Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that I changed the title of my main blog from “Learning in the Social Workplace” to “Workforce Collaboration” Why? Well, to try and avoid the “learning” word or at least the term “social learning”! Let me explain.

Despite the fact that numerous studies have shown that most workplace learning takes place outside training - the term “learning” is for many people still synonymous with training. They simply don’t realize (or value the fact) they are learning (ie acquiring new knowledge and skills) every day in everything they do – because they have been conditioned to believe that learning only happens in a classroom or an online course – that involves studying or memorization – and when a teacher is involved.

As social tools have emerged and are being used by individuals to address their own learning and performance problems (outside training), I thought these old perceptions might change, but unfortunately the term “social learning” is now being used to refer to the use of “social media for training” – despite the fact that “social learning” is something that happens all the time – with or without social media tools – and in fact takes place far more outside training than within it! ....

Read the rest of the post here

"There have been a couple of posts recently on the topic of whether organisations need to have a new role of a Chief Collaboration Officer (CCO) . This is something close to my heart as I am in fact Senior Director of Collaboration in the Internet Time Alliance, and I have been working recently with a few organisations as they grapple with what it means to support a collaboration culture across the whole of their business. So today I want to take a look at what it might mean to be a CCO – and who might take on that role."

Read the rest of this post on the Learning in the Social Workplace blog

Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2012 Time: 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM GMT   | 1.30-2.30 PM ET |  10.30-11.30 AM PT

Reserve your seat for the webinar now – there are 100 places available - https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/511613190

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

You can find more information about the webinar here

OK, these skills are not actually “new” – they’ve always been present – but perhaps they have not always been as visible as they should have been, as Oscar Berg explains in The collaboration pyramid (or iceberg). But, as businesses transform into social businesses, the social workplace is going to become more and more reliant on these skills ...

Read the rest of the article here

“A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.” (Wikipedia)

I’ve been preparing some extended notes for some presentations about The Social Learning Revolution – in particular how social media is impacting all our working and learning lives, and what this means for the Learning & Development department.   I’ve been looking at the following:

How we have traditionally understood “learning” in the workplace and how we really learn in the workplace

• How we are using social media in the workplace and how the Training Department is responding
• How social businesses are emerging and how we can really support social learning in the social business
• What new services will be  needed in the social business to support social learning  and the new role of the workplace learning professional.

If you would like to read my extended notes together with thumbnail images of the slides I will be using, you can find them here: The Social Learning Revolution 

Here is my pick of 10 articles about social learning since my last posting just before Christmas. I have listed them below in chronological order, and also added a short quote from each of them to give you a flavour of what each is about. If you want to read further articles you will find many more that I have saved in my 2012 Reading List ....

Read the full post in myLearning in the Social Workplace blog

Here's the latest news from the Social Learning Centre - what's been happening in January and what’s coming up in February? Membership has now reached over 700.  For non-members I've been adding some new (free) resources and some free on-demand tutorials.  How to use Twitter for social learning is particularly popular.

First of all, the Introduction to social learning in the workplace programme begins on 20 February. I want to build a small group of participants with a common interest so that we can have some good discussions around this topic. There are a few places left, so let me know if you would like to join this one. Details are on the page (link above).

Secondly, on 22 February, I have my first In Conversation with .. webinar, with Jane Bozarth. This is going to be fun. It won’t be the normal presentational-style webinar, but a dialogue where I talk to Jane about her job, her books, and her thoughts about the use of social media in the workplace. Joining instructions once again are on the In conversation with Jane Bozarth webinar page, and how you can also information on how to leave your questions for Jane.

I am lining up a number of great guests for this series of webinars; and you can find out who’s coming up on the Webinars page.

During January I also added a few more interest groups to the list including: Google applications for Learning, Social Learning Theory, Meet the ITA Team  and Community Leadership. You can view the full list of interest groups here.

I’ve also enabled the site-wide Activity stream so you can get a better view of all the public activity.  You can use this to post directly into the groups of which you are a member (and these are listed in the pull-down menu), so that other  group members are notified of it.  Note, if you post into your Profile – it will only be visible in the Activity stream and in your profile.

Updates in the group and site-wide Activity stream are also now editable within 10 minutes of posting – so if you realise you made a typo, you can now easily correct it.

And just a reminder, that both members and non-members can keep up to date with general news about the Social Learning Centre by subscribing to the RSS feed.