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SOCIALLEARNING

Bringing it into your blends

by Totara Learning in association with Julian Stodd

www.totaralms.com/social

SOCIAL LEARNING: THE COMPLETE GUIDES, FROM TOTARA LEARNING

PART THREE

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Social learning is already happening in your organisation. As Learning Designers, we need to be aware of its potential, and provide an environment in which social learning can flourish, through tools and effective blended learning design.

IT’S FOR: Learning professionals looking to bring a social learning dimension to

blended programmes and the learning ecosystem in

their organisations.

IT’S ABOUT:The role of social learning in the organisation, ways to bring social into your blends, and the role of

the LMS.

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Social learning is pervasive. One way we can think of social learning is the semi- formal layers that surround formal learning experiences. It’s the water cooler conversations in response to a training event, but on a larger scale.

Learning is no longer just about being trained to do a task, but about learning with and from one another as we do our jobs. In these semi-formal spaces, facilitated by technologies such as Totara Social, individuals can come together to make sense of the formal learning; to co-create meaning and share it with the group. The tools support people connecting, co-creating content, collaborating and learning from one another whilst we are doing the job we are learning about. Through the sharing of resources, ideas and experiences, learning becomes more present, situational and therefore more relevant to the individual.

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Social learning is already part of the modelAs learning professionals, it’s probably fair to say that the majority of effort goes into the design of formal learning experiences – courses and blended designs. However, that formal element only counts for the 10% of the 70/20/10 formula. It’s in the 70/20 that the pervasiveness of social learning becomes clear.

• What enables us to make sense and create learning from our on the job experiences (i.e. the 70%)? In moments when we are working on solutions together, sharing, reading and writing blogs, actively reflecting – these are key social learning moments.

• Asking questions, following influencers and learning from our peers are other dimensions of social learning.

• Reflecting on what worked (or didn’t work) in a presentation, then actively reflecting then sharing lessons learned – that’s sense making via social learning.

Participating in a group discussion on how to solve a difficult work problem, sharing ideas, and commenting on the suggestions of others – that’s collaboration via social learning. And while these are not new approaches to work, social learning tools have given us new ways to collaborate on a different scale.

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Social learning is ingrained in the learning models that underpin most formal blended learning programmes.

Kolb’s Learning Cycle has a strong social element in the guise of ‘reflective observation’:

1 When people are learning how to do something for the first time (New);

2 When people are expanding the breadth and depth of what they have

learned (More);

3 When they need to act upon what they have learned, which includes

planning what they will do, remember-ing what they may have forgotten, or adapting their performance to a unique situation (Apply);

4 When problems arise, or things break or don’t work the way they

were intended (Solve); and,

5 When people need to learn a new way of doing something, which

requires them to change skills that are deeply ingrained in their performance practices (Change).

Whatever learning models you subscribe to, the truth is that we very rarely learn about something in isolation. We may learn the facts and even the skill but it is through practice, feedback, reinforcement and further sharing of expertise from others that we achieve ‘mastery’ of something. That’s very much the proving ground for social learning.

Opportunities for social learning also percolate through the 5 moments of learning need:

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SO CAN YOU CONTROL IT?

A common question from L&D communities is how can I control this thing called “social learning”? In truth, it’s self-defeating to try to do so. Learners create their own relationships and meaning when using social tools. There’s an example of one organisation in which learners created their own Facebook group as an offshoot from the company’s onboarding programme. They didn’t ask for permission, L&D didn’t facilitate it, nobody managed it.

To bring social learning into your organisation, you need to first recognise that, to some degree, it sits outside of direct organisational control. Our role is more to create the environment, opportunities and tools to enable social learning to flourish.

CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR SOCIAL LEARNING IN YOUR ORGANISATION.

Social learning – the water cooler – has always been there. Now technology has helped it to scale. Social learning tools and technology have matured as a response to the modern workplace. Learners are under increasing pressure to problem solve rapidly, work more collaboratively at scale across distances,

and do it all without the opportunity cost of lots of formal learning.It’s up to the learning professional to respond to these needs, and support social learning as part of blended experiences. There’s no one right answer or way.

Done well, we can embed the elements of Social Learning throughout a learning journey: not just stick it alongside or on the end. Unfortunately, so often in blended or formal learning programmes, the social learning element is an afterthought, or absent completely. Platforms like Totara Social can overcome this challenge by offering a flexible, secure, integrated part of the learning ecosystem.

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IN PRACTICE: DOES SOCIAL LEARNING WORK FOR EVERY SUBJECT? Subjects like management and leadership lend themselves extremely well to social learning, where a group collaborates to solve a problem or agree on an approach.

If you’re doing compliance training or something that requires precise compliance with process, a purely social learning approach may not be appropriate. However if you are discussing the challenges of implementing that process, it may be exactly right. Why? Because the conversations and ‘sense making’ and sharing activities that take place in social learning exactly suit that type of uncovering of meaning. If supported and harnessed well, social learning supports people at a very practical level in the workplace.

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tools whenever and wherever there’s a need, whenever you’re in the 70/20 space. In essence, whenever and wherever you’re working.

For these reasons, social learning works better when it’s tightly connected to, but separate from, the LMS.

Totara Social, for example, is a standalone system that enables social learning and supports organisation-wide communication and collaboration. It can be linked to from the LMS but it stands alone as an Enterprise Social Network. In the same way you wouldn’t expect to go through your LMS to access an intranet, enterprise social learning tools should work independently.

Should social learning live inside the LMS?You probably have a Learning Management System (LMS) in your organisation. A LMS is an Enterprise system that provides access to, and tracks completion of, your formal learning programmes. But should it be the home of social learning - the other elements in your blend - as well?

In our view, the LMS (even Totara LMS) isn’t the best place for social learning. 70/20/10 is not an invitation to the LMS to change its purpose and become a social platform. It has an important job to do and should stay focused on that.

The LMS is the home of structured, formal learning. It’s typically not where you have breakout discussions, or where you collaborate to solve a problem, or go to canvas people for their response to an idea. Nor is it typically where your learners ‘hang out’ and build their personal social networks when they’re not engaged in a formal learning programme. If social learning is tied too tightly into the LMS, you’re potentially sending a message that social learning should only happen in the context of formal blended programmes – and of course we want people to use social

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1  People offer CHALLENGE to others, providing feedback on what we feel

and why we feel it.

2  The community can provide TEMPO, maintaining momentum in

conversations and learning.

3  We build SHARED VISION of a subject, a shared understanding,

built through the conversations and reinforcement.

4  Communities can provide space for REFLECTION, both internally and

into the community through the stories we share.

Social blends with co-creation

Within online communities, we see co-creative processes at work. Co-creation is the process of interaction that takes place in shared spaces, but it’s more than just arguing about things: we can see distinct activities taking place and, by understanding what these activities are, we can structure social learning to take advantage of this within our blended learning designs.

THESE ARE THE SEVEN TRAITS OF CO-CREATION:

5  Alongside the shared vision of a subject, we build SHARED

VALUES, particularly around subjects like management, leadership or responsibility. Communities allow us to rehearse views.

6  We can REFINE our understanding, iteratively. Much of the Social Age is

about iteration.

7  Finally, we can EDIT our language as we rehearse and refine our

understanding.

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The end result is that we build our own vocabulary and understanding around learning. We can support this by providing spaces and activities that achieve each of these things.

This process can be wrapped around formal learning interventions as part of a blend.

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CASE STUDY: ORGANISED COLLABORATION AS PART OF FORMAL BLEND

A co-creation task was used by a financial services organisation in a leadership curriculum. Cohorts of senior leaders were tasked with writing a blog post that shared their insights on a particular approach to leadership. The posts themselves were then curated and shared with the wider community.

The task was made sufficiently challenging that the groups needed to reach out and involve other people or carry out research. A safe space was created for them to share stories of their learning: what was hard, what was easy.

To do this well, you will need to actively be involved: facilitating, not just moderating the content.

IN PRACTICE: HOW TOTARA SOCIAL CAN SUPPORT CO-CREATION

• In Totara Social, you can create groups to enable co-creation. For example, this could be a response to a case study problem, or a shared document setting out an approach.

• Group members can edit documents in real time, making it a shared workspace as well as a social learning experience.

• Members of the group can propose ideas, and others can vote and comment on the ideas, building consensus during co-creation.

• In doing this, members are also building a personal learning network of colleagues.

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Social blends with collaboration We can view collaboration through two frames: organised and emergent.

In an organised framework, we assemble the groups (externally moderated collaboration) and set them tasks, so we are providing both the structure and narrative for them to work around.

In an emergent framework (internally moderated collaboration), the community is emergent, often around a specific shared interest or problems, location or time, and they choose both their space and purpose, as well as the narrative of their learning. We in the learning community don’t manage or organise it. In other words, organised collaboration has a set community, purpose and duration whilst emergent collaboration sets its own.

As learning designers, the way we facilitate both of these needs to be different, so it’s a more nuanced view than simply trying to generate engagement.

For organised collaboration we need to:

1Be clear who is in the Group and why

2 Be clear who owns the space and how it is moderated (or not)

3 Set clear purpose: what do you want people to do? e.g. problem

solve, propose new ideas, design a new process, co-create content etc.

4 Create links to supporting materials

5 Use a mix of formal and informal resources as appropriate

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For emergent or spontaneous collaboration we need to:

1 Be clear about how people can create and use Groups themselves

(who can see the conversation and how will that knowledge be used)

2 Be clear about who is responsible for safeguarding and moderating these

spaces and, if necessary, provide training

3 Offer tools and resources to these communities

CASE STUDY: ORGANISED COLLABORATION AS PART OF FORMAL BLEND

• A professional services firm designed a formal elearning programme on diversity and inclusion • The elearning included video ‘episodes’ portraying challenging situations • A community space to discuss the situations was set up and learners were

invited to answer specific questions: ‘who was in the right in this situation?’ ‘what would you have done?’ • Links to supporting resources were embedded in the community space • An expert moderator supported the discussions • Summaries of the discussions were curated and posted as blogs

In the Social Age, the role of the learning function becomes less about providing courses and resources, more about facilitating collaboration and learning.

IN PRACTICE: SOCIAL LEARNING OUTPUTS CAN BE EVIDENCE FOR CERTIFICATION

In some professions, social learning outputs form portfolios or evidence of practice, and are combined formal learning. The health sector provides a good example.

Health professionals need formal learning opportunities to gather CPD points and also need to have a portfolio of practice – and they need to reflect, self-evaluate as well as have others observe and comment on their practice.

Totara Social’s portfolio element supports this objective. You can create Page templates and copy pages for others to use as the basis of their portfolio – so it’s all the individual’s work and reflections but they are scaffolded through a framework (template) page.

Using their peer/expert and assessor networks the individual can combine with either groups or individuals to share and receive comments on their portfolios.

There is also an “assessment’ option where a page can be submitted in Totara Social for assessment purposes – only visible by a group member who has been assigned the trainer/assessor role for that group. In that way informal and individual learning portfolios can be assessed in a structured way.

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IN PRACTICE: HOW TOTARA SOCIAL CAN SUPPORT CO-CREATION

Enterprise Social Network platforms like Totara Social support those moments when we need reinforcement from others as we practice, providing connection to peers we can turn to for issues we encounter when we try to put our learning into practice. Totara Social is a way of connecting novices with experts or establishing knowledge pools for future reference.

In Totara Social you can

• Set up a group for collaboration to discuss a particular aspect of learning

• Set groups and define permissions: who can view or join the group

• Create links to more formal learning resources, e.g. elearning, PDFs etc.

• Set tasks or projects for groups, or pose an idea to a group for voting on

• Create links to supporting resources, for example individuals can share useful content on their profile pages or post links to group discussions

• Share an idea and seek votes on it – analogous to the virtual ‘ideas box’

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TakeawayBuild social learning into your blends

• Social learning plays a vital role in supporting formal blended learning programmes • Learning professionals need to

create the conditions and envi ronment that supports social learning • Enable social learning to be used

in wider contexts across your organisation – part of the eco-system but not buried inside the LMS • Use applications like Totara

Social to enable learners to col laborate and co-create • Actively manage tasks and

approaches to learning, flexing the level of formality according to the subject, audience, and certification requirements

GET IN TOUCH:

Contact Totara Learning or your Totara Partner to see Totara Social in action

www.totaralearning.com/social