#informal learning

The first thing we need to do, is think differently about the word “learning” itself. Learning doesn’t just happen when we are trained or taught or study something – that’s definitely the traditional view of learning: sitting in a school classroom or university lecture hall or in a corporate training room or working through an online course on your computer.  Of course, training is important – but it’s not the only way we learn at work. Research shows that people use digital tools to learn in 4 different but interconnected ways:

1)      People learn through Discovery – that is by finding things out themselves (mostly on the Web) through searching or serendipitous browsing. We might also refer to this as Informal Learning

2)      People learn by Interacting With Others (whether it be in their professional social networks (like Twitter or LinkedIn) or with their work colleagues. We can refer to that as Social Learning.

3)      People learn from from their Everyday Work Experiences. We might refer to that as Experiential Learning.

4)     And of course, people do learn by Being Taught Or Trained – what we usually refer to as Formal Learning. But, although this is the dominant way of learning for L&D departments, research shows that only around 10% of what people learn at or for work happens in this way.

So, when we talk about online learning, this means we need to think about how we can promote and support all of these 4 ways learning digitally or virtually. 

Research has also shown that people actually rate classroom training and e-learning as the least valuable ways of learning at work.  There’s lots of reasons for this (boredom, frustration, lack of time) so, if we simply replicate the classroom online we just repeat the same mistakes. So, here are things to consider:

Duration and Form:

If you are thinking about converting your classroom sessions into live virtual training (on Zoom, for instance) then these sessions need to be short – 30 mins works best, give or take 5 mins either side. They also need to be highly interactive (either using the platform’s own interactive features, like polling, chat or Q&A) or by incorporating other online or even offline activities. In other words, a live training session shouldn’t just be used to broadcast content.

Flexibility:

But don’t think creating an online course instead would be a better option. Rather create short flexible online resources in different formats – video, audio, even text and graphics – so that they can be used for different purposes – JIT learning, performance support, reference etc. These resources can then be used in the way that the individual wants – whether it’s working through them in a linear fashion or just dipping in and out of them. This approach reflects how people prefer to learn for themselves on the Web. Simple resources can be very effective – you don’t need to create highly sophisticated materials. 

Accessibility in Workflow:

Furthermore, it’s not then about monitoring course completions in an LMS to measure learning; it’s about making these resources available in the workflow – on the intranet for instance – so that they are easily accessible (and not locked away in another system) and people can use them as they will to do their jobs- and then measure their effectiveness in terms of improved job performance.

Self-Discovery:

But it’s important to remember that L&D can’t possibly create everything everyone needs to learn to do their job or to prepare them for the future; so it’s really time to think how to help people become self-sufficient and discover more for themselves online. In fact, that’s what a lot of them are already doing – and probably more so now they are in lockdown. So, it’s about promoting incremental learning (that is gradually building on what they already know) – as an important part of online workplace learning.

One way is for organisations to start encouraging everyone to establish a daily self-learning habit. That means spending just 20-30 minutes a day discovering something for themselves (on the Web) to support their own professional goals. It might not sound like a lot of time, but it all adds up – to around 2 ½  hours a week, 10 hours a month, and over 100 hours a year – that’s equivalent to around 10-12 training days.

Learning as a Culture:

Some managers who recognise the importance of continuous and incremental learning are already giving their people time to do this, but if your own managers are not quite ready for this, then your people might be encouraged to do this in their own downtime (on their commute – if they still have one) or perhaps at a coffee break. It’s for their benefit as much as the organisation’s since there is no longer such a thing as a job for life, and everyone needs to take responsibility for their own continuous career development.

And there’s a lot that can be done in 20-30 minutes. You can read a couple of blog posts or articles, listen to a podcast, watch a video. People should do whatever suits their needs, interests and preferences – there’s no one size fits all. 

The Modern Learners:

Lots of people are “modern learners”, learning for themselves in this way, others may need help to understand what’s possible and to acquire some of the new modern learning skills, like searching, curating, subscribing, sharing and so on.  But there are couple of other things the organisations can do to get the ball rolling:

1)      They can curate some relevant online resources for them either to build a collection of useful stuff your people can delve into on different topics

2)      They can offer some daily micro-learning – that is small pieces of curated or (even created) content to help them build their knowledge on a topic.

3)      They can also provide links to key people to connect with on Twitter or LinkedIn, because building an effective professional network with whom they can regularly interact, is, as we have seen, another key way of learning – by interacting. 

4)      Interacting with ones colleagues is, of course, vital too. Remote workers are, undoubtedly, now making greater use of online social platforms like Microsoft Teams, Yammer and Slack for their work, but helping teams use these very same platforms to share their knowledge and experiences with one another, so that they can continuously learn from one another online as an integral part of work – still needs some encouragement and support.

5)      Teams might also benefit from support to help them “work out loud” and share their key work experiences so that the learning from the daily work doesn’t go to waste, so duplications can be spotted and people can get help from others with their projects, or their challenges and issues

6)      Organisations can guide their social learning experiences and help teams learn and share as an part of their daily work, which of course is a big part of learning by experience.

Therefore, there are lots of things the organisation can do to support learning online at work – rather than just creating online courses and running virtual live training. There is a lot of value in working with teams to help them share resources effectively and discriminately on their social platforms – to make sure they don’t over-share and overwhelm one another, perhaps in order to try to get to the top of a leader board —  and how to add real value to what they share, so their colleagues get something meaningful from it.

But if the organisation still considers that an online course or programme of some sort is required, then all these elements – resources, activities, social experiences – can be combined to provide a varied, flexible online learning experience, blended into a learning campaign – which provides a varied stream of resources or challenges over a fixed period – perhaps 30 days. This is a very useful way of changing behaviours (like helping to establish a daily learning habit) which can’t be achieved by a one-off online course.

We are all going to have to adapt to new practices, habits and behaviours when we are back at work, so this is prime time to start preparing for the new world of workplace learning.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa