Perhaps though, Vincent Damon Furnier (Alice Cooper’s real name) was on to something. In many ways, particularly in business and corporate learning, school is out. While some formal classroom learning is still needed, estimates now say that 70 percent of learning is self-guided and informal (http://derekstockley.com.au/articles/informal-learning.html).
The learning needs of organizations have changed. Gone are the days of requiring a one-time event to prepare employees or students for a job or new tasks. Instead, the focus has shifted to ongoing, continuous training, with employees and clients being regularly updated with new learning and additional modules of knowledge.
As those needs have changed and grown, so have the methods for meeting them.
What is Informal and Social Learning?
For starters, informal learning doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to dress for it in a “casual Friday” sort of way. Nor does it mean you should organize a get-together at the local sports bar with your friends in order to prepare for it.
Some proponents of informal learning have described it as anything that doesn’t involve classrooms or curriculum, and for a broad-stroke definition, that’s not a bad place to start.
But at its heart, informal learning primarily has to do with who controls the delivery of information. If formal learning is defined by having an instructor and a curriculum that is delivered the same way at the same place to each learner, then informal learning can be described as being controlled by the student and delivered at his or her pace through a variety of means—ranging from on-the-job training to audio and video to eLearning.
Why the informality?
The simple answer is just this—because it works. Informal learning works for learners, and it works for organizations. But let’s dig deeper to examine why it works.
For learners, it works because it puts them in control of the learning environment and pace. A survey at the University of Pittsburgh found that the top three reasons learners would rather learn on their own include:
- Desire to set my own learning pace
- Desire to use my own style of learning
- Desire to keep the learning strategy flexible and easy-to-change http://www.knowledgejump.com/learning/characteristics.html)
In short, it feels more natural to them. It meets them where they are and in the way they learn. To draw from the cliché, it doesn’t force a bunch of square pegs into round holes.
For organizations, the benefits are primarily driven by the bottom line—especially in regard to time and money. Putting together major training events is expensive when you have to get a large group of people together, house them, feed them, and manage them. Even if you cut much of the costs by arranging virtual events, getting a large group to free up the same set of hours is about as easy as catching water in a net.
Informal options, such as eLearning courses, offer a cheaper and more adaptable option that enables each member of that large group to get the same training when it fits his or her schedule and without the expense of having a live, flesh-and-blood classroom meeting.
But it goes beyond that.
Today’s companies move faster than ever before and face changes on a day-in and day-out (and often hour-by-hour) time frame. It’s just not practical to constantly bring people back in every day or every week for updates as goals, tasks, or deliverables change. However, a quick update to an online interactive course followed by a targeted email, and poof, everyone who needs to be updated can be in a quick time frame and at minimal expense.
Old school, new school, e-school, your school
Learning still happens in a variety of ways. There’s still an occasional need for formal, classroom learning, but more and more there’s a growing need for informal delivery methods that enable your learners to work in a way that is most effective for them.
As the world becomes more electronically connected, such learning will continue to become e-focused and delivered through intranets and the Internet. But what will help you more than anything else is this—think of your learners first and what will make the knowledge you want to teach them move from their heads and into practice, even if it requires you to consider alternatives you may never have before.
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