SOCIAL LEARNING

10 Tips for successfully implementing social media for learning and performance support in the workplace

Here are some fundamental principles to guide you ...

1. Start by demonstrating how you use these tools in your own professional practice (and for your own leaning and productivity - you can't expect to be taken seriously if you don't do it yourself

2. Adopt a new approach to learning that values user-generated content, and gives individuals more responsibility for managing their own productivity and learning.  Don't automatically  assume that individuals are wasting time if they are looking at what might be considered non-mainstream websites.  Help to build a sharing and collaborative culture where everyone's ideas and experiences are valid and valuable.  (By getting engaged with social media yourself, you should acquire a new view of learning)

3. Think bottom-up rather than top-down.  Work at grassroots level with individuals and groups.  Don't try and impose a complex strategic approach across the enterprise that forces everyone into using a standard set of enterprise tools that they must all use.  That's the old way of doing things.  Bottom-up approaches are far more likely to succeed.

4. Where there are IT issues with downloading and installing software, consider hosted (Saas) tools.  "Cloud computing" is the way things are moving, so issues of security and privacy are being addressed.

5. Help individuals to understand and use appropriate tools for their own personal productivity.  If they want to use tools from their personal lives in their working lives, then this might make sense.  Consumerization of IT is becoming a new trend.  Many of these "personal" tools are more efficient and capable than large scale enterprise tools

6. Understand the needs of groups and help them to identify the right tools to improve team performance and productivity. For teams spread across geographies, hosted solutions are ideal.

7. Don't force everybody into creating their own content, if they don't feel comfortable about it. Some people like to create and share content, others simply want to be able to contribute and comment.  Find out who the natural Creators are in your organisation.  (Use our profiling tool)  Then get the Creators onboard to help drive forward a user-generated-content culture of sharing, and encourage the Participants to contribute

8. When there is a well-identified need for a formal learning solution to a problem (and these should be kept to a minimum) think about how you can incorporate/integrate social solutions into the mix, so it's not just about (so-called expert-generated) content, content, content.

9. When supporting informal learning and performance improvement initiatives,  minimize the amount of content that you produce and spend the time and effort helping to set up the tools (basic infrastructure) to allow collaborative content creation and sharing of ideas and experiences.

10. Bear in mind that most tools are in a state of perpetual beta, i.e. in constant development.  So you can no longer spend significant periods of time benchmarking tools (e.g. an authoring tool) with the expectation that it can be used for the next 2-3 years.  You will need to keep abreast of new tools and the new potential of tools all the time.  And finally, don't overlook the value of open source and freeware in the organisation, especially in the recession.

All this is a step too far?  Need some help?

Let us help you get started with social learning, by building a Social Learning Space for you - based around social networking principles, using open source and freeware - to provide the infrastructure for introducing the sharing of ideas, knowledge and experiences, collaborative working and learning within your team or organisation.  Contact Jane Hart for more information

If you would like some other practical help or advice implementing social media in your organisation, Jane Hart offers a range of social media and learning consultancy services