Learning environments and organizations alike are constantly evolving and advancing to keep up with learners living in a world of technology and social media. Gone are the days of exclusively formal classroom learning and teacher-led curriculum. Instead, in today’s companies and educational institutions, facilitators are becoming more and more tech savvy and incorporating technology, collaboration and social learning into their training and educational programs.
According to Bozarth (2010), social learning is the sharing of knowledge through both structured, intentional channels like having “go-to” people within a workplace or learning on-the-job from coworkers and mentors and informal, casual channels often not even recognized as learning, such as chatting with others within the industry at a meal after a meeting or in conversation outside of work. Social learning includes many different types of interactions, not necessarily just those that happen in a physical space, but also through talking, observing, trial and error, and consuming information presented by others (Bozarth, 2010). Modern social media has taken social learning to a whole new level using tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. These tools allow people from all over the world to network and share information with others within and outside the industry using videos, discussions, sharing articles, podcasts and many other types of media. Creating an effective social learning environment requires choosing the appropriate social media tools and each one offers its own benefits and challenges.
Sources: Bozarth, Jane. (2010). Social Media for Trainers: Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning. San Fransico, CA: Pfieffer.
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