Reflections on Harold Jarche's session (LSG13)

Social learning has been an area of real interest for me in the last two years.  I've encountered Harold Jarche's ideas a great deal in that time through his blog and the Social Learning Centre, so it was great to finally see him run a live talk and actually speak to him afterwards.

We normally find that social learning is dismissed as something that is hard to measure and intangible.  Yet increasingly it is the intangibles that make up the real value of our businesses, so let's challenge that assumption, and think about how social learning can fit with organisational goals.  Most of the learning strategies we already use, such as ADDIE and ISD, come from the military, where they also know the value of training people in a social environment - individual members aren't effective unless they are trained to work together, and share their knowledge.

Meanwhile, back in the business, we often find that sharing of knowledge can border on career suicide, because we reward the wrong behaviours.  Whilst this may sound like an unbreakable deadlock, the tide is turning as we move away from standardised work and rely on creativity and innovation.  You can't automate these things, only encourage them through a culture of openness and sharing.  Harold has been a great advocate of these approaches, especially through his 'Seek-Sense-Share' model in the building of online communities, an area that I have been exploring in depth lately.

Some of the problems with organisational learning, and our education system in general, stem from our acceptance of the printed word and the linear thinking that it instils in us.  This tends to reinforce a hierarchical organisation, that we need to combat by encouraging real learning skills within our organisation, such as Personal Knowledge Management.

I'm becoming ever more keen on this approach, although I have encountered some of the problems associated with working across silos, and resistance to different ways of learning.  Seeing Harold's talk has given me some fresh enthusiasm for keeping up the battle!


See also: Learning & Skills Conference 2013 curated backchannel resources.

Online communities - trying to walk the talk

Some more reflections from Learning Technologies 2013, this time thinking about Jane Hart's session. I've been involved with online learning for quite some time, steadily developing my ability to design effective e-learning materials in one form or another, but perhaps my most powerful experiences have been through online discussion with peers. I've been part of two communities in this respect: a formal community of enquiry for my Masters course, and of course Jane's own Social Learning Centre, although I must confess I've not had enough time to participate in all the activities that I'd like to!

After so many positive experiences of using informal tools for learning, I've been very keen to start bringing some of the benefits to my own colleagues, but progress has been quite slow, since it's not always seen as a priority. My quick wins here have been to bring in the social tools alongside traditional training events, which Jane identifies as being the 'social training' approach, as opposed to full social collaboration. Amongst my L&D colleagues, I've been able to get some engagement in longer term online communication, but this has been a little patchy without some clear goals to focus on. However, as Jane notes, communities don't have to last forever to be successful.

Where do I go from here? Well, my current module for my Masters module is Research Methods, so I thought that some kind of study of the online interactions we get at work would be a helpful next step, both to learn good research practice and consider ways to encourage and sustain communities, or at least to get the most out of social training initiatives. After several weeks of study and blog posts, I've learned a lot about research methods and online communities, but I still feel like I'm barely scratching the surface - as Jane said in her final step:

"Do not underestimate the time it takes to nurture a group or community"

 Link to my Research Methods blog: http://jimmyhob-el-researchmethods.blogspot.co.uk/

Reflections on LSG11 - Andy Tedd's session

Andy Tedd's session was of particular interest to me, since I started this blog to help me track what I've been learning from social media over the last couple of months...

We all know how to use social media, don't we?

DON'T WE?!

Apparently not, as many campanies are getting far too friendly with the #FAIL hashtag on Twitter.  So what is stopping us from putting these tools to best use? Usually it seems to be coming down to an unsupportive environment for communications - we're worried that we might look foolish, and sometimes we are right in this because there are consequences for getting it wrong, but too much fear will cripple us.  Companies can be criticised on social networking sites for getting things wrong, even they don't have a real presence there, so what's the difference?  And how can we break the cycle?

For a start, we have to leave behind our expectation that all corporate information should appear in a polished, professional format.  It turns out that the less complete the information seems, the more people feel invited to comment and leave their mark, and that should start getting them engaged with the process instead of being passive consumers of information.  The next step is for people in positions of influence to let the debate run freely, as they can often inadvertently stifle the conversation.  If this is happening too much, then it's a sign that your culture has to change.

Oh, and one very important point that has just been brought home via @JaneBozarth on Twitter, Social Media is not the same as Social Learning!  Social learning is not something that has been 'discovered', nor is it something to be 'implemented', and anyone who thinks that way will only succeed in throttling motivation (thanks @hjarche for inspiration too!)

More ideas on using social media for learning

I've just come across a whitepaper on increasing the use of social media within an intranet (Ward, 2010).  One of my colleagues is working on introducing a new intranet within my workplace, so I though it would be a good idea to have a look at what Ward believes are essential ingredients for success.  I'm definitely in agreement with the idea that a social intranet must include access to social media tools direct from the main intranet portal - these are certainly present on the intranet I use, so does it qualify as a social intranet?  Unfortunately the 'wide participation' hasn't started yet.  We have some executive blogs, and there are some comments on them, but the wider body of employees haven't engaged yet, so what is missing?  We've got the tools that people are supposedly coming to demand, but they haven't, well, come...

The problem doesn't seem to be unique to my workplace.  There is a lack of engagement with intranet tools across a wide variety of companies.  Ward identifies the same missing factor that I have been working to remedy - it simply isn't part of the culture, and that needs to be changed.  Since I'm not in a management position, and am approaching from an educational perspective, I'm planning to lead and promote conversations.  I believe there are sufficient tools in place to get those conversation going properly, and I'm having success with the group that I work with, so now I need to persuade other departments that my approach has merit, and build up the groundswell that can lead to company-wide support to realise the potential of a social intranet.

The case study shows that an effective social intranet doesn't neceessarily have to employ expensive social media tools to increase employee engagment and yield positive results, such as a saving of 400,000 Euros from ideas contributed by employees.  The flip side of this is that a company that doesn't implement an effective social intranet policy 'risks being left behind or outright failure', according to Prescient's survey.  Again, the problem doesn't seem to be lack of availability, since the tools are so cheap.  It is employee disatisfaction with the tools - or as I word re-word it: it's employee perception of the tools, because they don't get a sense of satisfaction from using them.  That perception is something that I want to change.

References:

Ward, T., 2010.  The Social Intranet: Key factors for Intranet 2.0 success; Social Intranet Success Matrix.  Prescient Digital Media Whitepaper [online].  Available at: <http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/download-social-intranet-success-matrix> [Accessed 16 May 2011]