Social learning is a trend. The core idea behind this social learning approach is as simple as it is compelling: Anyone who has a topic they want to learn more about meets regularly with like-minded colleagues over several weeks in a structured process, defines goals, plans and produces a micro-learning unit, and then makes it available to all colleagues.
If you want to learn something, start teaching it
This is an old piece of wisdom that is experiencing a renaissance here in modern form. User-generated content is becoming social. That means people do not just produce content in isolation. Instead, they share themselves and their content with colleagues in the company and receive feedback. Current projects with our customers—such as the ENT Academy at Swisscom—show: User-generated content has significantly higher acceptance, both in terms of usage and in the evaluation of the content, than externally produced content.
Formalising informal learning
Since the 70-20-10 formula was discovered, many companies have been looking for a way to formalise informal learning at least a little, give it structure, and optimise it. That is exactly what the Learning out loud framework provides.
Gernot Kühn developed it with his colleagues at Lernfuturisten, and we recently completed a certification with him and his colleagues. Learning out loud is derived from Working out loud, but it also has some crucial differences. In short: Instead of simply meeting for twelve weeks and posting what you are currently doing, Learning out loud defines a learning topic in seven weeks, develops and produces a micro-learning unit, and publishes it to colleagues.
From participant to proticipant
For several years now, I have been advocating that we need to move from participant to proticipant. In other words, a simple participant who only consumes content becomes a producer of content who also shares it. User-generated content has been a relevant topic for a long time, but until now it has not been easy to motivate the right employees to produce relevant content professionally so that others can find it and feel like using it. And that is exactly the challenge that Learning out loud addresses.
In addition, the whole thing has a number of very positive side effects:
- Exchanging ideas with colleagues beyond your own departmental and divisional boundaries,
- Defining goals and learning objectives,
- Reflecting on the purpose (and sometimes the lack of purpose) of your own work,
- Using existing company tools and infrastructure to create learning content,
- Giving and receiving feedback,
- And realising along the way that learning together can be great fun.
All of this naturally fits perfectly into the edutrainment story and the skillbox blended learning methodology, which already includes learning groups and corresponding materials. And now we are taking it one step further: We train multipliers for Learning out loud and the production of micro-learning, thus following our core idea of helping customers become—and remain—a learning organisation.
Stay tuned
If you would like to use Learning out loud yourself, you can either start an in-house workshop right away, take part in the next webinar with me and Gernot Kühn, or join the next certification together with Lernfuturisten in Berlin. Register here.
And of course, at this point I am once again promoting our eduTrends best-practice book. Gernot Kühn and Learning out loud will be included as well. Do you also have an exciting topic you would like to publish in the book? Please get in touch or simply fill out this form and send it to info@edutrainment.com.
[mc4wp_form id=”10811″]
