Informal Learning and Information Exchange in the Workplace

How many times have you been asked to roll out a new technology solution at work in the hopes that it will lead to a new learner revolution only to have low adoption rates? To engage learners at work and increase the utilization of our LMS, I am often asked to do just this. At a past corporation, I was asked to upgrade the LMS and roll out the new LMS community feature in hopes of attracting a wider audience. I didn’t stay long at the company to determine what the long-term implications were for the community feature, but it did spark initial conversations with employees from around the globe and for the first time we could read user comments about their LMS experience.

This week, I was inspired to read the article, “Actually, I Wanted to Learn”: Study-related knowledge exchange on social networking sites.” This article rightfully purports that with the rise of social networking sites, young adults are more inclined to use social media for educational purposes.

According to Caruso and Salaway (2009), 88.3% of undergraduate students owned their own laptops in 2009 compared to 65.9% in 2006, and spent an average of 21.3 hours per week online. In the future, it would be wise to see how we can capitalize on this trend to drive informal learning in the workplace. As a result, learning organizations are trying to see how this technology can be transferred and utilized in the workplace.

The researchers performed 3 studies, which focused on the teenage and young adult student population. The social networking site they studied is called StudiVZ which is like Facebook but was created for the university student population in Germany.  The research showed that most students spent most of their time on social networking sites for entertainment purposes and to keep in touch with their friends. Only a small percentage use it for academic or study-related purposes.

I believe one key conclusion from their studies may prove relevant for those of use who attempt to use enterprise social networking for informal learning. New students who had not had a chance to form connections with their fellow students or who had not formed well established face-to-face interactions were more likely to exchange study-related knowledge. The next time I am asked to implement an enterprise social networking site, I will focus on two employee groups to improve the utilization rate:

• New employees – I’ll focus on new employees as they will likely have the deepest need since they are new to the organization. An enterprise social networking site would be a beneficial way for them to share their onboarding and training experiences with the company and meet other new employees.
• Remote employees - As we move towards more virtual workplaces with remote workers around the globe, we will become less dependent on face-to-face interactions, which will lead to a huge opportunity in the workplace. I’ll focus on providing groups that remote employees can join to share and transfer knowledge with each other. They can form bonds and build relationships with each other. They will have the second highest need to connect since they have limited face-to-face interactions with others.  

Reference:

Wodzicki, Katrin; Schwammelein, Eva and Moskaliuk, Johannes. (2011). “Actually, I Wanted to Learn”: Study-related knowledge exchange on social networking sites. Internet and Higher Education. 15, 9-14.