Thanks for your comment and I was hoping to have my follow-up post ready for you … and I’m still writing. The short answer is we need to change the old model students, instructor, and lesson. The new model disintermediates the learning, and enables much greater access for everyone – students to lessons, students to students, and students to facilitators / mentors / coaches.

To make the model work I needed to go back to scratch and replace ADDIE. From that point, since an map from 1839 will not get you where you need to go tomorrow, the other pieces of the instructional puzzle were easier to fit. At the center is the student / learner.

One goal was to make the virtual time together as valuable as possible for both learner and facilitator. This includes placing the virtual class online, creating an active Community of Learners for the class, enabling a growing Community of Practice to emerge from the class, designing ‘homework’ to be interactive with peers, facilitators and a circle of Mentors (some from previous classes), and more. It’s a work-in-progress and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

Thanks!

My best advice to those interested in supporting and facilitating the social learning that is already happening in their organizations, and to nurture opportunities for more? Read my book, sure, (and Marcia’s!) but also read Lave and Wenger on apprenticeship, Wenger on communities of practice and tacit knowledge transfer, and Brown, Collins & Duguid on situated learning. Read up also on cultural and social anthropology and social psychology. Read Wasko & Faraj to understand why people share knowledge, and what supports that. Those wishing to attempt to manage, control, and quantify social learning would be well advised to pay attention to the considerable literature outlining trust and power issues in communities, particularly in regard to the damage caused by attempts to overmanage. Take a look at the stories Jane Hart and I have just begun to gather at http://www.realworkplacelearning.com . Try actually participating in some of the learning-like conversations and communities in your own workplace—not as a representative from some standapart business entity, but an contributing member of the community of learners. Educate yourself enough so that, in conversations or presentations, you can separate the plausible from the promises. If you don’t want to do this legwork, and instead depend on this week’s consultant for the information—well, you will get what you pay for.

People in organizations are learning all the time, without us: where is that happening? Why? What do they feel they need to learn about? What natural structures and communities already exist? How can you be a partner and ally in that? THAT is where L&D’s place in social learning starts.

Best,
Jane