Social learning doesn’t work.
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Oh no! Controversy reigns! I will either get a lot of ‘knee-jerk’ reactions to that blog title with people telling me how wrong/uninformed/stoopid and/or ignorant I am. Or people will reflect on what I am about to say and give sugesstions on how we can meet these challenges. If you bear with me to the end of this post you might see where I’m coming from.
So breathe, relax and hear me out. ;p
Firstly, let me do a complete backflip and say Social learning DOES work, HOWEVER for it to be sucessful the following 5 key prerequisites must be met:
1. Motivation
Social learning tends to be more ‘free-flowing’ then traditional face to face, or learning object orientated learning and development sessions. Freedom on how you learn, who you interact with and what you concentrate on. And thats a good thing. However with that freedom comes the danger of procrastination, “Hey there’s no structure, I’ll get to it when I get to it”, inaction, “Um well I’m not really sure what I should be doing, so I’ll wait wnd see what others are doing”, isolation, “I’d really like to talk to that person/avatar more but they seem to be spending more time with that other person/avatar, and I’d hate to impose on them. I’ll wait till they’re not so busy…”
If social learning participants aren’t motivated to rise above these challenges, there is a real danger that they will drop out of the social event and be even more de-motivated when it comes to learning events outside of traditional sessions.
2. Time Management
I am ashamed to say that this is the bane of my own existence when it comes to taking part in social learning or elearning 2.0. If a participant can’t manage the amount of time they spend in social learning, there is a real risk that the social learning will become more ’social’ than ‘learning’ or they will not give the social learning event the time it deserves. As in real life it takes time to build relationships both personally and professionally, if a participant doesn’t make the time to interact with other learners, the social learning event will not succeed or be as beneficial as it could have been.
3. Research skills
You can’t share your discoveries in a social learning environment if you don’t know how to find them first. Participants need to be able do something as simple as a Google search, or even know how to use the local library. Without these basics, there is always the danger that they will take someones opinion as gospel, when they should be cross-checking and referencing answers themselves. Which brings me to my next point…
4. Referencing skills
Referencing is just as valid in the social learning environment as the traditional environment. The crux of social learning is interacting with people socially to get their take on things. We should be givig credit where credit is due, irrelative of whether you agree with the source or not. No one likes a plagierist.
5. Language, literacy and numeracy skills (LLN)
It seems like common sense that people are all literate (reading/writing/communicating/computer use/web 2.0 familiarity etc), can communicate and count. The only problem with common sense is that it ain’t that common! We need to be aware that there are people who through circumstances may not have had the ability to develop these basic skills. If they don’t have the basics, how can you expect the social learning event to be a success?
Social learning does work as long as these prerequisites have been met.
What do you think? How do you ensure your social learning events are a success? Is there anything else that needs to be considered to make a social learning event a success? Do you disagree? Join the conversation by leaving you comments below.
[...] learners need to develop before, or as, they undertake any form of social learning. Refer to Social Learning doesn’t work for my take on all the important skills social learners need to [...]