get together and learn from one another by including #lrnchat in their posts at one regularly scheduled time. The @slqotd (Social Learning Question of the Day), started by Kevin Jones (@kevindjones) focuses professionals in the learning field on a single topic each day, providing them an opportunity to hear others insights. In a similar way, @lrn2daycreated by Jane Bozarth (@janebozarth) and mereminds everyone who follows the group to tweet what they learn each day and provides one more avenue for people to learn and meet.
7| Its overwhelming
How does it contribute? As one example, i4cp member company Qualcomm had learners in their business acumen program follow the Harvard Business Reviews Twitter feed. Qualcomm uses the service to foster discussions and pose questions during lectures, as well as for general information sharing.
From the December 2009 T+D article The Web 2.0 Police
Twitter is a serendipity engine. Rather than expecting yourself to keep up with every tweet, focus on whats before you when you check in and rely on direct messages, replies, and retweets to learn who is ready to engage. Short messages allow you to approach updates with a newspaper headline mindset, scanning assorted posts quickly, ignoring the uninteresting, and focusing on those that captivate you. This means you can easily process a message stream and then turn your attention back to other tasks.
Photo by shutterstock.com
rESourcES on thE MillEnial gEnEration anD thE iMpact of Social lEarning anD nEtworking
Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff Driving Results Through Social Networks by Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas ASTD Research Study: Tapping the Potential of Informal Learning ASTD Research Study: Transforming Learning with Web 2.0 Technologies Find these publications in a social learning bundle available at store.astd.org.
show up on YouTube, and so will your TV commercials, intercut with sarcastic commentary. If your CEO has any hair left, he or she is going to tear it out and then ask for your help in taming this torrent of people expressing themselves. Li and Bernoff go on to warn, But this movement cant be tamed. It comes from a thousand sources and washes over traditional business like a flood. And, like a flood, it cant be stopped in any one place. Often it cant be stopped at all. The authors see a fundamental change in behavior, and they define a groundswell as, A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. They also add that the groundswell trend is not a flash in the pan. This is an important, irreversible, completely different way for people to relate to companies and to each other. The groundswell trend also includes social networks like MySpace and Facebook. And, while you cant stop it, you can understand it, Li and Bernoff assert. You can not only live with it, you can thrive in it. Thats the point of this book.
Those are some powerful statements, and ones that have huge potential implications for learning. But, as Li and Bernoff say, you can not only live with this, you can thrive in it. So why is this happening now? The authors see the collision of three forces people, technology, and economics and they see these trends (peoples desire to connect, new interactive technologies, and online economics) as creating a new era. We also have a generation of people entering the workforce who dont know any other way; this is the way theyve always done it. Are you ready for them? Lets look at their expectations for work and how that affects you and your organizations. Tapscott writes, In this war for talent, employers are going to have to understand the key Net Gen norms if they want to hire them, and keep them. They want the freedom to work when and where they want, and the freedom to enjoy work and family life ... the Net Gens mix work with their personal lives. I think were seeing this for just about all workers today. The line between work and personal is very gray. Tapscott discusses other expectations of Net Gens in his book Grown Up Digital: They want customizationthis is what theyre used to.
They want to be managed as individuals, not as a big group. This means individualized learning and development opportunities, project-based role descriptions, a lot of feedback on their performance, and open and regular dialogues with their manager. Integrity and transparency are essential to this generation. This is how their virtual communities operate. They value collaboration. They are not turned on by climbing the corporate ladder. They demand challenging work and want to achieve with other people. This is how they get things done. Entertainment is very important. They want work to be fun, and they see work and fun as the same thing. (More information about Tapscotts other norms can be found in Grown Up Digital.) Was there a Net Gen norm about classroom training on that list? No. Is formal learning dead? Of course not. Informal learning will not eliminate traditional formal learning. Certification, compliance, and deep learning will continue to be formal because the structure is required.
In the May 2009 issue of this magazine, Josh Bersin of Bersin and Associates said it well: Its not informal learning taking over everything; its a modernization of the learning function. Karie Willyerd, vice president and chief learning officer for Sun Microsystems explains the huge opportunity the profession has in informal learning: One of the things that has happened is that we have focused so much on the 10 percent [formal learning] that we abdicated the 70 percent [informal learning]. If the learning organization doesnt get into that 70 percent and use social media, theyre going to get left behind. Theyre going to become irrelevant because people are going to be able to post and share knowledge with one another without the learning function. Its a call to action for learning to become really involved in social media in order to facilitate and enable informal learning. And thats a really exciting place for the learning profession to be because what you are capturing, then, is the performance of an organization. Doesnt it seem reasonable that if most of the learning occurring within an organization is informal, you should be involved?
In The aprIl 2009 repOrT, GeT serIOus aBOuT InfOrmal learnInG, claIre schOOleY Of fOrresTer research dIscusses effecTIve WaYs TO Include InfOrmal learnInG In YOur OrGanIzaTIOns TraInInG:
examine how you conduct employee training. Take stock of your present training and determine the components that lend themselves to more informal approaches. Provide the tools and resources for learners to find content easily when they need them. Collaborate with business units to develop the most effective learning strategies. This applies to both formal and informal learning and is one practice ASTD has been encouraging for quite some time. Use employee performance results as a measure of successful learning experiences. LMS vendors have assessment questionnaires to survey the employees managers regularly after the course to determine the impact on employee performance. To do this, you will need to collaborate with these managers to determine how you will identify changes in employee performance. Keep track of how people rate informal and formal content. These ratings will help employees find the best content, and help you to weed out the poor content and identify where additional formal or informal learning development is required.
GenerallY speakInG, TO WhaT exTenT Is InfOrmal learnInG OccurrInG WIThIn YOur OrGanIzaTIOn?
WhIch BesT descrIBes Where YOur OrGanIzaTIOn Is In Terms Of WeB 2.0 TechnOlOGIes?
We
have such technologies and they play a major role in the learning function
not at all
2%
8.7% 24.8%
We
To some extent
23% We
To a moderate extent
34%
To a high extent
34%
have such technologies and they play a minor role in the learning function
We
have such technologies but they play no role in the learning function
source: Transforming learning with Web 2.0 Technologies, an asTD research report
In the learning profession, weve never had the opportunity to broaden our impact as we do today through informal learning. people are demanding it, the technology is driving it, and the economy is requiring it.
of learning occurring in organizations is informal, yet most of the money is allocated to formal learning. This must change if we are to be successful in the future. Do you think that having the learning function driving informal learning would be good for you professionally and for your organization? Absolutely. This research shows that the learning profession has a great opportunity to make an impact with informal learning. Lets talk about Web 2.0 technologies, how the Net Gens are using those technologies, and the impact those technologies are having within organizations. Web 2.0 technologies are enablers. They are the tools that support collaboration and social learning, but they dont cause it to automatically happen. Working in partnership with i4cp, ASTD commissioned a Web 2.0 study, which was sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton. The purpose of the study was to determine how, why, to what degree, and with what success organizations are using Web 2.0 technologies in learning functions. Reasons for adopting Web 2.0 include improving knowledge sharing fostering learning providing more informal learning opportunities improving communication finding resources more easily boosting collaboration building organizational relationships. Data from the study revealed that only a small minority of companies are using Web 2.0 technologies in learning. And this is not the first study to find that Web 2.0 technologies are not yet widely adopted in organizations. Eighty-seven percent of respondents predicted that during the next three years, their organizations will be more likely to use Web 2.0 technologies in the learning function.
A driver for this may be explained by a 2008 AIIM survey. It found that among the 441 IT, executive, C-level, and other respondents, less than half said that they fully understood technologies such as RSS, podcasting, social networking, and mash-ups. It also found that 59 percent of the respondents considered a lack of understanding to be the primary impediment to implementing Web 2.0 technologies. Lets look at the effectiveness of Web 2.0 in the ASTD study. Ninety-five percent of those surveyed indicate that the technology is effective, though the highest marks for it are not really that high. I think this is a reflection of not knowing how to use the technologies, and the associated fear of them. The Net Gens are driving informal learning, which, as weve seen through the research, does not have the financial commitment nor the appropriate involvement of the learning organization, at least not yet. There has been an enormous increase in people who want to share their expertise, opinions, and time through collaborative technologies, and these technologies are being adopted by
society on a global scale as well as within our individual learning organizations. It is a groundswell as Li and Bernoff have described, and its unstoppable, with huge opportunities available to those who know how to leverage it. The use of collaborative technologies also has a huge impact on organizations ability to recruit and retain talent. As Walt McFarland, vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, notes, I see the impact of social learning increasing in the future in a couple of important ways. First, there is an expectation that in order to attract the staff that we want to havethe very best peopleyou must use social media, so its part of our employee value proposition. Secondly, the environment is going to demand it. The problems are just too big for any one person or team. And being able to leverage the knowledge that all of us have is a real competitive advantage. Mike McDermott, vice president of learning and organization development at T. Rowe Price, agrees: Social media has a great ability to retain talent. We know that one of the greatest factors around retention is feeling connected to people at work and feeling
Become more likely to use Web 2.0 technologies in the learning function than it currently does
11.8% 86.5%
source: Transforming learning with Web 2.0 Technologies, an asTD research report
trends //
One solution is to build an internal social networking system that has the familiar features of LinkedIn or Twitter, such as user profiles or bulletin boards for posting questions to the whole community, but that is open only to employees. To date, the most evolved internal networking systems can be found in large organizations with the resources to create a customized internal system. IBM, for example, introduced podcasting as a communications tool for the large global company several years ago. There were few controls, and many employees began to experiment with the medium. Over time, internal communications costs decreased, and some practical business applications, such as outreach to investors, evolved. A new report from Forrester, Get Serious About Informal Learning, by senior analyst Claire Schooley, describes the informal learning systems of Intel, Nike, and British Telecom. Other companies with robust social networking systems that support informal learning are Home Depot, UPS, Graco, Cisco, Kaiser Permanente, Wal-Mart, and Google. Frequently, the need that drove the creation of internal networking tools in these companies involved communication rather than learning per se. Many of these systems were created by a team that may or may not have included a learning professional. Thats the route taken by Sabre Holdings, the company that owns Travelocity and several other global travel reservation systems. An interdepartmental team created an internal social networking tool SabreTownthat facilitates informal learning and communication in ways that addressed many of the issues holding other companies back. The goal was to provide an internal tool for professional networking so that employees could connect quickly and easily, says Erik Johnson, general manager of Sabre Holdings Cubeless, the software platform created for SabreTown. At the time the networking tool was created, Sabre
Photo by shutterstock.com
To date, the most evolved internal networking systems can be found in large organizations with the resources to create a customized internal system.
Some examples of social media used successfully for informal learning do not come out of learning departments. By Pat Galagan
LETTING GO
Holdings had grown from a small domestic operation into one with 10,000 employees in 59 countries. Many worked as telecommuters, and employees were beginning to feel disconnected from colleagues and sources of information, says Johnson.
Web 2.0 and social networking tools are playing a growing role in informal learning inside organizations. But theres an odd catch. They work best when employees trust the tools and use them, which is closely related to how much control employees are given and how little is exercised by the learning department. Social media and learning consultant Jane Hart notes that once individuals and groups do realize they have the power, ability, and tools to learn for themselves, then they will begin to address their own problems informally and quite spontaneouslywithout the supervision or intervention of a teacher.
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Informal learning assignments bolted on to a formal course dont prompt the kind of work-related exploration for which social media can be really useful. Breaking out of the need to control employees use of social media while making sure that such systems are designed and implemented with suitable controls has been a stumbling block for many training departments. The social media systems that work well have found a balance between controlling learners behavior and giving them freedom to learn. Many companies would like to encourage informal learning by installing social media software that allows employees to ask and answer questions quickly and easily. On the plus side, social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are familiar to most people as methods for connecting with experts, and employees are already using them at work. On the minus side, companies fear that employees will waste time using such public tools for nonwork or hijack them for their own purposes.
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How it works
To use SabreTown, employees complete a profile of their interests and expertise. When someone posts a question to an online bulletin board, the systems predictive modeling software will automatically send it to the 15 people whose expertise is most relevant to the question. The more people who complete profiles and the more questions that are asked and answered, the better the inference engine is able to assign questions appropriately. You have a greater chance of getting a useful answer if your question is directed not just to the people you already know, but to the people who have the most relevant knowledge, explains Johnson. A team led by corporate communications and including representatives from various geographies and functions developed SabreTown and manages it. It is a tool for professional networking and holistic professional development, says Johnson. HR and training are on
board but are not the owners. One benefit for the training function is that the metrics on usage reveal knowledge and expertise gaps in the company. Creating a system that would be open and easy to use required solid planning and execution in three areas: strategy, environment, and implementation, according to Johnson. Sabre suggests these recommendations for a successful strategy:
Let the goals and expectations for the system guide the strategy. For SabreTown, the goal was to provide a tool for professional networking so that employees could connect quickly and easily. Make the business case and identify the value of the cultural benefits. The SabreTown development team showed that getting information by sending email to known sources consumed hours of company time. An inference engine would make the search for answers more efficient and cost-effective by identifying the people most likely to know answers and directing questions to them. Maximize the value of the system by making sure it is used to the maximum. The environmentthe way the system works for the useris a key to getting employees involved.
The average SabreTown user makes four visits per month. Sixty percent of questions are answered within one hour, with an average of nine people responding to each question.
stantial savings for the company. We identified $500,000 in direct savings the first year, but we also know, based on anecdotal results, that figure doesnt come close to representing the total savings we are finding from the system, says Johnson. He attributes the sites success partly to the fact that management ceded control over its use to line employees. He says, It is informal, easy to use, and resembles popular public sites that employees already know. A big benefit for us is that SabreTown is effectively creating a massive knowledge base that employees willingly populate with their own information.
Growth predicted
Johnson provides these recommendations for users: Make the tool easy to use for everyone, not just the tech-savvy. Build it to mimic the way people communicate by asking and answering questions. Dont worry about making it perfect technologically. Keep it simple. Some people are still afraid of using wikis, blogs, and other social media because they are complicated. Dont make it part of a larger system: It will lose its meaning and people will not adopt it. Communicate to employees exactly what its for. SabreTown achieved high usage quickly through careful implementation, says Johnson. Here are some key points to remember: gives the inference engine something to work with. As employees of all ages grow more comfortable with social networking tools and companies successfully introduce systems that employees trust and use to exchange information, we should expect to see much more informal learning facilitated with Web 2.0 tools. The research organization Forrester predicts that the market for intranet 2.0 applications will reach $4.6 billion by 2013, with the biggest sellers in employee networking, mashup, and RSS tools. Learning professionals have an important role to play in the facilitation of informal learning through social networking tools. If current trends hold true, many such applications will be closely linked to one of the most basic and instant forms of learning among people at workasking and answering questions about something they need to know right now.
Pat Galagan is editor at large for ASTD; pgalagan@astd.org
Lead by example. Make sure the launch team fills out their profiles quickly and uses the system appropriately. Encourage managers and leaders to use it. Find top executives who are enthusiastic about it and have them use it too. Sabre Holdings CEO, Sam Gilliland, is a user. Use the systems metrics to diagnose the health of the community. If people arent joining groups or arent filling out profiles, push those behaviors with specific communications. Fix roadblocks. The implementation team found that people wouldnt complete their profiles if they didnt have a photo to upload. One solution was to set up a photo station and help people upload their pictures. In communications about the system, keep returning to its value. SabreTown was launched in mid-2007 and nearly 90 percent of employees are using it to ask questions and get information from other employees. The average user makes four visits per month. Sixty percent of questions are answered within one hour, with an average of nine people responding to each question. SabreTown is credited with sub-
The biggest concerns about informal learning revolve around enabling users to generate content, and the fear that those users will post company-sensitive or inaccurate content. I generally tell them to get over it. The most successful companies using Web 2.0 trust their employee base to correct the small percentage of information that wont be appropriate. And guess whatit works.
From the December 2009 T+D article The Web 2.0 Police
Promote behavior that will increase trust in the system. There is no friends list. There are no anonymous posts. All conversations are open to all users. People are accountable for their answers because everyone can see them. Seed the system with questions and answers for the first month or two by selecting some people to overuse it. This populates the system with information, helps move questions along, and
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technology //
The rise of social computing, based on highly innovative, new Web 2.0 technologies, such as MySpace.com, YouTube.com, Digg.com, and Facebook.com, offers a new paradigm for how we approach learning and knowledge sharing, and is beginning to have a powerful impact on corporate learning.
based on highly innovative, new Web 2.0 technologies, such as MySpace.com, YouTube.com, Digg.com, and Facebook. com, offers a new paradigm for how we approach learning and knowledge sharing, and is beginning to have a powerful impact on corporate learning.
The dynamics of the North American workforce are rapidly changing, and that trend is altering how organizations facilitate the transfer of ideas and information to their employees. The millennial generation, globalization, and workforce diversity are changing the rules of traditional knowledge sharing, learning, and training in organizations of all sizes.
Evolution of the workplace
In the pre-industrial age, communities existed to connect people. People joined guilds to find mentors who would help them master their crafts. During the industrial revolution, workplace tasks were divided into small chunks to help employers define their employees roles and responsibilities. With the advent of the knowledge worker, the workplace has undergone another transformation. Now, jobs that involve the most complex type of interactions make up the fastest-growing segments in many industries. A 2005 McKinsey & Company report titled, The Next Revolution in Interactions, examines how workplace tasks are completed in developed economies. It describes a shift from valuing transactional interactionsthose that are routine and involve noncreative interactionto complex interactionsthose that require people to deal with ambiguity and solve problems based on experience or tacit knowledge. The phenomenon of the tacit worker is continuing to rise. Gartner, a research institute, estimates that the frequency of nonroutine situations that require tacit knowledge will double between 2006 and 2010. The reality is that in many industries in which situations change rapidly, formal learning once or twice a year doesnt provide employees with the experience or knowledge they need to find ongoing success on the job. This means that organizations must revamp their budgets and shift their resources from formal learning settings to informal situations in which the majority of learning actually takes place. (A recent study from Forrester Research detailed the rise of social computinginteractions continued through online or other technological meansand its impact on e-learning indicates that more than 80 percent of adult learning takes place outside of the classroom.) While the changing nature of work is key, it is important not to overlook technology trends and how they influence the expectations and requirements of workers. The rise of social computing,
and professional networking opportunities in which peers, mentors, and subject matter experts solve problems. Gartner has recognized CoPs as one of the five best practices for increasing organizational agility. CoPs deliver unique benefits to an organization. The peer-to-peer environment of CoPs fosters employees natural trust in advice from someone in their situation. It also encourages emotional as well as instructional support. CoPs focus on context-specific information sharing rather than advice sharing. Because users seek to solve immediate problems, on-demand information availability is enormously beneficial. CoPs also replace the one-way flow of informationtypical of corporate training programswith fluid, multipronged conversations. CoPs are being used by the United States military to adapt quickly to new situations and address complex challenges. For example, CompanyCommand is an internal Army website in which junior officers who are facing professional challenges can seek guidance from their peers. With this informal learning device, soldiers can get advice quickly to help them make fast and accurate decisions on complex problems. Since its inception, CompanyCommand has received significant recognition
Photos by corbis
technology //
as an example of how innovation and leadership through an informal network can yield incredible results. John Deere, one of oldest industrial companies in the United States, relies on CoPs to drive innovation, efficiency, and lifelong learning by facilitating connections among knowledge workers. Since implementing the current CoP technology in 2002, John Deere has built a network of 300 communities that covers a wide variety of topics from Six Sigma to mergers and acquisitions to the Deere Production System. Subject matter experts are available via email, face-toface meetings, or through online conference. The CoPs at Deere are based on practice areas, and cover best practices, training, mentoring, and peer resources. ganizational oversight, these groups can produce learning resources in a cheaper and more flexible way. participants, and occasional users in the community? l How does this technology integrate with our other learning and collaboration systems? Formal training has been stretched to its limit when it comes to successfully supporting learning for employees facing complex work. Organizations must address the need for informal learning systems that provide on-demand access to critical information while addressing the need for collective intelligence strategies. CoPs help organizations gain a significant competitive advantage.
Learning strategies
Successful communities are built on actual community process and structure, and the technology platform that underpins the system. In planning and building a community, there are multiple factors to consider from the initial planning stages of the project. On the process side, there should be a focus on setting short- and long-term goals for the community and ensuring theres an ongoing plan in place that anticipates many of the common issues associated with their setup and maintenance. Questions that should be considered upfront include l What communities will offer my organization the highest potential return? l How will we find and train community leaders? l How will we continue to engage new users after the launch of the community? For many organizations, technology has proven to be a stumbling block in setting up a CoP With the broad range . of enterprise software systems offering some collaboration or learning functionality, organizations often implement a CoP based on systems designed for purposes other than communities. In an effort to use existing systems or cut costs, organizations end up with limited functionality when they actually require significant customization. When addressing technology as part of an overall CoP strategy, companies should consider the following questions: l What type of functionality does this platform offer the organization? Does it deliver advanced features such as ranking, filtering, and other smart tools that add true value to the community? l Is this technology platform designed to address community-specific challenges? l Does the technology provide features and benefits that address the contributions of leaders, contributors, active
Eric Sauve is the CEO and co-founder of Tomoye, a provider of CoP software and services; esauve@tomoye.com.
Collective intelligence
To effectively leverage workplace trends, a new breed of technology is evolving from the principles of collective intelligence, which emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals. Time and time again, it has been proven that a large group of peers is more adept at solving complex problems than a small group of experts. New technology approaches are now enabling organizations to leverage the Long Tail, a term coined by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, to explain new models that are changing the economics of doing business through the Internet. It is based on a well-known model of statistical distribution. Just as the Long Tail has changed the rules for the flow of products on the Internet, it also has changed the rules for the flow of knowledge in the workplace. Most organizations are trapped in the economics of formal learning approaches, which can be expensive, time consuming, and inflexible. The economics of learning content are changing because organizations are tapping into the next source for enterprise learning contentthe learners themselvesby empowering them to teach each other in community environments. With less or-
The majority of concerns over Web 2.0 technologies can be mitigated through policy implementation. The nature of these technologies means that they cannot be too tightly controlled, otherwise they will never flourish. Too much policing will drain the usefulness right out of the tool.
From the December 2009 T+D article The Web 2.0 Police
Overlooked or Overhyped?
New research indicates that companies are recognizing
Informal Learning:
Informal learning represents a unique and somewhat mysterious method in workplace learning and performance.
So how much informal learning is actually occurring in contemporary workplaces? Is it helping or hindering performance on the job? Do learners even realize the opportunity for gaining actionable information through casual interactions?
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Organizations have begun to realize that the breadth of knowledge gained through informal channels is comparable to that gained through traditional formal methods. However, the specific steps needed to harness the vast potential of informal learning remains puzzling. To better understand the effect of informal learning on organizational performance, the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) recently completed an exploratory study on the topic. The core was an online survey of 1,104 human resources, and learning
Photo by Photos.com
professionals, who completed the survey between March and April 2008. The majority of them (86 percent) were managers, directors, vice presidents, or C-level officers. Most of the respondents represented large enterprises (60 percent had workforces of at least 1,000 people) that operate in multiple nations. Findings from the survey suggest that many organizations face a variety of issues in their handling of informal learning. In fact, feedback from the survey respondents, as well as learning executives advising on the study, indicated that many organizations are struggling with how to define the concept. After careful deliberation, the researchers arrived at the following definition: In this survey, we define informal learning as a learning activity that is not easily recognizable as formal training and performance support. Generally speaking, it takes place without a conventional instructor and is employee-controlled in terms of breadth, depth, and timing. It tends to be individualized, limited in scope, and utilized in small chunks. Survey respondents clearly agree that informal learning as defined is prevalent in their organizations. Nearly half of the respondents reported that it is occurring to a high (34 percent) or very-high (7 percent) extent in their organizations. Only 2 percent claimed that their workforce experienced no informal learning at all. The survey data established the presence of informal learning in almost all organizations, so what are some of the specific tools and processes for its usage? As many in the modern workplace would expect, email emerged as the topranked informal learning tool. Accessing information from a company intranet was a close second, with 65 percent of respondents citing use to a high or very-high degree. More than half of the respondents reported collecting fingertip knowledge, such as Google searches, as having high or very-high use. Some of the notable low scorers included communities of practice, which was cited to a high or very-high degree by only 20 percent of respondents. Voluntary mentoring scored a little higher at 28 percent, and coaching was slightly above that at 30 percent. In light of these findings, learning professionals face the challenge of leveraging informal learning to achieve organizational goals. Workers are clearly accessing knowledge through channels besides official company platforms, so is there any way to ensure that the information acquired is effective? Many of the best practices identified by survey respondents fell into two classes at opposite extremesembracing new technology for information exchange and creating time for face-to-face interactions. Workers are often encouraged to compile information through any technological platform that proves useful. One respondent mentioned that her company created a unique social networking site similar to Facebook, specifically for their employees. Multiple respondents also noted successful knowledge transfer through employee-driven
Workers are clearly accessing knowledge through channels besides official company platforms, so is there any way to ensure that the information acquired is effective?
podcasting, placement of televisions in common areas, and reliance on internal wikis. On the other hand, a large portion of the best practices involved escaping the hectic pace of technologically intensive environments in favor of personal connections. Many respondents stated the need for teams to have regular lunches together to keep ideas and experiences fresh. Rearranging the office layout to facilitate conversations was also mentioned frequently. Informal learning seems to be especially valuable for onboarding, since many respondents identified casual conversations with experienced workers in a buddy system as the best source of knowledge for new hires. As workplace learning shifts from the traditional model of event-based, instructor-driven content, to a continuous knowledge-acquisition paradigm, the focus on informal learning will remain sharp. Although many organizations seem to be in the discovery phase, facilitation of informal platforms, channels, and technologies for learning is becoming mainstream. And despite the difficulties inherent with encouraging, regulating, or even defining the nature of informal, examination of recent trends suggests that it is the natural learning complement to a world that is increasingly on-demand.T+D
Andrew Paradise is a research analyst for ASTD; aparadise@astd.org.
for more detailed results from the informal learning study, as well as asTDs other reports, visit www.astd.org/content/research. for more information on i4cp and their research library, please visit www.i4cp.com.
bout two years ago, the Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board was surveyed on the subject of informal learning. The survey generated a comprehensive and impressive list of 19 informal workforce learning activities, arranged by percentages of importance and frequency. If there were any doubts about the range and depth of unofficial learning, the findings clearly put the concerns of learning specialists to rest. But they also exposed as much as they illumined. Specifically, two major gaps existone of management, the other of structure. Thus, although clearly important, informal workplace learning is generally beyond the pale. Only 8 percent of CLOs surveyed had any comprehensive strategy in place to manage such workforce learning. Of equal or even greater importance, 11 percent were not convinced that it could be managed at all.
Only 2 percent linked informal learning to informal organizational structures. But if informal learning is positioned within the more comprehensive parameters of human performance technology, what immediately becomes apparent is that the subject of informal work learning is paralleled and joined at the hip with unofficial organizational structures and networks. These structures and networks coexist and are differentiated and sustained by a set of assumptions that are different, and beyond business as usual: 1| Informal learning is not an isolated or separable activity, but one that emanates from and is shaped by informal organizational networks. 2| Both inhabit and operate in a somewhat hidden, less official world whose parallels to the official world are often neither acknowledged nor identified.
3| Nevertheless, the connections between the unofficial and the official are discoverable and manageable, as Etienne Wenger notes in Communities of Practice. 4| The key is to bring work learning and structural networking to the surface, and to monitor and display its underlying dynamics as an actual, ongoing, and simulated performance improvement activity. 5| Computer tracking generates the visual patterns of team interactions, diagnosing network flow or obstruction, and thus providing the metrics for measuring and managing solutions and performance improvement. Although the above research has opened doors and provided key guidance, we need to go further. Specifically, we need to find out whether informal learning is not only teachable, but also manageablewhether such training can be tied to performance gains.
One approach is to contemplate what a workshop on informal learning would look like. What are some of the activities a volunteer group of test subjects would be asked to try out as a trial run? Immediately, three dramatic differences from standard offerings surface. First, the workshop initially would be more survey than training paradoxically less output and more inputand be less information-directed and more about information gathering. Second, as such, it obviously would be intensely participatory and even collaborative, compelling the presenter to be a facilitator. Third, outcomes might be so varied, individualized, and even eccentric as to preclude claims of consensus on the one hand, or jeopardize the prospect of collective follow-up on the other.
Given such dynamics, the training goals have to shift accordingly from instruction to discovery; from being company-managed to being self-directed; from policy to environment; from being horizontal or vertical, to multidirectional; and from CLO to HPT, and back again. Such a shift of focus minimally is based on two assumptions. The first assumption is that informal learning affects and reflects organizational structure. The second is that its pervasive and invasive range and depth affirms its importance centrality, and its value as both a learning and structural initiative. In short, difficulty of access may be more than offset by the prospect of comprehensive gains.
examples would be customized on an individual, and not an institutional basis, questions of priorities would have to be similarly decided. Each participant would thus develop a take-away or a personalized profile of his or her informal learning activities arranged in priority order. Workshop copies of each would then provide grist for the mill of minimally two company self-examinations: what structural and environmental obstacles, if any, exist; and what initiatives might be put in place to further enhance and optimize such learning?
What are some of the activities a volunteer group of test subjects would be asked to try out as a trial run?
What is also perhaps clearer, is that the experimental workshop should be a miniature of the whole, and thus involve at least three activitiessubject survey, learning relationships, and knowledge transfer. Fortunately, in all three instances, existing previous bodies of theory and practice on self-directed learning and succession planning can be tapped as is, or adjusted to apply. of the typical interactive dynamics: involvement with co-workers, members of teams, and managers; multidirectional communicationsup, down, and across; and finally, all forms of self-learning, including electronic, outside of the workplace. Then, too, interaction is complicated, taking place across generations, genders, race, religion, and other demographic variables. No wonder so many CLOs let sleeping dogs lie. But to make a start, self-conscious work conversations have to take place. Understand the who, what, where, when, why, and how of each conversation. It is also important to grasp the effects and results that come from them. Workflow thus has to become wordflow. The interactive design of informal learning is shaped by conversations.
1| Survey
As noted, a survey is the first order of business. A tentative definition of informal learning would be offered as a straw man, accompanied by the promise to revisit and even revise that definition at the end. That then would be followed by soliciting a list of examples of informal learning from participants to assemble the widest range of input activities. But just as the compilation of such
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The discovery mode of dialogue is also focused on determining the extent to which it is possible to not only capture the dynamics of informal learning interaction, but also to develop the managerial metrics to direct, track, and evaluate its frequency and quality. Once again, the starting point for such data and pattern gathering is the individual participant. The verbal exchanges need to be granted visual form, with each participant needing to render in pictorial terms the typical interplay with others. The result would be an interactive drawing or series of stills not unlike the separate frames of any animated story. Two techniques that could make the process more manageable and renderable are the visual thinking methodology of mind-mapping, and that of organizational network analysis. The first is a familiar pencil-and-paper version of brainstorming and thus, a tested mode of organizing and structuring multiple parts or offshoots into visual clusters. The latter is technological and involves computer simulations. Pioneered and perfected by Rob Cross of the University of Virginia, the process is obviously too sophisticated to be used and applied by participants in a training situation; though this is not so for its central principle, that each of us is a networkextensive, typically complicated, unfinished, but typically unknown or unacknowledged. So the key benefit here is awarenessfor each participant to explore and identify his informal learning relationships, to link work flow with word flow, to render conversations as information conveyers, and to chart and visualize how the members of a team interact with each other in terms of learning. Thus, although the more manageable process of mindmapping may not generate definitive or computer-generated visuals, it can render a basic picture of some of the essentials and players involved in a learning dynamics environment.
range of informal learning activities has been compiled. Each participant has identified the key players and rendered the range of learning interplay. Hopefully, there is now a clearer understanding not only of how knowledge is acquired and transferred, but also how it is withheld, impeded, or distorted. And even at this limited stage, the
Given such dynamics, the training goals have to shift accordingly from instruction to discovery; from being company-managed to being self-directed.
focus now on knowledge enhancement and transfer can support several more big-picture inquiries and evaluations: What structurally impedes and what facilitates informal learning? What best practices of informal learning are discernible and already operative? What appropriate metrics can be developed to monitor and evaluate such learning? What relationships and linkages should be established between official and unofficial learning initiatives? Should the focus on performance gains be expanded now to include the continuous improvement of learning networks? All of the above could then nicely serve as the agenda for exploring what is missing from the findings of the Business Intelligence Board.T+D
Irving H. Buchen is on the Capella University faculty; ibuchen@msn.com.
At this point, evaluation and recommendation come into play to follow up the basic first cuts. The
The besT of social & informal learning | T+D | 51
Knowledge Delivered
In some companies, people hoard information to get ahead. The future is moving toward a workplace in which employees who are not sharing information and mentoring will not get promoted.
t a bimonthly Friday happy hour, a group of employees shares stories of baseball games and baby showers, interspersed with bits of knowledge about their jobs. Amazingly, people still remember these random pieces of learning come Monday morning, despite being mixed up with personal anecdotes. Tim notes that Donna would be a good future resource on figuring out the new email system. Stephanie invites Aziz to the internal marketing group that brainstorms catchy slogans. To generate further discussion, Trevor posts a wiki summarizing the companys revised mission statement and the process behind it. Informal learning, or social learning, has been around for eons, and was the first method of sharing information within and between groups of people. Suffice it to say its not going anywhere anytime soon. Formal training and workshops account for only 10 percent to 20 percent of what people learn at work, says Jay Cross, one of the foremost experts on informal learning and systems thinking. On his blog, he compares formal learning to passively taking a bus whereas informal learning is like riding a bike, in that the rider chooses the destination and the route. The cyclist can take a detour at a moments notice to admire the scenery or help a fellow rider. Pervading many a workplace in various guises and fast becoming a staple of todays employee diet, the tools of informal learning are being harnessed both inside and outside the training function, infiltrating all parts of the organization.
Aparna Nancherla
Photos by istockphoto.com
An upward trend
In November 2008, ASTD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) conducted Tapping the Potential of Informal Learning, and according to their research, 41 percent of respondents believed informal learning was already occurring to a high or very high extent within their organizations, while 34 percent said it was occurring to a moderate extent. For the purposes of the survey, informal learning was defined as a learning activity that is not easily recognizable as formal training and performance support[taking] place without a conventional instructor andemployeecontrolled in terms of breadth, depth, and timing. Results also showed that 56 percent of survey respondents predicted that the use of informal learning will increase in proportion to all the learning at their organizations, in comparison to only 4 percent who thought it will decrease. There was an especially large gap between the degree to which employees share knowledge and the degree to which they think they should, says Kevin Oakes, CEO and co-founder of i4cp. In other words, seasoned employees share their insights at a lesser rate than that which was expected by respondents. Bridging this gap would come through building an environment of
open communication whereby after employers provide the tools, workers are encouraged to use them. Employees will often go around companies if senior leaders do not step up and embrace change. Oakes says that its about finding the people who are knowledge centers within the organization, and then building a database around them to capture this knowledge. The study, which was based on a survey of more than 1,100 business and learning professionals, also found that informal learning has a large impact on organizations, despite little investment in it. For instance, 36 percent of participants said their training budgets dont allocate any money for informal learning, while 42 percent noted that only 1 to 10 percent of their companys training budget is allocated to informal learning. The implications of this finding indicate that though investment in informal learning may be low, it actually provides high impact at low cost. Cross voiced his opinion in an interview at the 2009 Learning Technologies conference. He noted that the most cost-effective methods of informal learning he has encountered thus far include wikis, blogs, and other easily accessible, open source methods in which people are finding out what they need, when they need it.
Informal learning fits the context of todays knowledgeon-the-go world, where information is best processed in small information bites.
tions that are low in cost and high in cost-effectiveness. Traditional methods of training have shown rapid knowledge loss, says Tom Hoglund, a senior executive who runs the collaboration and knowledge management practice on a global basis for the consulting firm Accenture. For example, he notes that 60 percent of material can be forgotten 24 hours after a formal class is given. Hoglund also cites a study from the State University of New York where students who listened to a podcast of a class scored 15 percent better on a test than students who attended the live class. Informal learning fits the context of todays knowledge-on-the-go world, where information is best processed in small information bites. Its a perfect storm of pressures from the budget and newer generations of workers, and companies that have had success with informal learning are seeing good results, says Hoglund. Josh Bersin, CEO and president of Bersin Associates, a research and advisory firm for enterprise learning and talent management solutions, also agrees that learning needs to be primarily driven by workers. Formalizing informal learning is coming up with a learning architecture and a plan on how people can communicate with each other and share information in a structured firm, he says. In some companies, people hoard information to get ahead. The future is moving toward a workplace in which employees who are not sharing information and mentoring will not get promoted. There are already many examples of companies that are utilizing informal learning successfully.
regarding its training budget and how to face increasing demands, Sun Microsystems, a network services and solutions provider, instituted an open learning exchange called Sun Learning eXchange (SLX). According to Joe Campbell, director of global sales and services and leadership learning at Sun, it was created with a few goals in mindgiving leaders an alternative to formalized learning, taking advantage of expertise within the community, and harvesting knowledge within the community. SLX is now a platform containing more than 5,000 pieces of informal learning, the majority of which are objects aimed at increasing productivity, aiding sales and technical support, and providing internal marketing. Any employee can contribute to the site, and the formats of learning bites include PDFs, podcasts, and video. The media is also downloadable via iTunes, thereby creating a mobile platform. One interesting result that came out of the site launch was the creation of five-minute fridays, which was a video method in which senior executives could communicate directions and strategy to the rest of the employees. SLX has been easily embraced by Suns employee learning audience, more than half of which works from home. Another aspect of Suns learning innovation is that their formal course curriculum leverages their informal content. Their course player is a compendium of informal information including links to books and news, tag clouds, and media, much of which has been launched formally by being broken down into course-like structures. In doing so, Suns learning team cut its program development time by 90 percent. Sun works to use the appropriate tools to solve the relevant problems,
using a changing conception of learning to leverage what we are looking for, which depends on what the end user wants to accomplish, explains Campbell. Evidence of Suns customization of their learning solutions can be found in their multitude of CLOs. There is a different CLO for each major region of business operations, 16 in total, to help fulfill a multitude of learning needs in global markets and at various stages of development. To attract future employees, Sun works to create web-based communities for high school and college students. The organization also aims to eliminate the digital divide by offering OpenOffice, MySQL, and other open source community training offerings.
From a company standpoint, growing a culture that highlights informal learning often leads to positive byproducts such as engaged employee intrapreneurs. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, an intrapreneur is a person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation. One illustrative example would be that of Qualcomm, a wireless technology solutions company that prides itself on encouraging innovation from its employees. Tamar elkeles, the companys CLO, created a presentation called Fostering Intrapreneurship in Challenging Times, in which she elaborates on the many creative learning opportunities available at Qualcomm. One corporate storytelling program titled 52 Weeks at Qualcomm represents a collection of short historical stories that illustrate the spirit of the organization, and are captured from interviews with the most senior employees. During the onboarding program, new employees are sent one story a week for their entire first year to teach them about the culture. Qualcomm also has programs called the employee Tradeshow, the Qualcomm Technology Forum (QTech), and the Venture Fest. The employee Tradeshow is an annual event that occurs both on site at the company headquarters in San Diego, California, as well as online through video demos and an interactive web experience. The idea behind the event is to expose employees across the organization to the various projects occurring across different levels and functions. each company division is provided with a booth to educate others about their work. QTech is an annual three-day conference that allows engineers to collaborate on ideas, share best practices, and listen to keynote speakers. Only 30 percent of submitted presentations and papers are granted admission to the conference, which is streamed live to all company offices. Venture Fest is an annual business plan competition open to all employees, the winning ideas from which are then funded internally. The principle behind the contest is that every employee should have the opportunity to create and develop potential business ideas. In addition, Qualcomm Innovation Forum is a simple web tool built into the company system for idea generation. employees, the majority of whom are engineers, are able to submit, discuss, rate, and tag ideas, and a subject matter expert database is available as well. Currently, the site has more than 600,000 views and counting, and more than 1,800 ideas generated. none of these tools and programs is a cost-heavy investment, but the payoff is dramatic and multifold. Qualcomms culture is one that encourages the main tenet behind informal learningthe sharing and exchanging of knowledge that in turn benefits the organization.
the method is first used. Other types of measurement are coaching or leadership 360-degree feedback mechanisms, as well as seeking both qualitative and quantitative feedback from delegates in the programs. One companys very purpose is to aggregate informal learning bites as an online job resource for any employee. EmployAid.com is a site founded on the principle of extreme learning, or informal learning at its highest level. It provides skills and strategies in the form of articles, videos, and podcasts. Issues covered include how to sell, how to negotiate, working with peers, working with supervisors, and work-life balance. Employees learn from each other what I would call basic survival skills, says Barbara Poole, founder of EmployAid. I see a real abandonment in organized functions, and people are searching for informal learning.
Though Phillip Kim, executive vice president of marketing at VoIP provider M5 Networks, adds, I think its detri mental to formalize something before you even know what it is, and then try to teach it. Kim notes that having a culture of collaboration is essential before necessarily running out and investing in the latest tools that are not the be-all and end-all of informal learning, which takes place at any given moment. Finally, an underdeveloped organizational learning culture is one in which functions are highly centralized and the training function is not aligned with any of the other business functions. To do informal learning well, you really have to study the patterns of communication inside the company and understand how the roles interact until you get a sense of where people do go for information and where people can go for information, says Bersin. Furthermore, sharing informal knowledge should be implemented into a companys reward structure, says Mark Salisbury, author of ILearning: How to Create an Innovative Learning Organization. These rewards can come in hard or soft formsfor example, a compensation package or a promotionbut the important piece is that disseminating knowledge is a regular part of the formal appraisal process. The idea is to move toward a culture that celebrates sharing information. You should spend 20 percent of your day creating informal knowledge and documenting it, notes Salisbury.
learning because otherwise, they will find themselves marginalized in the business. Cross notes that the near future is a place where the word training will be retired. These days, where knowledge work is at the discretion of the knowledge worker, I think learning is a more appropriate concept to go with. He visualizes the fast-changing work environment as a world of intangibles, where inside knowledge is better shared and retained via peers or social networking platforms rather than communicated in the classroom. Its not informal learning taking over everything; its a modernization of the learning function, says Bersin, whose company is working on a visual framework that describes what this learning world will look like, to help people see where they are and where they need to go. He adds, Its more of an evolution than a revolution. T+D
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