Feature article Reframing practice: creating social learning networks

Anne Bartlett-Bragg

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change (Giuseppe Tomasi di Pampedusa, 1958).

Anne Bartlett-Bragg is Managing Director/ Lecturer, based at Headshift Australasia, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

marter, simpler, and social learning landscapes are achieving results in the organizational learning context that more expensive controlled learning systems have failed to deliver. By integrating social software, organizations can generate powerful learning networks which create a platform that extends from simple individual actions, to links that connect people for a common learning goal, to connecting learners with others beyond the boundaries of their current learning contexts.

Upon closer examination, the early implementation strategies of e-Learning products in organizations focused on delivery, accessibility, and small chunks of learning available to learners anywhere, anytime. Huge investments in time and money were spent on intranets, online courses, learner management systems (LMS), and other enterprise software that was supposed to provide improved delivery and other workplace efciencies. Yet there is little evidence to suggest these implementations have enhanced the learning experience and have been criticised for poor attention to pedagogical structure and lack of learner engagement. In fact, they have come at a cost human interaction has been ignored and the learning experience has been reduced to a product, measured by completions and adherence to compliance regulations. The focus has been on access to technology where learners have been forced to adapt to the capabilities and limitations of software, rather than on adapting the software to t to learners needs and as an aid to enhance learning. However, recent developments of enterprise web-based software are facilitating the creation of communities and personal publishing. These applications are bringing more people together to share, collaborate, build knowledge, network and learn, subsequently adjusting the relationship with knowledge from one of passive consumption from static web pages to active engagement with content and social interactions with other learners the emergence of the social learning network. The social learning network equips organizational learning departments with the capabilities to shift away from knowledge strictly organized by departments, classroom courses, and subject expertise. It is possible to move to an arrangement that allows the learner to personalise and re-structure knowledge into areas that are signicant to their context, available at different times, and with the exibility to re-examine and update when relevant to the learner.

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DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING IN ORGANIZATIONS

VOL. 23 NO. 4 2009, pp. 16-20, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1477-7282

DOI 10.1108/14777280910970747

 Smarter, simpler, and social learning landscapes are achieving results in the organizational learning context that more expensive controlled learning systems have failed to deliver.

How do you create social learning networks in organizational learning?

A number of recent studies have indicated that learners, who are connected in an online format, feel a greater sense of community and have perceived higher levels of learning satisfaction. Inherently participative by its nature, the social learning network is designed to augment group interactions and shared spaces for collaboration, social connections, and an aggregation of information exchanges in a web-based environment, while allowing the learner to clarify concepts and establish meaningful links with content that is transferable to their workplace context. Social software used to establish a social learning network is informed by the following assumptions that learners:
B B B B B B

want to communicate and collaborate with others; enjoy sharing their ideas with like-minded people; will openly share their experiences; look for recommendations and feedback from trusted resources; will create their own contextual knowledge by self-publishing; and will manage their own learning by subscribing to information that is relevant to their context.

Collaborative publishing spaces such as blogs and wikis are at the core of the network where the use of writing allows learners to clarify and articulate their thoughts. Additionally, learners are able to review each others work, share meanings, and use critical reection processes to contextualize the key learning points. Podcasts, and the newer versions including video or vodcasts, are gaining momentum as an alternative rich media communication method. Simultaneously, the aggregation of content into a personalised space using syndication tools or RSS (Really Simple Syndication), provides the learner with the ability to manage their information ow. The social structure, comprising of a variety of people, both readers and writers, supports a network that develops into an ecology of connections. All these applications, the so-called Web 2.0 technologies, have emerged as powerful tools in the organizational learning landscape, and are now being integrated or mashed-up to create social learning networks that are both individually driven, yet socially constructed.

Case study example: MentorNet a network of young women entrepreneurs

MentorNet (www.headshift.com/projects/2008/06/mentornet.php), launched in Australia in 2007, was the rst national mentoring program for women in business and the rst to use Web 2.0 technologies to provide a social learning network environment. The program provides a niche network that supports entrepreneurial women to grow their businesses through education, networking, and mentoring over a period of six months. The main challenge of MentorNet was to overcome the geographically dispersed nature of its participants, and to create a vibrant online social learning network that was able to support and empower Australian business women wherever they were located.

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Essential to the design of MentorNet was clarity of the underpinning assumptions about the nature of the mentoring and learning to be provided, while understanding the parameters or constraints that would need to be addressed before selecting and designing the software platform.

The solution
The core web-based context is shaped through a variety of large group, smaller peer groups and individual learning spaces based on a wiki and weblog environment, a mash-up platform, heavily customised using an enterprise wiki, Conuence. Live fortnightly meetings are conducted through synchronous webinar technologies, where participants are able to collaborate and share in real time. Mentees build their business plans on a personal wiki, while collaborating with the entire group analysing case studies and completing activities that relate to specic business practices. Additional functions, like event calendars, resources, social bookmarking, photo sharing, and other subscription services are displayed through RSS feeds in the central wiki that serves as the main portal for the group. All participants, who never meet face-to-face, create proles based on digital storytelling principles that incorporate photos shared through Flickr and other rich media. These proles build connections between people in a more personalised and contextual way to develop stronger network connections.

The results
These results have been collected from four programs by participant surveys: (1) Mentorees:
B B B B B B B B B

100 percent reported an increase their business skills; 95 percent report having more direction in their business; 100 percent have expanded their networks; 50 percent report an increase in turnover (during the 6 months program); 65 percent report business growth (during the 6 months program); 35 percent have employed more staff (during the 6 months program); 90 percent have developed their business plans; 100 percent report increased condence about their business; and 100 percent are more enthusiastic about their business.

(2) Mentors:
B B B

100 percent have expanded their networks; 100 percent are more enthusiastic about their business; and 100 percent reported an increase their business skills.

Learners are increasingly discontented with the organizational learning landscape, expecting their experiences of social computing to enable the same sorts of interactions and networking functions they can access at home.

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 While technology is providing us with radical new opportunities, simply embedding computers and software applications into our existing pedagogical practices is miserably insufcient.

Both the formal learning outcomes and the social networking results demonstrate a signicant positive impact that can be directly related to the design of the learning platform. A comparative program, delivered entirely in a face-to-face classroom environment for six years prior to the development of MentorNet produced results that were notably lower in all categories reported above.

Barriers to implementation
Simply creating a social learning network will not guarantee positive results and learning outcomes. The following three categories of inhibitors were identied during my PhD research as critical factors which may undermine the success of such an initiative. Organizational inhibitors (1) Organizational technology infrastructure:
B B

limitation imposed by rewalls; speed of internet access required particularly if collaboration is occurring outside of workplaces; and limitations imposed by IT departments on rich media such as video and music.

(2) Organizational culture:

B B

no active encouragement of the sharing of tacit knowledge and experience; a training culture that is structurally dependent upon competency and regulatory requirements; and a focus only on measurable return on investment.

Individual inhibitors
B B B

digital literacy; learner dependency on a trainer/educator for direction; learner anxiety, sometimes expressed as lack of self-condence in publishing and sharing; and learner personal time management and conict with daily work patterns.

Pedagogical inhibitors
B

educators existing pedagogical frameworks where the role of the educator has been inuenced by traditional formal studies or organizational training structures, it can negatively impact learners participation in social and informal learning activities.

Future implications
Educators who dismiss learning networks as a fad, demanding results that unequivocally demonstrate improved learning outcomes, are opting for a model of learning that is no longer sustainable in a fast changing, information rich, networked society. Learners are increasingly discontented with the organizational learning landscape, expecting their experiences of social computing to enable the same sorts of interactions

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and networking functions they can access at home. Yet rewalls and other organizational inhibitors prevent their use and learners are presented with what appears to be outdated, static learning environments with little or no engagement with others. As educators, our responsibility lies with the creation and development of learning. While technology is providing us with radical new opportunities, simply embedding computers and software applications into our existing pedagogical practices is miserably insufcient. We need a more creative approach, not one that simply or directly replicates, renovates or reinforces traditional models of didactic teaching. A social learning network approach requires a re-conceptualisation of the relationship between technology and learning. We need to re-frame our practice and pay attention to the key inhibitors. Otherwise, the integration of social learning networks into existing organizational structures, (as with early implementations of other e-Learning technologies) will be unlikely to deliver the performance expectations of the organization.

Keywords: Social skills, Workplace training

About the author

Anne Bartlett-Bragg is a sessional lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is also Managing Director of Headshift Australasia. Anne Bartlett-Bragg can be contacted at: [email protected]

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