4

Supporting a Learning Community

From our earliest moments in life, we learn how to act in the world from interacting with other people. While it can be tempting to focus on available anytime resources to support learning, people report that their most impactful and significant learning comes from exchanges with other people—by watching, conversing, and collaborating with others.

When designing a learning environment, it’s important to ask: How can I connect learners to one another? Who are the more advanced practitioners that learners can emulate or learn from? How can we promote interaction for learning purposes?

Research shows that there is a wide range of interpersonal activities that result in learning and performance outcomes (for a review, see Lombardozzi 2013). Scholars parse out different kinds of relational learning; they study intense one-on-one relationships (mentoring, developmental relationships), communities (communities of practice, communities of inquiry), work teams, or coaching relationships, and their studies draw conclusions about each particular context. There are established theories related to social learning, teaching, mentoring, communities of practice, and more, but taken together, these literature streams provide a strong base for understanding in more general terms how people learn through their relationships with others. These ideas can help learning leaders scaffold and support interpersonal learning in all its forms, and provide a foundation for the effective integration of people components in a learning environment, as well as for nurturing a community of learners that support one another’s learning.

LEARNING THROUGH AND WITH OTHER PEOPLE

Learning interactions among people are quite diverse: One worker may call a peer to get advice. A team member pings a colleague on Twitter to get a quick question answered. There’s a lively discussion on the company blog about how to best address a new client need. A global work team organizes a multisite test of the new videoconferencing equipment, experimenting with the various tools to learn how to use them effectively. A team of people set up a conference room so they can work together to figure out the best way to reshape a work process to be more efficient and effective. A supervisor coaches a direct report preparing for an important presentation. In many of these interactions, one person may be identified as the learner, and the other as the developer, at least for a specific point in time. In others, the relationship is best described as co-learners. In order for these interactions to result in learning, a degree of intentionality is needed. What we see here is deliberate action that is meant to develop knowledge or skills, and deliberate pursuit of learning.

This chapter focuses on developing a broad understanding of social learning, which is described as any learning that is precipitated or supported by some kind of interaction with other people. It is not limited to interactions through social media, and it can be one-on-one learning or learning in a group.

Some relationships are deep and ongoing, while others are fleeting and utilitarian, but all of these interactions result in learning for one, both, or all of the participants. The variety of interactions in which learners and developers can engage is captured in Figure 4-1. On the left side are actions that the developer might take: to instruct, coach, and support learners in a variety of ways. On the right are the actions and behaviors of the learner, who actively engages in course work, responds to coaching, connects with a network of developers, and so on.

FIGURE 4-1. PROCESSES OF LEARNING THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS

Many of these activities can be conceived as a type of call and response: the trainer teaches and the learner learns; the tenured co-worker acts as a role model, the newbie emulates; the novice practices, the coach critiques; the mentor challenges the learner to think more deeply, the protégé reflects out loud about options and ramifications. It is important to note that in work activity—collaborating, working together, and so on—the dynamics change. Learning while doing allows learners and developers to co-create knowledge, fine-tune skills, and define practices. In working together, the distinction between developer and learner often disappears.

Interestingly, studies show that developmental relationships are often mutual—that mentors often learn from protégés, teachers often learn from their students, and new-to-role learners often teach a thing or two to more experienced people as they try to make sense of their new accountabilities.

KEY FACTORS ENABLING SOCIAL LEARNING

Relationships that enable learning and development can have varying levels of depth. Learners can gain knowledge and skills from others without knowing them well on a personal level, as in reading an expert’s publications, observing people in action, or engaging in brief exchanges on social media. At the other end of the scale, mentors and protégés and learning-focused work teams engage frequently in many different learning exchanges, often switching between the learner role and the developer role. These deeper relationships require trust and communication.

When you are promoting learning through people in a learning environment, you need to attend to specific factors that support the development of these relationships. Researchers have studied this aspect of learning and have documented three important kinds of factors: individual, relational, and organizational (Rock and Garavan 2006, 2011).

At the individual level (whether a developer or a learner), people need to have the desire to interact, the skills to communicate with one another, and the savvy to network and build relationships. Importantly, they also need to know themselves well enough to identify their learning needs and gifts, and the confidence to learn and experiment with new behaviors. Learner motivation also plays a role here.

At the relational level, there must be a degree of trust and authenticity between a developer and learner. Both parties need to be able to speak candidly with each other, and they have to listen, communicate, and give and receive feedback. Another important aspect that solidifies the relationship is for people to have access to the time, space, and technical tools that allow them to converse. Do not underestimate the importance of time here—it takes time for relationships to strengthen and for trust to build.

At the organizational level, the organization itself needs to support learning and development in various ways, setting an expectation for learning and sharing, and promoting the development of the skills necessary for engaging effectively with one another. In other words, it’s helpful to have a strong learning culture in the organization. Relationships can grow without it, but having a learning culture really allows them to flourish.

Based on these findings, you can run through a mental readiness checklist for the learners and developers in your particular situation. You’ll find an informal social learning readiness assessment at the end of this chapter (Worksheet 4-1). If you find some factors that are weak, you’ll want to identify steps you can take to strengthen them so that developmental relationships can form.

Often the joy and power of learning is inextricable from the amazing people with whom you learn; having colleagues, mentors, coaches, and others who support and catalyze your learning is a treasure. Learning environments are most impactful when the “people” part contributes significantly to learning, and we can design elements into learning environments that promote this kind of interpersonal exchange.

DESIGNING PROGRAMS

One of the ways we enable social learning in a learning environment is crafting formal development programs, such as mentoring programs, peer onboarding, coaching, and peer learning events (such as book studies, discussion groups, action learning groups). Given these factors, there are a number of actions we can take to ensure the success of these programs.

• To solidify individual factors:

  o   Help learners and developers become aware of their strengths and weaknesses and identify goals. This can be facilitated through self-assessment and action planning.

  o   Provide activities that encourage learners to seek out others for conversation, specific learning, or advice.

  o   Promote motivation and self-direction using strategies discussed in chapter 3.

  o   If you are developing a program, be sure to define its purpose and consider selecting people based on their willingness and ability to engage in this way.

  o   Support the development of the interpersonal and communication skills necessary to engage.

• To solidify relational factors:

  o   Ensure some level of compatibility by looking at goals, areas of expertise, career trajectories, personality types, and other factors. (Attempts at “matching” people have shown mixed success in the research, but may be helpful in your situation.)

  o   Provide guidance for interaction—specific goals, checklists, and discussion topics, for example, especially for mentoring and coaching relationships.

  o   Encourage and enable the pair to meet frequently. Recommend specific timeframes, frequency, and distraction-free locations to meet, and provide quality online conferencing tools where needed. In a hectic work environment, this may be one of the most critical keys to success.

• To solidify organizational factors:

  o   Work with organizational leadership to strengthen the overall learning culture, and identify and remove barriers to learning.

  o   Provide support for learning continuous improvement practices and feedback skills in general if needed.

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media has been a boon to relational learning insomuch as it enables the processes described so far. Through the Internet, people can connect with others that they may never meet face-to-face. They can interact with thought leaders, learn what other organizations are doing, listen in on industry-wide conversations, and find out about new resources, articles, and learning opportunities.

Some of the connections made through social media are “loose ties”—people who can be influential and who can share learning resources, but with whom there is no deep personal connection. At the same time, social media has made it possible to build strong relationships with people whom one may have had little opportunity to meet and engage with otherwise. Just like developing relationships in the physical world, deepening cyber-based connections with “friends” and “followers” requires consistent interaction and more personal disclosure.

Both loose ties and deep relationships can be promoted and nurtured through the use of social media. In creating a learning environment, it can be important to have a variety of social media tools through which people can interact. Some of these tools may be connected outside the organization (such as blogs, Twitter, and social networking sites), while others may need to be limited to connections inside an organization’s security firewall.

When social media advocates explain how their networks are valuable for their learning, they cite a substantial list of benefits. At its core, social media helps learners connect with others in their fields who are discussing emerging trends and tackling similar challenges. These connections often point out relevant resources (such as articles, websites, books, and conferences), and engage in online discussions about emerging ideas and issues. A social network can often be the quickest source of answers to urgent questions. Even without posting to the web, a learner can have access to important ideas and news.

Benefits also accrue from what learners share as much as from what they find through social media; social media learning comes from what you give as well as what you get. The act of writing forces people to clarify their thoughts (at least a bit), transforming a set of impressions and random ideas into a cohesive narrative. By “working out loud” in this way, people increase the likelihood that they’ll get useful feedback on their ideas and support for their work. In addition, a timeline of social posts provides a record of notes that can be searched later, and can be a quick way to ensure that ideas are not forgotten. Social media use can also help cement a person’s professional reputation.

Here are some questions you can ask when considering the social media strategy for your learning environment:

• What social media tools do learners already use, and how can we use those tools to enable learning? (Don’t assume that people already know how to use the tools to support their learning.)
• What social media tools are available for learners to leverage (outside and inside the enterprise)?
• Who are the people that learners should “follow” or “friend”? What tools are they using?
• What are the best ways to enable and promote asynchronous interactions that support learning?
• Which online conversations can be more public (on the Internet) and which need to be limited to tools inside the enterprise (for reasons of privacy and security)?
• How can we promote the use of social media among learners who have little experience (or inclination) to use it for learning?
• What social media policies are in place, and were they developed with learning in mind?

LEADING A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS

When you have a group of learners who already have a relationship with one another (a work team, a course cohort, or a group that has similar challenges and a desire to learn from one another), then supporting their ongoing learning with a robust learning environment can be a real boost to their cohesion as a learning community. Through effective learning environment design, you can give them additional learning materials, space for shared documentation, and new communication channels that will be welcome and well utilized.

The most important community-building tool is direct conversation, so it is important to open up channels that allow the community to engage with one another. These channels can be both direct and electronic: meetings, video and audio communication, discussion boards, instant messaging or Twitter, and other means of interacting both synchronously and asynchronously.

It can be important to have a community manager or advisory team for your learning environment who takes on the role of actively promoting interaction and sharing among members of the group. A community manager builds the community by:

• getting to know community members one-on-one, and becoming familiar with their projects and learning needs
• introducing people to one another, especially when they have specific needs or projects in common
• prompting community members to post ideas, questions, and resources to the community space
• ensuring that community members get their questions answered in a timely manner
• inviting contributions and interactions by experts
• sharing stories of what individuals in the community are accomplishing
• deliberately generating conversations among community members by posting provocative or compelling content, asking interesting questions, and bringing together like-minded members who are working on similar challenges
• keeping an ear to the ground for emerging needs of the community and proactively finding and curating resources that may be helpful
• moderating the online experience, managing technical problems, and thwarting any disruptive activity
• garnering support from leaders, key stakeholders, and other needed advocates
• measuring and reporting on community outcomes.

Enabling the learners to cultivate the environment will also help to ensure its success. By actively involving learners in planning and curating the environment, you greatly increase the chances that they will endorse the materials and activities you’ve assembled. Learners can help flag the best resources and identify those that are unhelpful or have become outdated. Most importantly, members of the community can also be authors of the resources—creating articles, tip sheets, videos, and other learning resources for the community’s shared knowledge base.

When a group of people already have relationships with one another, the social aspects of the learning environment can get strong reviews; learners may respond well to having new ways to interact, especially when the environment provides connection to experts. Conversely, it can be more difficult to promote community activity when the learners have only loose ties to one another. In this case, a designer must go well beyond building the infrastructure for community interaction. If you simply collate resources and open up a discussion forum for learners who do not already have a working relationship, you are not likely to find success—at least not in generating discussion among learners. They probably won’t know one another, be invested in one another’s success, or have the kind of trust (in one another or the organization) that would allow them to interact effectively in a public forum.

Consider, for example, that you have assembled a learning environment to support manager development. Managers may not yet see the potential that exists in everyone relying on one another for learning support and problem resolution. Or you may be assembling an environment for newcomers who have barely met each other. Or your learning environment may be for a geographically dispersed user group who work in varying organizations and industries—they don’t know who the go-to people are, and they are not sure whether to trust one another. In these instances, you are assembling an environment to serve the needs of a learner group that doesn’t already have deep connections.

Many theorists would caution against trying to create a community where none exists, but some organizations have had success in building a community over time. The role of the community manager is critical in this instance, and all of the activities described in this chapter need to be consistently enacted. The resources listed in the additional resources section provide additional advice for building communities.

WORKSHEET 4-1. SOCIAL LEARNING READINESS ASSESSMENT

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

People are critical to learning, and effective learning environment design not only links people to one another, but also encourages the kind of interactions that promote learning and development. For each learning environment design project, you will need to determine the most impactful ways that you can promote and support interaction. In some instances, that work will be quite easy, as you tap into relationships that already exist or are fairly simple to make and strengthen. In other projects, however, you may struggle to figure out how to incorporate more people components into your vision. While solid productive learning relationships can’t be forced, the research synthesized in this chapter gives you a foundation on which you can begin to build your strategies for promoting social learning.