Elliot Masie reports from America on the rise in social learning and the challenges it poses for the global training community.

Social learning happens when you are engaged in a learning process with others. Classically, social learning happened in a classroom through the process of group discussion or assigned projects. Informally, social learning happened outside of class, as students turned to each other for assistance, context, reference or collaboration. But now – in 2008 - social learning is growing dramatically as a component of organisational education and training, as a result of new technology and a generational shift in the workforce. Think of one flavour of social learning as a combination of Facebook, MySpace and elearning.

Here are the forces that are enabling and driving its growth:

New technology

Social networks: Organisations are rapidly creating internal social networks to give greater exposure to the profiles and backgrounds of colleagues around the globe. These corporate Facebooks or MySpace-like systems are adding social networking to learners' toolkits. I recently sat in a classroom during a safety briefing and saw a learner search the corporate intranet for other engineers with related experience. That learner sent them an email and asked for validation of what the instructor was saying, right in the middle of the class. Learning designers are starting to assign social networking tasks as part of learning curriculum.

"Social learning is growing dramatically as a component of organisational education and training, as a result of new technology and a generational shift in the workforce."

Instant messaging: As learners have access to corporate instant messaging, they are more likely to quickly 'ping' another worker as part of their elearning or classroom-based offering. They may reach out to a colleague that has relevant expertise. Or, using systems like SameTime, they may be able to see which colleagues are taking the same module at the moment and send them an instant message.

Search engines: Learners are increasingly using search engines as part of their learning process. They are turning to external engines like Google and Yahoo in addition to internal intranet and document stores. As learners search, formally or informally, they encounter resources and expertise that they are likely to contact for context in their learning processes. The use of social networks for learning is a natural extension of the availability of search.

Video conferencing: While video conferencing technology has been around for decades, we are now seeing desktops and laptops with easy 'vidcon' capacity built in. The MASIE Center believes that the use of video to the desktop will become a part of learning design. Imagine asking a learner to complete a series of modules and then to click on an icon and have a video conference with several other learners to discuss and self-remediate the new content?

Generational shifts

Social networking for assistance: As we use social networks outside of work, they start to become a more natural aspect of our at-work behaviour. Our most recently hired employees are coming to work expecting the same types of social networking resources at their desktop that they have at home. In fact, new staff are more likely to turn to a colleague they know and trust who works at a different organisation than to turn to the official resource at work. Social networking starts to become their model for knowledge. They trust that the 'wisdom' is in the crowd and they naturally turn to it as their first line of knowledge acquisition.

Exposing our trust networks: The younger generation uses a very different model for discussing trusted colleagues. They are more likely to use the term 'friend' as an agreed-upon state of connection. They are more likely to visualise their network of 'friends', and they are more open about rating the contributions of members of their social networks.

In an experiment at a college, the students provided ratings for the contributions of other students to online discussions. Each student had an avatar rather than use their real names. The students were brutally honest in rating the contributions of each member of this social network, from genius to low value. The students started to turn to the perspectives of the higher-rated students and we also saw a change in the comments from those that got low ratings. While it seemed harsh, the experiment actually created an 'economy' within the class.

Multiple knowledge sources: One thing that is changing about education that we can see most clearly in our youngest workers is a shift away from single-source knowledge. They are less interested in the 'sage on the stage' and are more likely to want and use a wider set of resources for information and knowledge. They want to have context along with content and are in need of multiple points of view as they learn new objectives. Social learning provides learners with opportunities to take a more global and multi-point perspective on new information and skill sets.

Social learning is an emerging experiment. We will need to try different models as instructional designers and trainers. We will need evidence-based research on how to best leverage social learning and match it to diverse learning styles and stages of maturity to task.

Clearly, learners of today and tomorrow will desire and demand an opportunity to learn with others, even if they are alone and trying to learn at midnight. Let's celebrate and explore the opportunity for leveraging social learning.

Elliott Masie is the host of Learning 2008 and the chair of the Learning Consortium. For more information go to www.masie.com