10. Social and Informal Learning

(IN WHICH WE LEARN THAT LEARNING DOESN’T FOLLOW A STRAIGHT LINE, AND THAT SOMETIMES IT IS ALL ABOUT WHO YOU KNOW)

One of them, Mark Britz, an organizational performance strategist who specializes in social and informal learning, said:

If you took a picture of your organization and looked at where learning was happening, it wouldn’t just be in the classroom.

Jane Bozarth demonstrated this beautifully in her book Show Your Work, where she featured a teacher-created Pinterest board called “What does learning look like?” Almost all the images are of people doing things, rather than images of traditional classrooms (Bozarth 2014).

So let’s try this for ourselves. Imagine we took a picture of your organization or workplace:

Your first reaction would probably be, “Wow, what an attractive, well-dressed, and diverse bunch of co-workers I have! They could be in a stock photo!”

But after you finish admiring your remarkably photogenic colleagues, you could look at how learning is happening:

• One of your co-workers is getting advice from another co-worker about his client proposal.

• Another colleague is showing a junior colleague how to perform a new task for which she’s going to be responsible.

• Somebody pinned an interesting article to the bulletin board, or posted the article to an internal discussion forum.

• Somebody is reading their Twitter feed to see what their broader professional network is talking about today.

• Someone else is Googling how to save their presentation in a format that can be read on a mobile device.

These are all examples of informal or social learning.

This is what Jay Cross refers to as “the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way people learn to do their jobs” in his book Informal Learning.

A number of different definitions exist for social learning. Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham, in their book The New Social Learning, define it as “participating with others to make sense of new ideas.” Other definitions focus on learning from observing others’ behaviors, or using social media to connect people into learning networks (often referred to as PLNs, or personal learning networks).

This chapter will take a look at some of the ways informal and social learning are parts of the learner’s journey.

• Learning. How is the initial learning event structured?

• Practice. How does the learner get practice and hands-on, visceral experience?

• Feedback. How does the learner get feedback on their performance? How are they getting coaching or mentoring?

• Support. How does the learner access resources at a moment of need? How do they get help troubleshooting?

• Refreshing. If it’s an infrequently used skill or procedure, how is it being refreshed or reinforced? How are we using spacing to make the knowledge more durable?

• Developing Further. If it’s a complex skill, how is the learner getting to the next level? How can the learner continue to develop skills and move toward mastery?

This is a journey that will inevitably have formal, informal, and social components.

So let’s take a look at how this can work.

• Tacit versus explicit. Formal learning experiences are usually about communicating explicit rule sets. For example, a complicated procedure that requires practice might be a good candidate for a formal learning experience. Topics that are mostly tacit are more difficult to make into formal learning, except as case studies or role-plays.

• Complexity. Highly complex topics can be difficult to reduce into formal learning experiences. When they are turned into formal learning, the subject matter can often only be an explanation of general principles, rather than prescriptive behaviors. For example, you might learn several good principles of salary negotiation in a career seminar, but when applying those principles in a specific situation you may need to use informal or social learning (e.g., talk it over with a mentor or a colleague) to help you decide what to do.

• Changeability of the material. Formal learning experiences often take a while to develop, and it’s difficult to develop formal learning around volatile, changeable subject matter. For example, I deliberately limited the number of references to particular learning technologies in this book because the technology landscape changes very quickly, and it’s easy for that information to go out of date. Informal or social learning can often be more flexible and a better source of up-to-date information.

Sometimes formal learning isn’t necessary because it’s overkill. You need to ask, “What is really necessary to support performance?” For example, a formal learning class on how to use the company’s uncomplicated voicemail system is just a creative form of torture for all involved. A quick job aid will support the needed performance and will be much more pleasant for everyone involved.

So let’s take a look at an example to see what combination of formal, informal and social learning would be most effective.

He’s a new associate for an architectural design firm. He needs to learn how to budget projects.

Hiro has five goals with respect to learning to budget projects:

• Goal 1 : Enter budget data into the software that the firm uses to estimate projects.

• Goal 2: Construct complete budgets that encompass all the likely project costs.

• Goal 3: Recognize whether a budget has any risky areas that could cause the company to lose money.

• Goal 4: Manage budgets throughout the project, and troubleshoot cost overruns that may occur.

• Goal 5: Continually develop project management skills regarding budget and cost controls.

For each of these goals, we’ll look at the balance between formal and informal/social solutions, and at some of the tools that can be used to promote social or informal learning:

• Performance support and just-in-time resources

• Mentoring and apprenticeship programs

• Social learning communities

• Working out loud, and reflective activities

• Curation

• Social networking

If we use our criteria to evaluate this learning goal, would formal learning make sense? The gap here is primarily knowledge of the software procedures, so the material is pretty explicit and not overly complex. This particular system has enough complication that a class of some kind would probably be helpful, but it would also be good to support it with appropriate just-in-time resources such as job aids or short video recordings of how to perform certain tasks. Additionally, it’s likely that Hiro will still need social support in the form of knowing who to ask or where on the company intranet he can post if he has a question.

The gaps here are more related to knowledge, procedures, and skills. This is a more complex topic, and it requires that Hiro understand the difference between estimating costs for a home kitchen remodel and estimating costs for the construction of a commercial building. Improperly constructed budgets could cost the company a lot of money, so it’s in their interest to make sure Hiro can do this properly.

The balance of formal, informal, and social is probably a bit different here. Formal learning has a role to play, but Hiro’s work will probably need to be supervised for a while before he can operate independently. Formal learning can teach him all the steps in the process and give him some practice, but there are a lot of subtleties that he’ll learn only through experience. After training, his company puts him on small-budget projects and makes sure he has a mentor.

Typically, each person has had to learn the tacit skills through experience (which is very costly), but the company’s training manager has been trying to figure out ways to help everyone learn from each other’s experience. One day, she saw a few people gathered around Mila’s desk while she walked Hiro through a problem budget. Even some of the experienced people were interested in hearing about it. To facilitate sharing, she’s now set up monthly brown bag lunches. Each month, an experienced person opens up a recent project budget and talks through what worked, what didn’t work, and what they would do differently next time. Sometimes the meetings are in person, and sometimes they are done remotely using a web meeting platform. One of the best ways to promote informal/social learning is to see where it’s already happening and figure out how to support or amplify it.

Fortunately, Hiro has access to Mila for help. In addition, the other experienced staff have been really encouraged by the knowledge-sharing going on in the brown bag sessions, and they have asked the training manager to set up an internal online discussion forum so they can continue some of the conversations. When Hiro has a problem or an issue, he can post it in the discussion area, and he usually gets a response by the end of the day. This is particularly helpful when he’s dealing with material or technology that he’s unfamiliar with. His co-workers typically stay on top of new developments in their field and can help him when he has to work with something new.

Early on, Hiro is going to feel overwhelmed by the new information, but eventually the learning curve will even out. Hiro will then start to feel like he’s getting some mastery of the knowledge in the organization. If he wants to continue developing his skills, he’ll probably need to look outside the organization.

He can definitely look at formal solutions like classes, degree programs, conferences, or certifications. All of those are likely to represent a significant investment of time, money, or both.

He can also look at the broader community online: Where are interesting articles being posted? Who is blogging on topics he is interested in? Where are people having interesting conversations?

Hiro finds several people on Twitter that are talking about topics he is interested in professionally. They link to blogs and articles that turn out to be very helpful for some projects that he is working on. He participates in some Twitter chats and discovers that he can use a conference hashtag to follow an event he couldn’t attend. He develops relationships with several people on Twitter who work in his field, so when he can attend the conference the following year, he has several acquaintances he can interact with at the event. He also begins blogging his own development journey, which gains him a small following.

A PLN doesn’t have to be based on Twitter; that just happens to be the platform that worked best for me. It can be whichever community works for you. It doesn’t even have to be online—it could be people from local professional organizations. Helping learners find and connect to their own learning communities is another important tool in the learning design toolbox.

• Formal learning works best for content that is explicit and stable. Content that is tacit or that changes rapidly is often difficult to incorporate into formal learning.

• Highly complex or variable problems may require the flexibility of an informal or social solution, such as a mentor, a coach, or advice from a community of practice.

• Learning communities cannot be forced and are not about the technology. Instead, they often need to be nurtured or encouraged over time.

• To best focus your efforts for social or informal learning, try to identify the things people are already doing and figure out ways to support them.

• While it’s always great if one person helps another person, that help can be useful to many more people if it happens “out loud” (e.g., on a message board) so that others can also benefit.

• Activities like curation and the development of a personal learning network are becoming increasingly important not just for learners but also for learning designers.

Bozarth, Jane. 2014. Show Your Work. Pfeiffer.

Brown, J. S., A. Collins, and P. Duguid. 1989. “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning.” Educational Researcher 18: 32–42.

Cross, Jay. 2006. Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance. Pfeiffer.

Duty Calls, XKCD. Retrieved on August 29, 2015, from https://xkcd.com/386.

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Kim, Amy Jo. Gamification Workshop. Retrieved on September 7, 2015, from http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/gamification-workshop-2010. Published on Nov 19, 2010.

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