Image via Wikipedia

WHY #2: Social Learning Personalizes Learning.

The next verb of Social Learning is that it will personalize your learning. I don’t know how many training classes I have been to that I was told what I was going to learn instead of learning what I felt I needed to learn to do my job. Some of the instruction I definitely needed – other instruction I didn’t. But in the end I may not have received the answers to my questions.

Learner distraction often is high in training classes because their mind is on their work, yet they are being pulled away to learn something that is not relevant to them at that moment. No wonder they only take away and use 10% of it! (or so)

So we need to ask ourselves, who’s agenda is it that a person learns a particular subject or information. If the answer is not ‘the learner’ then it is not social learning. Instead of forcing someone to learn a subject, it is discovered by the learner.

Like BarCamp, social learning is personalizes the learning to the individual, not to the training class or even to the company as a whole, but to the individual. I want to know something - that topic now becomes my quest for information instead of it being spoonfed. And I want it in the amount I want it, not through some large training class. Training classes have their place, but I learn MUCH more outside of them than I ever do inside.

Experience:

My clothes washer was leaking. In order to skirt the Maytag repairman coming out, I went online and found a forum. It not only let me to the problem, but let me to the solution. I followed the steps and solved the problem. In the steps it said that one task would take two people. I figured out how to do it in one. That is something that I can give back.

This experience we very personal to me. I didn’t have to take a class on repairing washers. The learning happened how I needed it, when and in the amount I needed it. No more, no less, perfectly personalized for me.

Have you had similar experiences in a professional setting?

(Repost from Engaged Learning)

We’ve put the next happy hour out there on Upcoming.org  This is not a sponsored event, just an intentional meet up.  Hope to see you at the next First Friday!

Click here for more information!

Thanks!

Image by ____federico____ via Flickr

Jim and I met earlier this year.  He is doing his doctoral dissertation by creating a case study examining the use of wikis and podcasts for training and performance improvement within an organization.  The company he was working with changed leadership and decided not to participate in the research.  In fact, their commitment to using Web 2.0 tools was in question.  (Boo!)

From Jim’s email:

Photo from Flickr by Thomas Hawk

WHY #1: Social Learning FOCUSES on People.

What this means could be different for everyone.  But I think that there are many similarities.  (ASIDE:For some reason, whenever I think about this, Barbara Streisand starts singing in my head.)

This is what it means to me.

First, social learning focuses on people rather than focusing on a presenter or instructor.  This may be a little scary to some, and  others see this as threatening to their job.  Instead of being a presenter we need to become a true facilitator of learning no matter what the mode.  It is a slight change of wording, but a large paradigm shift.  It is not a one way street – the instructor to the pupil.  Instead of the main contact being from teacher to student, it is student to student.  Because we focus on people, we want to help them exchange ideas and learn from each other.  We facilitate conversation, share resources, share information.

Second, it is not focused on content because we are not the ones creating it anymore.  It’s the learner who is creating the content.  For example, if you go out on a public drive at your company, you can learn a lot.  But how do you find it all?  And which folder do you look in?  Which version of the document that you found is the correct one.  And who ‘owns’ it?  This lesser approach focuses on the content itself and on the document instead of the person. This is why I am not a fan of Microsoft’s SharePoint - it centers on files and content.  I prefer systems that focus on the people, and there are plenty of them (a shortlist here).

Another thing it does not do is focus on the legal or corporate mandates.  For example, being forced to take sexual harassment training.  In our new of environment we are not focused on what one MUST do, but on what they CAN do according to their individual needs, not according to the needs of the organization.  And that is really the crux of it.  Focusing on what the learners want and need, not on what the organization wants or needs.  (Not that there shouldn’t be mandates from a company on training, but this is not the focus in this context.)

What it DOES do, is it gives the “power to the people” and allows them to take control of their learning. This may seem like craziness at first, but hold on to this thought: They already have control.  As much as we learning professionals like to think we have control, we don’t.  Influence, yes.  Control, no.  For example, how many of you have created (in your estimation) the best training and still had someone give you a bad Level 1 score or they fell asleep?  It has happened to us all.  Yes, they have control.

In my next series post I will give you a fabulous example of this and talk about the ramifications of focusing on people.

Until then…  What does “Focusing on the People” mean (or not mean) to you?

Related Post

• Corporate Community Trend: Focus on People

(Repost from Engaged Learning)

Image by Steve Keys via Flickr

One thing I am not is a natural salesman.  I have given it the old college try in past lives, but it was not my cup of tea.  Until I found that if I LOVED the product (like I do this) I can sell anything.

At the beginning, after having this social learning idea in my head for awhile, I realized that what I needed to do was sell it.  So, I tried.  I told people what social learning was, how it might work and why they would like to use it.  It took some time, but I realized that I had this all backwards. Let me explain…

The first time I tried to introduce social learning to an organization, I created a plan and took it to my boss.  He asked a few questions and said, “I like it.  I like it a lot.  But we would need to explain this to the president.  He wouldn’t get it like this.  Redo it and come back.”  So, I did.  I tried to explain it a different way and went back.  Again, his reaction was, “Still good stuff, but the president won’t get it.”  So, for the third time I restructured it, tried another way of explaining it and gave it to my boss.  His reaction this time surprised me.  He said, “Oh, now I get it! I love it!  That is exactly what we need.  Let’s talk to the president about this.”

I suddenly realized that my boss was just being nice the first two times.  He could tell there was something there, but from my explanations he couldn’t put his finger on it.  It wasn’t until I talked about something that was near and dear to his hear and applied social learning to that, that he finally got it.

The first two times I explained WHAT it was, HOW it worked and WHY we should do it.  What I needed to do was the opposite: WHY / HOW / WHAT. But to even deliver the first part I needed to understand why he wanted to hear about it.  Only at that point could I deliver an effective ‘WHY’.

When we talk about they WHY, they listen.  Then we tell them how we can help them with the “HOW”.  Then comes the “What”.  But often times we don’t even need to tell them the ‘What’ at this point because they make up their own ‘What’.  I don’t care what they call it.  Just as long as they know why it will help them and how it may work.

Previously I approached explaining social learning leading with a noun instead of a verb.

When we start with a verb we are stating what it is doing, the action, state or relation this thing may have.  There is the real value.  Nouns don’t intrinsically have value.  That something is expressed by a verb.

I know this almost seems like a rudimentary grammar or sales lesson, but it is an important point.  We must teach the WHYs behind social learning.  Teach the verbs.  Then let them apply it to their situation and their circumstances and they will understand it.  Too often I have watched people get caught up in the ‘What’ only to find that they are not having success.

So to help you articulate what social learning is, we will cover the 11 WHY’s in the following posts, all focused on the verbs – focused on what social learning does.

Do you have any short “I did it wrong” stories you can share?

(Reposted from Engaged Learning)

Related articles

• Designing Online Social Networks: The Theories of Social Groups
• Top 10 Tips for Web 2.0

Image via Wikipedia

I am often in the position of talking with others who somewhat get what social learning is. They know enough that it would be good for their organizations. They see the benefits. They can inherently feel that this will help their groups. But they would be hard pressed to explain what it is, it’s benefits and why the company should use it.  I used to be as speechless as the Thinker myself —->

The way we know we really know something is by explaining it to someone else. But it isn’t until we can articulate our thoughts and knowledge to others that truly begin to understand it. We must be able to verbalize what it is we are thinking before we can really say that we know a topic.

So, how do YOU articulate social learning and explain it to others? Most importantly, how do you explain it to the executives who are sceptical and have heard rumors of how evil anything that starts with ‘social’ is? How do you explain to the babyboomer who is on the front line what social learning is and why it would benefit them?

I have found that it isn’t until we can do this – and do it well – that we’ll be able to implement social learning. This is the first step to the world outside of yourself.

Over the next several posts I will be going through what it takes to explain social learning to others.  Its not an easy task, but I have found some things that help.

So, a question for all.  When asked to concisely explain what it is and why a company would want to use it, what do you say?

(This series will be a repost from the Engaged Learning Blog)

Join us for the Social Learning SIG’s October Webinar

Title: Informal Learning in the 21st Century

Description: There’s a true transformation happening on the Internet. The passive read-only experience of static web pages is changing into active participation via the read-write web. Our children are on Facebook and listening to podcasts on their Ipods, and every day we hear about blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and the like. We know the online world is changing. We know that an interactive web will have profound implications for us as learning professionals - but what does it all really mean?

In this session you’ll get a guided tour of how new rich-media and collaboration technologies are changing the face of the web, and how learning organizations are leveraging these technologies to better serve their customers.

Host: Cascadia Chapter of ASTD

Presenter: Bill Bruck of Q2 Learning

When: Friday 17 October 2008, 11:00 AM - Noon, Pacific

Audio: The audio is Voice over IP (VoIP) and is not over a conference call. To listen, you will need to have headphones connected to your computer.

REGISTER TODAY: https://admin.acrobat.com/_a791885149/octslsig/event/event_info.html