Tag Archives: social learning theory
Avoiding Anarchy in Social Learning

Avoiding Anarchy in Social Learning

by on September 29, 2011 in social learning

A lot of commentators writing about social learning today stress the importance of keeping it free from rules or overarching control.  I myself have, on occasion, made this point.  Key considerations one commonly sees associated with this idea include some or all of the following:

  •  Give everyone the opportunity to teach and learn whatever they know, whenever they have the time;
  • Give everyone the opportunity to learn what they want to know.  Self-directed learning is the best.
  • Avoid being hung up on job description or hierarchy; everyone should be able to share with everyone;
  • Provide tools that allow for the rapid dissemination of thought, such as wikis, internal chat, blogs, etc.  Avoid the temptation to impose structure.

Central to these tenets of social learning is the importance of keeping things unfettered.   The problem is that in some cases, this call has risen to the level of dogma.  “Don’t direct …

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The Death of the Traditional Web: Implications for Self-Directed Learning

The Death of the Traditional Web: Implications for Self-Directed Learning

by on June 29, 2011 in Informal Learning

A friend of mine recently sent me a fascinating article titled “The Shrinking of the Non-Social Web” which contained some real eye-openers.  Essentially the Web is not just evolving gradually as it absorbs the impact of smartphones and social media; it’s changing so radically that it might be better to look at what’s happening as the birth of an entirely new concept of internet interactivity and learning.  A brief overview of the content of the article:

Traditional use of the Web (i.e. non-mobile and non-video usage) is shrinking.  Per-person consumption of traditional Web content fell by 3 percent between March 2010 and March 2011 in terms of minutes.

Within that shrinking slice of online time, Facebook is increasingly the portal for everything.  While the “document Web” (as author Ben Elowitz terms the old-style Web) shrank by 9 percent overall, Facebook consumption increased by 69 percent, essentially stealing time …

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Games in Learning: Review of Grockit.com

Games in Learning: Review of Grockit.com

by on June 6, 2011 in Gaming Theory

Those of you who visit the Social Learning Blog frequently will know by now that I’ve been on something of a “games-in-learning” kick for a while.  One major reason, of course, is that games represent one of the cutting-edge aspects of our industry, and our blog seeks to explore anything that’s new and exciting.  Another reason, though – and this coincidentally helps to explain the appeal of games to learners in the first place – is that it’s such a fun topic to write about.  What’s not to love about a learning strategy that is informative and empirically proven to be effective, yet engaging and entertaining at the same time?

While we at Dashe & Thomson are generally more in touch with advances in learning techniques in the corporate sphere, it’s always good to stay abreast of what’s going on in education generally (after all, the fields are related…).  With …

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Social Media: The Virtual “Over-The-Partition” Learning Network

Social Media: The Virtual “Over-The-Partition” Learning Network

by on April 28, 2011 in Informal Learning, Instructional Design, social learning, Training Development, Video

According to the 1996 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 70% of workplace knowledge is learned informally (a statistic that is frequently referenced in the learning industry). While I haven’t seen more recent data, my experience is that the informal learning trend holds true today.

So, what does informal learning look like? Maybe something like this:

You walk over to a colleague, and ask, “How do I get this widget to stop blinking?” (Of course, you ask someone who knows widgets really well and who is willing to share their knowledge.) Fortunately, most colleagues (at least the normal ones) won’t ask a series of true / false or multiple choice questions to check your understanding. Instead, they show you how to do it and then help you as you try. They might even jot down a few notes that you can reference the next time you troubleshoot that widget problem.

So, here’s …

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The Return of the (Digital) Native

The Return of the (Digital) Native

by on March 25, 2011 in mobile learning

In recent years, we’ve all heard a lot about digital natives.  These precocious youths, born after or during the general advent of digital technology, have an inherent understanding of its concepts in a way that their forebears cannot hope to achieve.  What’s more, they are beginning to use it at an increasingly young age – a recent study from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop (producers of Sesame Street) found that 80% of children age 5 and under use the Internet at least once a week. 

 As this is well under the age at which language learning is easiest, and as one could argue that mastering the concepts of technology (as opposed to rote memorization) is somewhat similar to learning language, it’s not really a surprise that many of these children are becoming wired to learn in a way that is much more technology-oriented than their predecessors. …

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