Foundations of the Social Age MOOC 2017 Q1: Unit 06 - Social Learning

This post contains publicly available content and my responses to exercises from this unit of the course created by Julian Stodd and Sea Salt Learning.

As I started the course,  I decided that I would go for 100% completion of all exercises given that there was a leaderboard for completion and learner engagement. On the back of that decision, I decided to do the exercises using “wild mind writing”.

 

Introduction

In this level, we will explore what Social Learning is, how organisations can take this understanding on board and evolve the learning function, and the core skills required for people to thrive in Social Learning spaces. This includes skills around storytelling, sense making, challenging, and sharing.

Overview

Social Learning takes place in communities. This video explores why it's important to understand Social Learning in the context of the Social Age.

Video

My response:

Social learning is codified in blog posts and the like.

I would hope that formal learning/ knowledge is better than the view expressed in the video.

Note that some moocs are very short so no time to get to know fellow learners.

Yet to work in org with social learning going on.

Defo compiling/ creating content in blog posts.

Need to verify validity and veracity of content in social learning platforms cf IT technical forums where if a SQL Server DBA blindly follows some "helpful" tips in a forum may do serious damage to an organisation's data.

I have loved learning in MOOCs. This is my 21st. Different degrees of social learning on each ranging from none to extensive.

Volatility of subject area us a factor. In 1980 when I did Business Studies/ Management Science degree much of the additional content was not in books but in business journals and periodicals.

Lots of formal learning is self-directed these days so more MOOC-like.

An introduction to Scaffolded Social Learning

Article

In a Social Learning approach, the organisation listens to the tacit, tribal wisdom, the voices of the community itself.

Name three challenges you can identify with implementing a Social Learning approach.

My response:

The downside of co-creation is that you as a learner are at the mercy of the collective wisdom or ignorance of the group. Depending on the subject and the level of knowledge of the group on that subject, co-creation may produce content that is minimally helpful or indeed take people down wrong roads.

Twitter chats have been helpful in 1 questions and n question formats to structure co-creation of the community's knowledge and sharing that.

I strongly recommend Harvard's Leaders of Learning MOOC. Amazing content. Helpful doing it after I had done a couple of huge MOOCs.

Challenges:

• learners not directing themselves
• too many lurkers not contributing
• people waiting for others to contribute rather than "going first"

This course itself has a challenge with minimal interaction with other learners or updates from course leaders re progress of the course etc.

Will read the "Guide to establishing social communities at work" later.

Functionality of the social platform IS important because depending on your requirement the platform needs to support that. If the platform is simply a direct 1:1 messaging service then that will not be fit for the purpose. As ever with all things IT, we need to state our requirement and source a platform to best meet that within any budgetary constraints.

1.3. Social Learning

Podcast

How would you describe the benefits of using a Social Learning approach? List three.

My response:

Benefits

• learn anywhere
• learn anytime
• learn anything

Varying content delivery mechanisms. Videos, audio etc.

Just need to Google for content and then assess relevance, veracity and safety of the content if we apply it.

Co-creation a challenge when that is done in course-specific platforms and that content dies when the platform dies.

Making MOOCs on a Budget MOOC was an amazing course (https://youtu.be/SlucUUKzyko). Went away thinking I can actually build a MOOC myself.

Re shared values in a community, I enjoy being part of communities where I am not a subject area expert because I want to learn or where I can bring a different perspective to stretch me as I apply that.

Building community hard when MOOCs are short. On longer ones I have done you do get to know some fellow learners. This was where the content release was time bound so all learners were going through the content and commenting at the same time. So if you are first learner in, there will be no comments for a unit yet but if you back later there will be hundreds! So the approach on this one to encourage the learner to do the units in any sequence may be good from a DIY perspective but meant that as I started with later units I saw no comments for a lot of days.

Time bound discussion is also an issue for Twitter chats. People seem to have the view that if you cannot take part in real-time, you cannot take part later. Some of us chip in regardless and the convo moves on. Storify does not help either as you start and end the curation either time-wise of with specific tweets.

I am still keen to develop training assets that do "last" wherever that is possible with the flexibility. E.g. yes ESNs are a way of eliminating emails but fundamentally ESN posts and emails are simply different ways of communicating the same thing and we need to start looking at what are we communicating when and why. I have an emerging view that I need to "test" which is that people who are inefficient and ineffective at email will be similarly so in ESNs.

1.4. 10 Tips For Designing Effective Social Learning

Article

Can you share your tips for designing effective Social Learning, or what you think might make it successful?

My response:

Don't you need formal learning to teach social learning? Or is "how to do social" itself a social learning pathway?

Interesting re tech, I am in the process of building a mooc on Teachable. The platform allows you to host for free if you do not charge for your course. I am seeking to use the max amount of functionality that I can that is available out of the box for free. So I can see others being constrained as I am by what the tech allows you to do unless you have your own developers. I am seeking to be "social" obviously! But I may have to resort to other platforms in parallel with Teachable. We will see ...

Interesting what comes first, engagement or strong community? It takes one person to start a movement. Interesting exercise I did years ago about healthy Christians and healthy churches and which drives which if you are seeking to sort out a "sick" church. Substitute "community" for "Christian" and "church" ... discuss ....

"Social learning typically takes place over time" - does this mean that social learning cannot take place on a 6-week MOOC given that simply going through the content is a sprint and that learning through collaborative relationships is a marathon?

Scaffolding is a key point and course design and structure was a key part of the Making MOOCs on a Budget. Really helpful course that one including some learning 101 material that was eye-opening (e.g. Bloom's Taxonomy, Rubrics etc).

Assessment on anything other than a right/wrong test is a key challenge for MOOC designers if we/they need to assess 00s/000s of learners.

Re Case Studies, I note from earlier comments I saw in the course that many of us are incapable of providing good examples of orgs doing social learning at all, let alone well.

Can anyone point me at role specs for the suggested roles?

1.5. Challenge

Video

My response:

Main challenge is to get the informal/social stuff back into the formal so there is a virtuous circle. May be this is the sort of issue where social learning dies as a separate, parallel activity and becomes part of the way organisations work. This, for me, would be the ultimate definition of success. This, for me, should be social learning advocates' mission.

I need to revisit "community" as a subject. How to start, nurture, close etc.

Good to hear about assessment approaches. Definitely need metrics of some sort otherwise how would you demonstrate benefit and where that money and time is going and is it furthering the mission of the organisation.

1.6. Share your thoughts on Social Learning

Use this as an opportunity to share your experiences of this type of learning.

My response:

This is my 21st MOOC on various UK, European and North American platforms. I am that rare person who has finished every MOOC I have started. I have documented my MOOC journey in this post. That summary includes the extent to which there was learner interaction.

Prior to my 1st MOOC experience I would have said I wanted all my learning to do from formal channels and ideally by experts. I hate courses that are based solely on the collective wisdom/ ignorance of the group being "trained". I have now learned that I can actually learn stuff from my fellow learners! 

I have had some amazing social learning experiences on those MOOCs especially Harvard's Immunity to Change. The nature of that course leading the learners to effectively become support groups for each other.

I have documented my education, training and career journey in this post recently as part of a Working Out Loud circle goal.

I have just completed a 12 week virtual 5 country/timezone WOL circle using Zoom and Slack. This is probably the pinnacle of my social learning to date and is documented in this post.

The Harvard Leaders of Learning MOOC is an amazing course to get your head round different learning and leaders of learning approaches. I suspect I got way more out of that course having had my eyes opened wide by the early MOOCs I did.

I do no social learning at work and neither do fellow employees (30 of is in a web solutions supplier serving some UK household names with highly-secure solutions).

I am an avid tweeter, recently tweeted my 50,000th.

I am a giver more than a taker. I am a community builder.

I am keen to explore social learning further with a particular interest in social networks that span customers, suppliers and intermediaries.

I am about to start a virtual book club to read a specific book in the first instance.