How do we define early adopters?

Are they companies and individuals who set out and say, “we are going to follow but add value”, or “we see what is possible and move forward”?

I say no.

Early adopters understand the power and benefits that come with the technology or solution. In the case of social learning, they realized the capabilities, foresaw the challenges, identified the features to bring about a new experience for their learners.

In turn, their learners responded. They gained insight, added value, engaged and inspired others, and brought a real sense of collaborative and community learning.

Social Learning is about adding social media types to e-learning.  It is taking that next step, to see what is possible, to try out new ideas for higher engagement boosting comprehension, retention and more importantly, synthesis.  Adult learners want to see real gains and a real world experience in their learning.

Social Learning enables that and more.

Can you add APIs (Application Program Interfaces) and Mashups to go beyond what is possible and explore new learning opportunities, regardless of the location?  Yes.  Can you enable your learners to create, edit and share in real time documents; offer new ideas and develop a sense of belonging through various new forms of social media?  Yes, to all the above.

That is the amazing strength of social learning, but it doesn’t stop there.

Virtual Worlds can be integrated with various social media offerings, and the next evolution of social learning incorporates augmented reality, mobile learning with tablets and the use of livecasting.

Will this make you an early adopter? Absolutely.  Will it offer an engagement and experience for your learners and equally as important, boost their productivity? Yes.

At this year’s Global Leadership Congress, Hitachi Data Systems, Mercer, Plastipak and General Mills will discuss the details on how they implemented and acheived success with social learning.

As an attendee, you too will experience social learning, first hand. Brainstorming, collaboration and engagement is included, all components of social learning.

A learning tool designed to help you identify the appropriate social learning types to meet your company’s business needs and eliminate the challenges is included.

So, who are the early adopters?

You are.

The Global Leadership Congress, Social Learning Roundtable will be May 11th, from 2-5 p.m.

If you haven’t yet registered for the Global Leadership Congress, seats are still available, although they are going fast. To learn more about the Global Leadership Congress, May 9-11th in Philadelphia, visit the event page.

Finalists from the CorpU 12th Annual Awards will present their award-winning programs at a peer-to-peer event at the upcoming 2011 Global Leadership Congress in Philadelphia.

An exclusive group of senior learning leaders will be gathering for the three day congress, and Tuesday morning’s session is devoted to a poster session in which participants will interact directly with the award winners as they give informal presentations and facilitate small-group Q&A sessions. Read more »

How many conference invitations do you receive each year?  How do you decide which events are must-attends? What should conference organizers be doing to give maximum value for your time and budget?

We thought a lot about these questions at CorpU when we and our partners at UPenn’s Graduate School of Education designed the upcoming 2011 Global Leadership Congress, the annual signature event being held this May 9th-11^th in Philadelphia on the UPenn campus. Read more »

Your company has a corporate social responsibility program, but is your learning organization part of the CSR strategy?  It should be, and here’s why: Read more »

How do we define social learning?

Is it a collaborative approach? Enhanced feature sets to engage learners? Strategy tied to learning initiatives from a business standpoint?

Or is it a way to ensure that our employees and our customers see the value of  learning and its benefits?

Benefits of Social Learning

• Gives power and provides engagement to your learners, they seek this out
• Eliminates passive training, now you can find out what your employees are thinking, responding and inquiring about
• Opens up an experience that can show the real impact of learning
• Does away with instructor led training that is often non-engaging, lacks interactivity and hopes that everyone asks questions and is involved (rarely the case)
• Enables people regardless of location, division, department to be part of something rather than nothing
• Offers opportunities to link to job roles, skills, leadership development using tools not available before

Two types of Social Learning & Benefits

Social Q/A

• End users ask questions, Subject matter experts respond, end users add comments
• Unique Value Proposition- establish mentoring program, one learner to one SME (via department, division, region, etc.)

Gain?

• Eliminates on the job training – which has been shown ineffective in the long term
• Identifies topics that could be used for future training

Scribd & Slideshare

• Employees or Trainers can upload presentations and share them with other learners
• Training department or employees can create, upload, read, print or share documents, audio/video files, presentations, spreadsheets, etc.

Unique Value Proposition

• Training Departments can provide quick reference materials, cards, video clips or presentations, audio, etc. to employees/customers and identify how many times they have been viewed, printed & shared – reduces cost to department for unnecessary future training or courses, reduces cost to department (eliminates printing/shipping), opens up global experience – which can be tied to native language (for example you have employees outside your home country)

Gain

• Localized learning
• Higher engagement
• Eliminates waste
• Identifies topics to train & topics to re-train (via blended learning or e-learning)

Bottom Line

Social Learning offers your learners, new opportunities, provides you as a training executive with future topics without the need of constant gap analysis, reduces costs in the short term and long term and identifies what your trainees need and want.

To gain a new perspective on social learning, please make sure to attend the exclusive event of the year, the Global Leadership Congress, May 9-11, 2011 in Philadelphia.  A roundtable on this topic and its strategy from a training and department angle will be presented. To learn more about the roundtable including the agenda, click Social Learning at GLC.

We teach our children through stories not because it is a simplistic or naïve methodology, but because narrative orders our experience.  The power of narrative lies in its capacity to reinforce memory; to engage the mind and emotions with an immediacy that intensifies the learning experience; and to create community. Read more »