1. Nic Laycock
Amos Laycock Consulting

2. What we will do this morning
 What is a learning community?
 How do successful communities work?
 The place of Learning Communities in L&D
 Tools for Learning Communities
 Roles in initiating and supporting LC’s
 Beyond LC’s – Communities of Practice
 New kinds of Community

3. What is a Learning Community?
 Framework for “talking” about things connected
with learning that is in common
 Learning Communities are about the way people
talk to one another
 Embed good practice
 About people not technology
 Different kinds of community
 Overlaps of communities, networks and people

4. Information Overload
 Many communities and networks – too much information!
 What do you need?
 Follow people who will do the work for you!
 Tag, filter, prioritise
 Bookmark, index – but update the index!
 Use platforms that help you – disengage and unsubscribe
 Be selfish in expressing needs clearly – learn to use 140
characters (Twitter)
 Remember communities are made up of people
 Human rules apply!
 Respect, Listening, Offering,
 Being part of the community

5. How Successful Communities
Work
 Self- sustaining – develop their own life
 90:9:1 model
 90% lurk (do not contribute)
 9% contribute
 1% energise and lead
 Need for critical mass!
 90 lurking is OK so long as can check people are
learning
 Facilitation - aimed at creation of internal energy –
the internal champion
 People only stay in successful communities – spend
time where there is benefit
 Need to continuously stimulate, evaluate – self appraisal

7. Facilitating Successful Learning
Communities
 Facilitation of LC’s aims at the creation of
internal energy – the internal champion
 SME – willingly sharing
 Enthusiast – involved!
 Socialite – welcoming, empathising, praising
 Change agent – strategist – shaping the
community’s direction
 Service role – efficient and effective
 not a part time role for big communities or major
interventions

8. The Place of Learning
Communities in L&D
 Socialisation medium – virtual interventions
 Supporting formal learning - especially long timescale
interventions, geographic separation
 Working space – physical and virtual – Yammer, Socialcast,
Moodle etc
 Sharing space – physical and virtual – LSG, LinkedIn,
SlideShare, Share and Learn
 Repository – mostly virtual – Blogs. Wikis, etc
 Point of cohesion in learning process – groups within
platforms – FB groups, #groups in Twitter, Yammer threads,
 Source of expertise – mutual assist – Twitter, OER
movement, SoMe networks
 Networking hub – I know someone/place who/where…..

9. What tools do we use?
 Have to work with approved platforms/media
 Some key principles
 Have to resonate with the potential community
members
 Especially important with SME’s
 Our personal comfort zone – but not hiding!
 Have to be consistent with the learning
proposition

10. Finding things on the Social Keeping up to date
Web with new content on
Improving the Social Web
personal and
team
productivity
Building
a trusted
network
of colleagues
Collaborating
with colleagues
Communicating
with colleagues
Sharing resources, ideas
and experiences with Source: Jane Hart
colleagues

11. Principles explained (1)
 Have to resonate with the potential
community members
 Especially important with SME’s
 Place of comfort
 Technology they are familiar with
 Supportive facilitation
 Sense of community
 Familiar people
 Recognisable formats
 Spirit of interchange

12. Principles explained (2)
 Personal comfort zone – but not hiding!
 Not comfortable with a tool - don’t use it!
 Don’t like where a community meets – don’t go!
 Don’t like the people – disengage!
 Value of virtual communities – don’t have to like or
dislike – just use !
 Not getting value – try to improve it – but ultimately
leave!

13. Principles explained (3)
 Have to be consistent with the learning
proposition
 Eg Twittter inappropriate for engineering content?
 Unless ……. Use of hyperlinks – be inventive
 Linkages to other resources and platforms

14. L&D role in supporting Learning
Communities
 Seed, feed, weed
 Identify personal and mutual need
 Energise, facilitate, enable, …….
 What’s the right term?
 What’s the intent?
 Doing what the community needs
 Technical assistance
 Collation
 Stimulation
 “Warming” – the human touch
 Subject expertise – Ukabhabha
 Servant leadership!

15. Evolving Learning Communities
into Communities of Practice
 LC – an end in itself or pathway to a business
hotspot?
 Transition from LC to CoP
 COP’s are not the same as LC’s
 Need to have
 WIFM
 Gaining as well as giving
 Authenticity and integrity
 Improved results
 Faster – Better - Novel
 Focus on content not process
 Facilitated interaction
 Facilitated data and information mining

16. LC’s in the shift to Social
Learning
 Learning is ubiquitous – a characteristic of being
human
 Need to awaken and heighten learning skills
 70:20:10 – model
 90% of learning happens away from the classroom
 Communities facilitate sharing and learning
 Need to design L&D strategy and practice around
the model – communities facilitate the change
 Turn learning into a business driver

17. Source: Charles Jennings

18. New kinds of Community
 LSG – Conference, website, webinars, physical meetings
 Communities that evolve from other events – webinar
alumni
 Backchannels with lives beyond events/interventions –
 Social Learning Community
 Noddlepod
 Share and Learn
 1st platform I’ve seen predicated on 70;20:10
 Others will emerge as we recognise and enable Social
Learning
 move away from Kirkpatrick levels and LMS’s into collaborative
SoMe enabled wierarchies
 Story for another day…………

19. As a result of being here …..
 What have I learned from this workshop?
 List one thing I will do/do differently as a result
of the session
 Share your learning and your plan in one of your
networks