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Social/Informal Learning Instructional Designer Behavioral Interviewing

January 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As I was driving down the road the other day, I was thinking about the future of instruction design, especially as it relates to informal and social learning. So as soon as I got to my destination, I threw this post together as a working document. Many people taut themselves as experts in social media, so how can an interviewer really know whether the person they are interviewing is truly an advocate of informal and social learning? They can speak social media but can they design towards social and informal learning?

After the introductory questions and answers like “How’s the weather?” or whatnot, why not dive right into the deep questions?

Personally, my objectives in the interview are to determine the following:

  1. Do they have a working knowledge of social media sites beyond social networking?
  2. Do they have personal experience with a wide variety of social media sites?
  3. Can they identify and explain what are some types of social media sites?
  4. Do they know who the leaders are in the field of social and/or informal learning?
  5. To what degree are they ready to begin designing courses with social and/or informal learning in mind?

Here are a series of questions that I have thrown together that I would ask a potential new hire to determine their informal or social learning instructional designing readiness.

  1. Please name a few different types of social media or web 2.0 and what purpose(s) they serve.
    • Here I am looking for them to be able to articulate beyond social networking but to include things like blogging, micro-blogging, social bookmarking, video sharing, picture sharing, web conferencing, etc.
    • Besides being able to tell me the various types, I want to determine whether they have a working knowledge of those types by asking follow up questions like, “What is your favorite social bookmarking site and why? What is your favorite micro-blogging site and why?”
    • If I really want to determine their gaps, I would have  an exhaustive list of various social media sites and just go through them asking them the following: Please let me know how familiar you are with the following social media sites on a scale of 0-10, 0 being, I haven’t ever heard of that site and 10 being I am extensively active on this site. I would also add in a few ad hoc names of a few sites (like techbuzz.com) to see if they are lying.
  2. Please name three advocates of informal and/or social learning and tell me how each one has impacted your thinking regarding informal and/or social learning.
    • Personally, I would be looking for the following names: Jay Cross, Marcia Conner, Tony Bingham, Dave Wilkinson, Kevin Jones, Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, Clark Quinn, and Jon Husband. While this list is not a complete all-inclusive list, one of these names should come up.
    • One possible very basic follow up question is, “How much of learning is informal?”
  3. What blogs or websites do you frequent the most and why?
    • First, if the person rattles off a list of various social media sites, this really doesn’t tell you anything. It may only mean that they are a social person. However, digging into why they frequent those sites will be quite insightful. Or simply asking, “For what business purpose(s) do those sites have?”
    • Second, I am really looking to see if they are current on what is being discussed in regards to social learning. If they are active on Twitter, I want to hear something regarding #lrnchat. If they are active in LinkedIn, they I want to hear about the various groups on LinkedIn and how they are effectively utilized.
    • Third, I also want to see if they use a Reader like Google Reader to aggregate their various feeds.
    • Fourth, the list, while important, is not as important as their interaction on those sites via comments or retweets, etc.
  4. Do you have a personal social media policy? If so, what is it?
    • While there are many who have had a personal social media policy only to let it dissolve, there are some who haven’t even considered it. If your company is policy-laden or heavily policy-oriented, then this question will reveal more of a cultural fit.
    • Possible follow-up questions are: If not, which social media sites do you follow and for what purpose(s)?
  5. If you were to design a course, say on Procrastination, how would you design it?
    • If they question the analysis stage (because they may think this is an ADDIE question), simply inform them that the analysis determined that the company needed to train leadership on how to deal with procrastination personally and with those whom they supervise to improve productivity.
    • If they ask questions regarding the SME, simply inform them that only one SME has been identified. Here I am looking to see if they incorporate social media to find other potential SMEs.
    • The main goal of this question is to see whether they are already thinking outside the box incorporating some social learning activities/event.
  6. Do you have your own website or blog? Why or why not?
    • Personally, I can care less what they are blogging about; however, it doesn’t hurt to ask what they blog/write about?
    • After hearing their purpose, my questions would center around time and frequency and consistency.
  7. What is the difference, if any, between social learning and informal learning?
    • To me this is an important question. Because I see so many people use informal learning and social learning interchangeably, I am looking to see if the candidate can determine and articulate the difference between these two types of learning.
    • My definition of informal learning is semi-structured, learner-initiated, ad hoc acquisition of knowledge, attitudes, values, or skills resulting in the ability to do something that was previously unknown.
    • My definition of social learning is simply the gaining of knowledge, insight, or a skill through one’s interactions with others (typically three or more) and their knowledge, expertise, and skill.
  8. If someone objected to the use of social media at work saying that it was a time waster, what would you say?
    • There are several objections that you can use. The top three that I hear most often are: (1) Time waster, (2) Control of information & accuracy, and (3) Accuracy & people posting anything. For a good list, see Kevin Jones’s list at EngagedLearning.net or his and Dave Wilkins’s SlideShare presentation.
    • Besides their ability to think on the spot and problem solve, this really looks inside their head and their ability to articulate the faultiness of the objection as well as the benefit(s) of social media at work.

This list is by no means an exhaustive or complete list of questions. Other questions that would vary from organization to organization would include questions around tools that you may already have. For example, if your organization has no social tools per se, but has Sharepoint, I would ask some questions around Sharepoint and social learning (though obviously not ideal). However, if your organization has Jive, then my questions would revolve around Jive. However, if the person is ignorant of these Business software solutions, that isn’t deterrent. What is deterrent would be a lack of knowledge around what constitutes as blogging or podcasting, not that they don’t know how to use Sharepoint to blog or Jive.

Some more advanced questions would be regarding social learning strategy and approach and methods of social learning. For example, if the organization needs a more codified approach to social learning, what does that look like? Likewise, if an organization needs a more emergent approach to social learning, what does that look like. And finally, what does it look like to simply take a collaborative approach to social learning?

And finally depending on the person’s potential role or the size of the organization, I would ask questions regarding the use of social learning for the extended enterprise, such as external audiences like vendors, customers, etc, or community management.

So what other questions would you add?

Filed Under: Informal Learning, Learning, Social Learning, Social Media, Training Tagged With: , ,
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Social Learning v. Informal/Formal v. Socializing Learning: What IS Social Learning?

December 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Dave Wilkins provides an excellent working definition of social learning (Dave Wilkins definition and blog post, “Social Learning Defined”). Social learning is simply the gaining of insight, knowledge, or a skill through one’s interactions with others and their knowledge, expertise, and skill. While there may be some overlap, social learning, informal learning, formal learning, and socializing learning are different and at times VERY different, possibly antithetical.

Social Learning v. Informal/Formal Learning?
Primarily, social learning can happen in a formal learning environment while informal learning demands an informal environment from the start. In a sense, good formal learning that follows adult learning theory models is also social learning. So what marks the difference from social learning and formal learning? Primarily the approach marks the difference almost entirely. If the training is top-down or from an expert to the masses, then it typically, not always, is formal learning. Furthermore, when combined with the control residing with the training department or the subject matter expert (SME) or some governing certifying body, then it is most certainly formal learning. Social learning is open source, creative commons stemming from the ground up.

Informal learning can sometimes occur non-socially or without any collaboration while lack of collaboration and interpersonal interaction is antithetical to social learning. Social automatically demands one more person’s involvement. Social learning cannot happen in a vacuum or in complete isolation. While social learning can happen alone, one is only alone physically or geographically. For it to be social learning, there must be an interactive and collaborative environment. Social learning includes online forums, wikis, blogs, social networks, communities of practice, conferences and colloquiums, coaching and mentoring. However, informal learning can happen independently and on-demand using books, articles, and knowledge portals. Informal learning can also include informal feedback, developmental reviews, etc.

Social Learning v. Socializing Learning
Social learning is also different from socializing our formal learning models though sometimes simply providing access or an outlet to some social online venue will provide the social learning support necessary for the grass to grow. Social learning is an orientation towards learning. In reality much of learning is social in its nature. Socializing learning, or sprinkling a little social behaviors, is only one small facet of social learning. Furthermore, socializing learning is learning controlled by the facilitator or the trainer whereas social learning is undefined and uncontrolled encouraging, enabling and empowering learning to occur on-demand, just-in-time, collaboratively and spontaneously. The major difference between social learning and socializing learning is the focus on strategy as opposed to the incorporation of technologies. While social learning is not just about the technologies, it is about the technologies in some sense (tweet). Never before have we had the ability or the ease or the simplicity to share, to collaborate, to track, to analyze immediately. So web 2.0 has made all these things better and usable and scalable. So with the technology, social learning requires the development of a good social media policy coupled with an incredible social strategy where learning and development, training, and talent management must be at the table with communications, marketing, and IT.

What is Social Learning?
Social learning in its truest form requires a paradigm shift. Just as Andrew McAffee of Enterprise 2.0 has said, there must be a relinquishing of control to one of facilitation (which includes moderation). It also demands that the paradigm shift change from top down to bottom up, a grassroots initiative that grows organically and exponentially. So just as it once was, top management informing front line leaders, a grassroots approach has the front line leaders informing the top management. Social learning requires, allows, and even encourages learner to learn from other learners, not just the SME. The SME is just one among equals where he has to jostle and demonstrate his expertise, instead of simply having it bestowed upon him by someone or some institution. True SMEs will either engage and demonstrate themselves to be such experts, disengage in superiority or fear, or simply fade.

Just as we can gather some incredible knowledge, know-how, and expertise through our peers in the classroom, it is the same with social learning outside the classroom. How many times have we been in an experience that if we could talk to someone who was in the same experience or had a similar experience we could effectively perform our way out? How much simpler would action plans be if there were somewhere that contained a plethora of action planning ideas that were tried and trued so that some became best practices?

Anything else outside of these is simply socializing learning, a short-sighted look at social learning and informal learning. And frankly to socialize learning only and not to engage in social learning is rather insulting. To say, in essence, that our/your employees cannot be trusted to start, to carry, and to join the conversations regarding whatever conversations are started wherever that conversations begins, goes, and ends (of course within one’s social media guidelines and policy). Instead, we will quickly realize that some of our best realizations, insights, and action items will come through others. As Pratt has said, “If we only knew what we know.”

Filed Under: Informal Learning, Learning, Social Learning Tagged With: , , ,
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Social Media Objection

April 22, 2009 By 1 Comment

My company (who will remain anonymous, but not too much if you dig deep enough, because of their crazy Google Alerts) has for some time maintained a blanket NO stance against social media. I have been working for months to educate the right people on what it is.My company’s main objection is:

“They [Facebook and Twitter] are both “open ended” systems which means the Unions could join and start distributing their propaganda.  Also, if we support it over our network, we will have to keep track of it for discovery laws since these are communications that occur both inside and outside our company.  This would be next to impossible for us to monitor since it is open ended.” So simply, the objection exists because of employment and labor law and its relationship to social media. Current labor laws force companies to allow the same opportunities for all employees to say something, even if it means to include a union. So in order not to discriminate against those, we simply do not allow it for the entire company. My company has already shut down two “official” Company Facebook pages because of the fear of inappropriate comments (one made by two employees on non-company time, interesting that appeared on another employee’s Facebook page, not the group page or discussion page) and fear that unions will start posting on the site. I completely understand the apprehension against Facebook, as most companies do not use it—not that I agree with it though. However, because of Facebook and Twitter fears, they fear placing one inside our corporate firewall as well. Does anyone know anything about discovery laws and its relation to social media?

My response has been consistent. Here is one edited response that I have used.

I completely understand wanting to close off Facebook and Twitter. They are open applications that could allow for Unions to join and start distributing their propaganda. On the other hand, do we just allow the unions to keep the technology to themselves? Do we not chime in and listen even if we don’t want an official Facebook page or Twitter username? Unions are using these means already. Our own employees are using these means already. And we have no visibility into what is going on except through Google Alerts, which is truthfully inadequate alone. 2007 was the first year that there was more content creation than crawlers, servers, etc. could document and store. Facebook boasts for over 200 active million users! Surely many of our own employees are on this list, and Google does not Google Alert it. At first search without digging, I found 380 people on Facebook from my company (not a large company). A quick search on Myspace.com revealed 112 hits including job postings from their partnerships with job websites. Linkedin.com listed 190 employees. The people at these sites include people from almost every rank.

Furthermore, just today I checked out a public message board that has over 19,900 members, and one thread dedicated to our company. It is already being used for HR information, travel information, corporate communications, policies, unions, compensation, etc.

Again, to my knowledge, these threads are not supported by Google Alerts. So our people are already using social media for “good” and for “bad.” Why not have a discussion board on our intranet for our employees only (i.e. they have to login through their employee #) where we have full visibility? Are we that afraid of our employees? Are our employees that bad? Are we not treating our employees well? Aren’t we making strides to understand our people with our new survey? Will people post bad or negative stuff? Maybe. Maybe not. If they do, we won’t need to do anything because some other loyal and faithful employee at their same level or lower will say something. The community will police itself. There was a hospital who wanted to move away from email because email was being bogged down through too many discussions and announcements. So they created a discussion board for general announcements like cookout for all the ?? employees, and other social type things. For the first six months, it was used what it was created for. At the sixth month mark, they noticed a shift in the conversation. Employees began using it for work. They shared information and knowledge about all sorts of things. Why? Well, the biggest thing that we all have in common here is our company. It’s our work that unites us. It’s the logo, the brand. Yes, if the discussion board is inside, then yes the unions may place something on it but only through an employee. And we know who it is and we can address the root cause, but before they place union information, they’ll be warning signs. Things we can know and address.

As for our LMS, it cannot do some of the things that would greatly benefit us as can blogs, discussion boards, wikis, social networks, etc. Other companies are using blogs and Twitter, and yet they have to submit to the same discovery laws as we do. So how can they do it and we can’t? What good is Twitter? What good is blogging?

Imagine this. Having a tool that pressing one button, it will notify a long list of people instantaneously to their phones. Imagine this. Having a tool that notifies all our customers immediately about a new service, a new program, or some other PR or Marketing campaign. Imagine this: having immediate access to over 500 other professionals who do the same job you do. It’s like being at a conference all day every day. Networking with people. Conversing over hot issues that companies, even competitors can discuss. Helping one another improve through benchmarking. Imagine this. Our president makes a brief announcement via Twitter then everyone of his followers have it immediately on their phone.

Twitter can be used for all sorts of things. It is micro-blogging. It is texting. Currently, we cannot see what people are saying to one another in their cubicles, in the halls, in the stairwell, at the coffee station, in the breakroom, etc. Now imagine being notified every time someone says something. Twitter now can be searched via hashtag, Twitter Alerts (like Google Alerts), by attitude!, by words, etc. Twitter can be used to announce training opportunities, real time advice from the masses, leadership/motivational quotes, etc. Again, it can be whatever we want it to be. It can be whatever we officially deem it to be. It’s fast, simple, and easy.

But does anyone have any information about social media and discovery laws?

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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