We’ve all heard of the benefits of social learning. It’s said that improving social learning will enhance the value of training activities. It’s also said that a lot of elearning projects fail because of the lack of social intercourse between participants, and that instructional designers have to learn from social managers how to pump up conversations and ultimately engagement.
This is all true, but let’s focus on three concepts to benchmark the “common added value” of social learning including the costs of social learning implementation, and the real benefits of social learning.
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The cost of social learning
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Approach dependent on situation
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Reflecting on constructivism!
To aid understanding the context of the following points, I refer to a real implementation scenario where social learning is a target – not just a meaningless “add-on” to follow social trends, but as a real methodological approach. A real scenario with desirable targets has to be defined before measuring the potential of any social tools.
The cost of social learning
If you are running an ILT program skip this section because you know exactly how many hours of work is required to create a well structured training program that involves social activities at its core. If you are running a WBT or similar program you need to be aware of the fact that once you have finished working on the course you have to start working with an actual class!
I recognize that, especially in large corporations, HR and Training managers are very focused on the management of the “project” but are largely unaware of how much work is actually required to set up a social learning initiative.
So to sum up, costs that need to be taken into account are: time and resources.
Approach dependent on situation
Social learning is often described as a high quality methodology to teach (and the best situation to learn from). This implies that methodologists, trainers and instructional designers ought to be concerned when they cannot set an elearning environment up for social learning. But there are several situations when (and where) social learning is not the best methodology to apply! Common sense suggests that if you have large numbers of users in the same class you cannot apply social learning (small numbers are required to achieve high quality interactions). Equally, if you have set up a short time frame to finish the program, you can’t apply it.
Social learning has to be strategic and have goals, there is no point running social activities if there are no tangible results. For example, if you are leading a course on a new procedure (knowledge + behaviors) you expect people to focus the discussion (a social activity) on the impact of the procedure on their current activities, how to react to problems that arise, and giving suggestions / instructions to eachother.
Whether or not social learning is applicable needs to be assessed according to each situation.
Reflecting on a constructivist approach
For trainers it is clear that giving a comment to a video is not the same producing new content based on actual learning. When we launch a discussion we know that our learners will achieve the best in terms of learning (and even retention) when they eventually create their own knowledge. Social learning needs to achieve this goal.
Are you ready for this kind of learning environment? What is your primary goal? A real change in learner’s habits or a simple transfer of knowledge?
“We teach a subject not to produce little living librarians on that subject, but rather to get a student to think…for himself, to consider matters…to take part in the process of knowledge-getting. Knowing is a process not a product.”
Jerome Bruner
Docebo for social learning
Docebo has focused its own R&D process on real social learning scenarios, developing new features that will allow trainers to design tailored social learning environments. That means that every trainer will be able to design autonomously the right learning environment to reach defined learning goals.
To check out Docebo’s social capabilities and how it can help in your elearning project, try our 14-day free trial!
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