Ready or Not, Here It Is: Social Learning as the New Norm

By Meredith Camp

Today’s top story highlights the author’s experience at a recent “Social Learning Boot Camp” in which participants spend the bulk of their experience interacting with one another, both live and virtually, and utilizing technology to solve problems in group exercises. Many people do this every day with their colleagues in order to get work done, so why can’t organizations bring that into the learning environment as well? Is it because it costs too much money? Does its fluid nature intimidate leaders? Do they think people can’t really learn socially?

According to Andrew Krzmarzick, the author, the three barriers organizations face in adopting social learning methods into their training programs are:

The culture is not ready for it.
There is confusion about its value.
There is a lack of training on its use.

So yes, some of those fears and misunderstandings exist, but the solution is not to avoid it altogether and hope people will still learning adequately in a classroom setting. Experiences like the recent boot camp prove that there are better, more engaging ways for people to learn, so if you want the lessons to stick, stop wasting money on instructor-led, Power Point-driven training models that bore people to tears and don’t allow for hands-on, realistic learning. The first and biggest hurdle to overcome is organizational culture. By educating decision-makers in the purpose and value of informal, collaborative training methods, the fears and lack of understand across the agency will begin to subside and make way for innovation and real growth through social means.

How is your organization overcoming the barriers to social learning integration?

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