Slides from an EduTech14 Masterclass held in Brisbane, Australia on 5th July 2014.

1. Mobilising Informal &
Social Learning in the
Workplace
Neil Ballantyne

2. The agenda
Learning
Informal &
social
learning
The
workplace
context
Barriers
and
enablers
Social
media
Practical
action
planning

3. The Chatham House Rule
"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the
Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use
the information received, but neither the identity
nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any
other participant, may be revealed".
Link to Wikipedia article

4. “Companies die because their managers
focus on the economic activity of producing
goods and services and forget that their
organisations' true nature is that of a
community of humans.”
(de Geus, 1997, p3)
Link to the text on Amazon

5. LEARNING
Session 1

6. Human Memory
Sensory
memory
Working
memory
Long term
memory
Explicit
memory
Declarative
memory
Episodic
memory
Semantic
memory
Implicit
memory
Procedural
memory

7. Human Memory
Sensory
memory
< 1 second
Working
memory
< 1 minute
Long term
memory
Lifetime
Explicit
memory
Conscious
Declarative
memory
Events & Facts
Episodic
memory
Events &
experiences
Semantic
memory
Facts & concepts
Implicit
memory
Unconscious
Procedural
memory
Skills & tasks

8. INFORMAL &
SOCIAL LEARNING
Session 2

9. Defining informal learning
“Informal learning is the unscheduled,
impromptu way people learn to do their
jobs.”
(Cross, 2007, p.15)
Link to text on Amazon

10. Defining informal learning
“…research on informal learning has suggested
that informal learning is integrated with work and
daily routines, often begins with an internal or
external jolt or triggering event, is often haphazard
and not highly conscious, is an inductive process
of reflection and action, and is linked to the
learning of others.”
(Ellinger, 2005, p. 392)
Link to article

11. Defining informal learning
“Characteristics of the informal end of the continuum of
formality include implicit, unintended, opportunistic and
unstructured learning and the absence of a teacher. In
the middle come activities like mentoring, while
coaching is rather more formal in most settings.”
(Eraut, 2004, p. 250)
Link to article

12. Informal
learning
LIVE
in the
workflow
REFLECT
ING on
the past
PREPARI
NG
for the
future

13. THE WORKPLACE CONTEXT
Session 3

14. Thinking
Doing
Communicati
ng
CHANGINGCONDITIONS
DEVELOPINGSITUATIONS
INITIATION
Receiving new information
Reading the situation
Clarifying the brief
ENDING
Products, Decisions, Records
Reporting to Others
Learning by Performer
Learning by Others Eraut (2004, p. 258)
Link to article
Sensing Listening
T
i
m
e

15. Imagecredit|FlickrNationalInstituteofHealth
Learning in the workflow

16. Image credit | Flickr Ross Beckley
Learning in the workflow

17. Image credit | Flickr Tuomas Puukko
Learning in the workflow

18. Instant/Reflex Rapid/Intuitive Deliberative/Analytic
Reading the situation Pattern recognition Rapid interpretation Review involving
discussions and/or
analysis
Decision making Instant response Intuitive Deliberative with some
analysis or discussion
Overt activity Routinized action Routines punctuated
by rapid decision
Planned actions with
periodic progress
review
Metacognitive Situational awareness Implicit monitoring;
short, reactive
reflections
Conscious monitoring
of thought and activity;
self-management;
evaluation
(Eraut, 2011)Link to chapter

19. BARRIERS & ENABLERS
Session 4

20. Barriers & Enablers
• Feedback, evaluation, coaching & reflection
• Organizational culture
• Management support
• Communication, interaction, cooperation &
participation
• Physical spaces, structures & processes
• Workload allocation, scheduling and work patterns
• Job design
• Access to information

21. Rapid research
• Your task is to agree on five key actions to
facilitate informal learning in the
workplace. To do this you will need to:
– Discuss in your group your experiences of
barriers and enablers of informal learning.
– Discover the views of other groups.
– Reconvene to summarize and arrive at the
five key actions.

22. Group A
Group B
Group C
Group D
Group E
Group F
1. Group A discusses and lists barriers & enablers.
2. Two group members stay in Group A
to share your ideas with Group F. Others
move to Group B to gather ideas.
3. Continue till you have visited all groups.
Then return to Group A, discuss findings,
agree and list five key actions to facilitate
informal learning in the workplace.
Rapid Research Process

23. SOCIAL MEDIA
Session 5

24. Towards Maturity:
Learner Voice Survey 2014
• 88% of staff agree they like to learn at their own pace
• 86% say working in collaboration with other team
members is essential or very useful
• 70% say Google and the web are essential or very
useful tools
• 51% access learning and support resources from their
mobile device “at the point when they need them the
most
Link to survey

25. Towards Maturity:
Learner Voice Survey 2014
• 65% are motivated by using technologies that
allow them to network and learn with others
• They are four times more likely to go to YouTube
for learning than their in-house social network
• YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ are more
popular for learning than Twitter and Facebook
Link to survey

26. The conversation prism Brian Solis

27. Types of social media
Kaplan & Haenlein (2012)
Blogs and microblogs (e.g. Twitter)
Collaborative projects (e.g. Wikis)
Social networks (e.g. Facebook)
Content communities (e.g. Youtube)
Virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life)
Virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft)
Link to article

28. Functions of social media
Identity: the extent to which users
reveal themselves.
Conversations: the extent to
which users communicate with
each other.
Sharing: the extent to which
users exchange, distribute and
receive content.
Presence: the extent to which
users know if others are available.
Relationships: the extent to
which users relate to each other.
Reputation: the extent to which
users know the social standing of
others.
Groups: the extent to which users
form groups or communities.
Kietzmann et al (2011)Link to article

29. Internal use of social media
• The ‘Dare2Share’ project delivers British
telecom total efficiency savings of at least
£8 million per year.

30. Crowdsourcing
Step 1
Each group identifies a workplace informal
learning problem in the form of “How could social
media help…?”
Step 2
Write the problem at the top of a whiteboard.
Step 3
Everyone writes one solution for each problem on a post-it
note.
Step 4
For each problem (apart from your own) read all of the
solutions (apart from your own) and allocate votes to those
solutions you think seem best (you can allocate 10 votes
across the proposed solutions for each problem).