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Informal Learning Equals Formalized Chaos?
June 22, 2009
By Tom Kelly and Joe Gustafson
A change in the organizational learning pecking order is afoot, and companies are learning about learning in order to be successful. While certainly not fading into obsolescence, the dominant-for-decades formal learning model—encompassing processes such as live classroom and online sessions, measured in days or hours—is taking a backseat to spontaneous, collaborative, and employee-driven informal learning.
Given this learner-centric paradigm shift and learner-controlled environment, is it time for organizations to throw in the towel on their training initiatives? Or perhaps it's time to take a firm stand and squelch the new culture? Both would be inadvisable, unproductive, and, most of all, unwise. By embracing informal learning as an instrumental part of the organizational learning fabric, companies can leverage this trend to their advantage, regain a sense of control, and become an indispensable information hub.
Why Informal Learning and Why Now?
First of all, formal learning no doubt has a role to play in training programs and has its share of success stories—from those compelling customer courses to that attention-grabbing Webinar. However, these individual initiatives often are not scalable, and content usually is siloed by audience segment—often involving disparate tools and tracking methods, and even separate Learning Management Systems (LMS). The resulting duplication and waste, as well as usual underfunding, limits program effectiveness.
Thus, a confluence of factors is contributing to the rise of informal learning, which, if you ask learners themselves, can amount to 80 percent of the job-related information they need. Easy information access, the rise of social media and social networking, the prevalence of "Googling," and a desire to learn from "expert" peers and subject matter experts are chief factors. In addition, with travel budgets (and budgets in general) being slashed, in-person classroom activities are also on the decline. And, whereas formal initiatives can be somewhat of a timesuck and occur at inconvenient times or locations, informal learning can be created and consumed at will and generally caters to each learner's individual attention span.
What Next?
So what to make of the wikis, white papers, blogs, online communities, etc.? Admittedly, informal learning has its downsides too, in the form of difficult tracking, lack of structure, and sometimes-dubious quality control. But with organizational endorsement and input, it can be cost-effective, compelling, and, more importantly, successful.
Adapting to a dominant informal model implies a change in—and the decentralization of—content creation. Yesterday's day-long classroom courses need to decrease in frequency, with more of an emphasis toward (inexpensive) Web-based delivery and, especially, online modules that are measured in minutes rather than hours and created by those within your company who have unique subject matter expertise. Often, this type of content can be refreshed easily and repurposed for others beyond the original audience, thereby transcending organizational boundaries.
As we managers, executives, and training professionals embrace informal learning and tap into its vast potential, here are five additional steps to keep in mind:
1. Leverage with Subject Matter Experts as Content Creators
Your greatest resources—and you may have thousands of them at your disposal—are company subject matter experts (SMEs). Incentivize them, and equip them with tools that enable the easy creation of brief, high-impact content and multimedia presentations that can easily be disseminated across the enterprise and that stimulate further viral distribution, online and live discussion, and peer-to-peer learning.
2. Address Your Learners' Needs
Connecting with your diverse pool of learners is another must. Collect their feedback, and survey them—formally or informally—about topics of interest or confusion. Keep their consumption behavior and preferences top of mind, encouraging the creation of content that is:
•Quickly consumed and reviewed: Take into account that employees are pressed for time and also may be consuming this content outside of work hours. Enable maximum productivity with brief, compelling content that can be viewed (and re-viewed) at any time, and that enables hassle-free navigation.
•Visually appealing and easy to experience: Increase retention by tapping into creativity. Content that is visually appealing and appropriately enhanced with multimedia—voice, video, and interactivity—combined with advice delivered verbally from the author/expert yields maximum impact.
Interactive – Incorporating quizzes, as well as surveys and polls, within a brief presentation keeps your employees engaged and enables you to measure the effectiveness of the information delivery.
•Easily shared: Monitor and track the viral distribution of content to see how well it resonates and when interest is peaking.
•Easily and frequently refreshed and repurposed: Whet learners' appetites, and continue to deliver. Encourage SMEs to publish frequently and to refresh materials. Use tools that enable you to easily repurpose and personalize content for various audiences.
•Accessible: Promote a "one-stop shop" for information deployment and delivery, where employees can easily search for and access the content they need.
3. Centrally and Dynamically Deploy Content
By creating the aforementioned one-stop shop, organizations can assume greater control of the training environment, as learners become accustomed to consuming content in this central hub. Centralize on tools, templates, guidelines, rating, reporting, and tracking, as well monitoring the efficacy of your efforts.
4. Enable Easy Search
Offer learners a central, logical, and intuitive way to search for content—and, specifically, for the nuggets within any piece of content that give them what they need. When searching for that piece of information or answer, people want access at their point of interest. It's not enough to get them to the book or paper or video—instead, enable them to get right to the paragraph, slide, or clip that ends their search and sends them back to work. Search will increase the reach and value of the content, as well as the productivity of learners. Make this single search location widely known and easily accessed.
5. Become an Indispensable Information Hub
Following these steps can make Step 5 a foregone conclusion. That is, providing a central deployment and search location, along with central tracking—and enabling easy access to compelling, interactive content made by the people who know it best—can put your organization en route to training success. Most importantly, by embracing and institutionalizing informal learning, organizations can ensure they don't cede training control—and instead share the reins in what promises to be an interesting, valuable, and, of course, educational ride.
Tom Kelly has 30 years of experience in corporate learning. Currently, he is an executive advisor, focusing on strategies and implementations that increase revenue, productivity, and customer satisfaction—as well as on the systems and services that measure success.
Joe Gustafson, CEO of Brainshark, Inc., founded the company in 1999 to help knowledge experts accelerate the flow of information to their audiences in an effective format. He is an experienced leader in the technology-based training industry.
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