Chapter I
What is Social Learning?
Towards a definition
We've all been through it: traditional schooling relies on lectures delivered by a teacher who holds the knowledge, to pupils who, most of the time, receive it passively.
This way of passing on knowledge can be roughly pictured as a one-way vertical movement, from the top (the teacher) down to the bottom (the pupils). Beyond the classroom, this top-down model of transmission is also commonly used in continuing professional development.
Increasingly popular, social learning describes a method of learning that is diametrically opposed to these traditional teaching habits. The idea, on the contrary, is to rely on horizontal knowledge sharing and a two-way co-construction of knowledge, continually enriched by the interactions between the various members of a group of learners.
In short, social learning means learning with and thanks to others.
From the social being to social learning
If you consider that the social nature of human beings plays a crucial part in how they develop, social learning is plainly common sense. Throughout our lives, we talk to others, we listen to them, we watch what they do, we interact with them, and we naturally take in countless lessons through these social relationships.
For a child, for instance, learning to speak, to perform everyday gestures, to grasp essential concepts (right and wrong, rules, and so on) or simple games happens by watching and listening to their parents and peers, as well as by experimenting for themselves. You can even set up a peer assessment system. It's concrete and it goes without saying: no one would dream of teaching a young child how to wash their hands by giving them a lecture. In the same way, there are no marbles teachers, yet children pass the rules of the game on to one another, and even work them out together.
In line with this observation, social learning is an approach that values concrete, interactive, engaged learning, and encourages everyone to wear both the learner's hat and the expert's hat. Each person contributes to the group by sharing their own knowledge and know-how, voices their questions to find answers collectively, and in turn helps solve the problems others come up against. These cross-cutting interactions give everyone information and demonstrations that enrich the learning experience.
Social, Peer, Collaborative... different words for a shared meaning
The term social learning can be understood in several ways, and a number of expressions sit alongside it with what seems to be an equivalent meaning. People talk in particular about « peer learning », where colleagues « learn from one another as equals », or about « collaborative learning ». The nuances between these labels are subtle, if not non-existent: they all describe participatory learning, based on cooperation between learners who leave behind the passive status of the traditional pupil to become, together, the drivers of their own training.
We're also seeing new vocabulary emerge to describe the material shared by learners: the terms « user generated content » and « expert generated content » are appearing to describe learning content created by learner users (« user ») or by experts, who might be trainers, outside specialists in a particular field, or indeed learners who themselves hold specific knowledge.
Beedeez therefore encourages the company's employees to create learning content in-house. The « Tips » feature, in particular, lets them share their know-how by recording short demonstration videos, ideal for example for passing on their technical gestures.
At the heart of social learning: Social Learning Theory
Among the theoretical foundations that underpin social learning, the best known is Social Learning Theory, developed in the 1960s and 1970s by the Canadian Albert Bandura, a distinguished researcher in social psychology.
This theory stresses that learning rests on observing behaviours performed by others and taking their consequences into account, leading to a considered form of imitation. According to Bandura, this process means you can skip a great deal of trial and error to acquire the knowledge or know-how you're after.
Within this framework, the researcher calls the imitated behaviour the « model », and « modelling » the whole mechanism that leads to imitation. It's worth noting that this isn't mere mimicry, but rather using observation to build your own ways of behaving, going as far as generating new skills beyond the model itself.
Social learning draws on 4 distinct processes:
- Attention, which needs to be of good quality for the process to pay off. Observation has to be active so that the learner can pick out the information worth noting, and extract the underlying rules from the behaviour observed.
- Retention, an essential step in any learning approach. It consists of holding on to the key points of what has been observed, through mental images or through mental or physical repetition.
- Reproduction, which consists of putting into practice what the learner has chosen to retain. At this stage, you need to be able to self-observe in order to correct yourself.
- Motivation, needed to make the effort of learning. It's stimulated by the prospect of concrete or symbolic rewards, such as the satisfaction tied to a sense of « self-efficacy ».
Albert Bandura also points out that we learn better when we take as a model someone we feel close to. Just as a child happily imitates their parents, siblings or friends, social learning is all the more effective when it draws on the sharing of experiences and knowledge between peers linked by a certain closeness.
Two concrete examples:
- Sharing with the whole class the work of a pupil who has done well, or asking that pupil to write a correction on the board, are good examples of social learning. To put it simply: carefully observing the strong pupil's skills encourages beneficial reproduction by their classmates, motivated in particular by the prospect of a good mark next time.
- A similar mechanism underpins certain television adverts whose aim is to prompt people to imitate certain consumer behaviours by associating them with appealing benefits. Think of persuasive messages along the lines of « Drink this fizzy drink and your life will sparkle! » or « Use this beauty product and the world will be at your feet! ». On an attentive consumer, won over by the promise, it can work!
Before: interactionist theory
Ahead of Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory, the Russian intellectual Lev Vygotsky had already highlighted, in the early twentieth century, the social component of learning.
The social origin of human thought
A philosopher, psychologist and educationalist, Lev Vygotsky was one of the first to establish that a child is first and foremost a social being, and that the whole of their development (thought, language, higher mental functions) is the fruit of constant interaction with their parents, teachers and other children. He argues that learning is only accessible within this communication with the adult and collaboration with peers.
According to his « interactionist » theory, learning first goes through a collective activity, supported by an adult and by the group. It is then consolidated during an individual activity that allows it to be internalised.
A 100% social learning theory
Applied to the field of training, Lev Vygotsky's analysis means favouring a learning environment that maximises the opportunities for interaction within the group of learners. Discussions, collaborative work, sharing impressions and feedback on experience should all play a central role in it. That's the very definition of contemporary social learning!
After: situated learning theory
The work of Bandura and Vygotsky underpins another analysis that values social learning: situated learning theory, set in motion in the early 1990s by the social anthropologist Jean Lave and her student Etienne Wenger.
Lave and Wenger reaffirm that social interaction holds a central place in the learning process. In their view, this process happens within all human activity and at any moment, through observing the problems encountered, the way theory is applied, and the role played by the learner themselves.
Context and concreteness
Lave and Wenger's learning model is described as « situated » because it takes place within the very context where it will later be used, and is inseparable from it. Within that context, they stress that knowledge is co-constructed at the heart of a « community of practice » where learners learn from one another.
This theory was developed in particular from observing the behaviour of communities of apprentices around a master craftsman. To become skilled professionals, apprentices acquire their know-how directly in the workplace, through observation, participation and collaboration.
Other examples? Workshops, or role-play exercises in real-life settings, can fall within this framework.
An excellent way to learn: the 70-20-10 model
If social learning is enjoying the limelight today, it isn't only for its likeable, sociable side. Educational theories, like many studies, show that it's above all a particularly effective way to learn.
Have you heard of the 70-20-10 model?
The 70-20-10 model was developed in the mid-1990s by the Center for Creative Leadership, an American leadership research institute. It's very often cited today to extol the virtues of informal learning, in other words learning outside the academic setting.
To build this model, the researchers Michael Lombardo, Morgan McCall and Robert Eichinger asked 200 managers which ways of learning they credited their acquired knowledge to, and obtained the following answers:
- 70% through activity and experience, in other words « on the job »
- 20% through their social interactions
- 10% through academic training
The 70-20-10 model therefore stresses that 90% of knowledge is acquired informally, through experience and social interaction : a real plus for social learning! The flip side of this figure is that the formal part of learning accounts for only a very small share of what we take in.
Academic learning fades fast, informal learning sticks
Other studies confirm, moreover, that most of the information learnt in the classic way is quickly forgotten, unless it's anchored through a process of reactivation:
- As far back as the late nineteenth century, Hermann Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve showed that 30% of the information we learn is forgotten within 24 hours if we don't repeat it.
- In 1939, HF Spitzer established that, without revision, 80% of the concepts taught academically are forgotten within 2 weeks.
Unlike academic teaching, social learning emphasises observation, the sharing of knowledge and skills (whether hard skills or soft skills), putting knowledge into practice in real conditions, and interactions between learners... If the 70-20-10 model is to be believed, this highly informal nature places it among the most effective training methods.
Chapter II
Social learning trends
Growing popularity
Social learning isn't, in itself, a new practice. Team-based learning simulations, practised for a long time, or even simply chatting about your challenges around the coffee machine, set in motion mechanisms that fall within the scope of social learning. That said, social learning identified and practised as such within professional training is a recent approach, and one that's expanding fast.
Informal learning is riding high
More and more companies are taking an interest in the potential of social learning, won over in particular by the 70-20-10 model, which establishes the superiority of informal learning over academic teaching. Social learning appeals to a growing number of learning and development professionals, on the lookout for ways to fuel learning momentum within the company and cultivate employees' expertise. By encouraging employees to learn from one another and build their skills together over time, this approach gives them a new line of progression and a solid base of support. The same applies to training your frontline teams with social learning.
Training in search of appeal
In an increasingly competitive and fast-moving working world, maintaining and developing skills within the company is a performance asset it can no longer do without. Offering employees genuinely effective and highly engaging learning experiences has become a must, and social learning approaches are ideally suited to this need. So how do you truly become a learning organisation?
The social becomes societal
Back in 2019, the proportion of social media users had already reached 60% of the French population, compared with 23% ten years earlier, a rise of 37 points in a decade. This trend has only accelerated since. The spread, not to say the omnipresence, of online social networks has made collaborative habits so commonplace that social learning fits more broadly into a genuine societal trend that is multiplying its growth.
An increasingly digital development
Although social learning didn't begin with the rise of social media and can still be practised offline, the growing power of the « social » internet has pushed it onto largely digital ground.
Digital social habits benefit social learning
The technologies we use every day to communicate have naturally taken on board social learning tools, which have seized on these now-familiar habits to encourage exchanges intuitively: « chats » or instant messaging, themed discussion forums, video conferencing, wikis, blogs, intranets or enterprise social networks... So, how do you communicate about your training with social learning?
The features of social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn or X (formerly Twitter) are likewise repurposed by social learning: they have the advantage of stimulating interactions while being understood by everyone. The principle of the « post » that shares or relays information, the « like », the comment, organising exchanges into themed discussion threads: so many mechanics that have become intuitive and that social learning has naturally made its own.
A digital momentum that continues
The enrichment of the digital world, where new uses keep emerging, has thus benefited and continues to benefit the rollout of social learning, whose collaborative dimension is perfectly in step with the times.
Social learning can draw on a growing variety of technological solutions, deploying engaging mechanics that help create virtual communities, make connecting easier, and multiply the ways and opportunities for learners to interact. This digitisation of social learning will carry on, and even accelerate.
A mutual enrichment that's transforming e-learning too
In social learning, learners progress alongside one another, in a two-way exchange. It's interesting to note that this idea of mutual influence can apply to the relationship that social learning has with digital technology.
From e-learning to digital learning
While social learning is undergoing a development largely shaped by digital, the reverse seems true too: as it becomes increasingly essential, the social dimension of learning has driven the transformation of the e-learning tools used for professional training.
Since e-learning doesn't, in principle, encourage social interaction, a way had to be found to break the learner's isolation, and to make them active in their own learning process. Combined with the digital revolution, this imperative is no doubt one of the factors that has shaped the evolution of e-learning. At first too often limited to long videos rounded off with a quick end-of-module quiz, this remote learning has thus transformed itself, right up to the rise of digital learning.
New tools with a social purpose
Digital tools have emerged to adapt to the new social challenges of teaching, equipped with collaborative features that encourage the learner's involvement and their interactions with their tutor and peers. This is called paragogy. Digital learning today includes many tools that facilitate social learning, among them:
- The virtual classroom, which brings learners together online (sometimes spread far apart geographically) for a given learning session. The trainer can share their screen, chat, and speak on video. Each participant can also share content, use their webcam and microphone, ask questions or answer them. This collaborative aspect is central.
- The LMS (Learning Management System) platform, which makes it possible to manage and track training activity within the company. It centralises learning resources, includes authoring tools, and makes it easier to organise virtual classrooms or discussion forums, all of them spaces that are essential to social learning.
Chapter III
Social Learning made more effective by digital
Digital social learning breaks down the silos of the 70-20-10 model
Remember that the 70-20-10 model splits our ways of learning into distinct areas: on one side, 10% of formal learning that corresponds to academic teaching; on the other, 90% of informal learning, which includes 70% of practice and 20% of learning through our social interactions.
Social learning falls squarely within the informal, yet the new digital tools dedicated to it tend to break down the silos between ways of acquiring knowledge. So, how do you use social learning in your company?
In effect, by making it possible to create and/or distribute formal learning material, around which the learning communities will form, digital social learning tools incidentally blend the formal with the informal. In doing so, they enrich, multiply and optimise the learning opportunities offered to learners, helping the learning path succeed:
- the quality of the formal learning data provides a solid starting point for the more informal exchanges between learners;
- at the same time, those same learners' social involvement boosts their motivation and engagement in the training, which makes them more likely to take in effectively the formal teaching material made available to them.
The virtual classroom is an excellent example of this blending of genres!
The benefits of digital social learning
Learners brought together and involved
Digital technologies largely ensure the effective rollout of social learning within the company. So, how do you make a success of your social learning training? Not only do LMS platforms optimise the management of the various learning resources and the tracking of learners, but the proliferation of participatory tools makes it possible to bring users together as never before :
- collaborative apps (Klaxoon, Slack, and so on);
- document-sharing tools (Google Drive, Dropbox, and so on);
- video conferencing solutions (Hangouts, FaceTime, and so on);
- and so on.
Digital also has a « disinhibition effect », studied in particular by John Suler, a professor of psychology, in his book The Psychology of Cyberspace. In a professional context, this freeing up of speech makes it easier for everyone to take part in social networks. Some employees will speak up more readily at a distance from the group, from their computer or mobile, than when faced with the gaze of others during an in-person session.
The growth of gamification features also stimulates learners' involvement by bringing a playful aspect into the learning process. Interactions are encouraged too, for example through group games or competitive challenges that participants are invited to take on. The « Battle » mode offered by Beedeez, which lets you measure your knowledge against an opponent's on a given topic, is one of those features that boost engagement.
Social learning set free
Another notable benefit: thanks to digital, social learning frees itself from the constraints of space and time. Virtual communication has no time for physical limits, and many exchanges can take place asynchronously, with no obligation to be in the same place or at the same moment. That said, unlike the old ways of e-learning, in digital social learning the learner is no longer alone behind their screen: today they use their mobile, their laptop or their tablet to connect, wherever and whenever they like, to their online learning community.
Mobile learning takes centre stage
Among the devices that give access to digital social learning solutions, mobile is looking ever more relevant. Always to hand, it makes learning accessible anywhere and at any time, and encourages spontaneous exchanges and sharing. These strengths are heightened further by the rise of smartphones and their constant improvement.
Increasingly widespread equipment
The leading piece of digital kit among the population, the mobile phone is not only replacing the landline more and more, but is also taking on many uses once reserved for the computer, a trend that affects every age group.
According to CREDOC data (2019), the mobile phone ownership rate had already reached 95% across the whole French population aged over 12, and more than 98% in the 18-59 age bracket. At the same period, 82% of French people used their mobile phone every day, compared with only 47% for the computer, and 51% preferred mobile for connecting to the internet. This trend has only accelerated since.
The smartphone has also established itself as the phone of reference, with 77% of people owning one at the time, up 60 points on 2011. Among 25-39 year olds this figure reached 95%, among 18-24 year olds it climbed to 98%, while 80% of 40-59 year olds owned one.
A learning tool on the move
By the sheer force of the figures above, mobile learning, or m-learning, is becoming an ever more essential mode of professional training. And social learning, which is undergoing strong digitisation, has everything to gain from drawing on this shift.
Built on short formats and particularly intuitive habits, mobile learning (which makes training accessible on every device, at any time and in any place) pairs naturally with microlearning, an approach that focuses each sequence on a single, targeted skill that can be applied straight away.
Thanks to mobile, the learner can consult whenever they like the knowledge available in their network, connect instinctively to the community, and instantly share their own expertise, as with Beedeez « Tips », which let you capture knowledge and share it in the form of short instructional videos: a product demo, a job testimonial, a technical gesture, a safety rule, and so on. Learning becomes flexible, gradual, light on time, engaging because it's appealing, and mobile par excellence since our smartphone goes everywhere with us.
Chapter IV
How do you set up Social Learning for your frontline teams?
Respecting the keys to informal learning
As we've seen, social learning falls within the framework of informal learning. From sales teams to teams on building sites, setting it up therefore means respecting the keys that determine whether this type of training succeeds:
- Enabling learner autonomy
Social learning makes the learner a driver of their own training. Not only is their participation essential, but it's often the learner who has to spontaneously seek out the solutions and information they need within the content shared and made available by and for the group. The aim, then, is to create an environment that fosters everyone's autonomy, in particular through tools that make interpersonal communication easier, along with searching for and sharing information. Even so, a minimum of facilitation is needed, and we'll come to that.
- Breaking down the boundaries of the learning space
Just as social learning spreads training time out to favour learning at the moment chosen by, and relevant to, the learner, it must be able to be practised anywhere. Setting it up therefore means planning ways of access that make knowledge available both in the office and on the move, at a client's premises, within business software, and so on.
- Loosening up your objectives
Since social learning involves ongoing training, at the pace and according to the needs of each learner, it's harder to apply qualitative and quantitative objectives to it. The company necessarily has to show some flexibility, though the benefits of social learning in terms of employees' upskilling will be no less real.
- Being concrete
It's best to favour pooling practical content that improves immediate performance, is useful and readily available in the course of work. Every learner needs to be able to find the procedures, working methods and answers to their concrete questions through the enterprise social network, online help, or exchange with their expert peers. The idea is to learn while working, sometimes without even realising it! Beedeez « Tips » make it possible to create and share videos precisely there, directly in the field.
Drawing on the right tools and techniques
Social learning needs tools that make communication, information sharing and the co-construction of knowledge easier, by allowing learners to connect and interact.
Some traditional, long-standing arrangements can be put to use in this way: group lessons where everyone is invited to take part by sharing their knowledge, or workshop-style sessions that prompt people to work as a team.
But we've noted that digital, above all, provides many supports for social learning:
- You can use social networks such as LinkedIn to create private groups dedicated to your teams and use them to organise the co-construction and sharing of useful information for everyone. Likewise, the enterprise social network makes it possible to build collaborative groupings that encourage learners' involvement, such as virtual communities or working groups on specific themes.
- Draw on features such as FAQs, discussion forums and instant messaging. Everyone can contribute and find answers there, put their questions to the community and easily exchange with their peers about their professional challenges. These habits are already well embedded, since social networks have popularised virtual interactions by systematically prompting the « like », the comment, the share, and so on.
- Create your own « Wikipedia » and/or your company blog, and invite employees to create content. This source of information can prove valuable, in particular for new recruits or for those who aren't familiar with every facet of the organisation. The most expert people will be ideally placed to keep an eye on the relevance and updating of the shared data.
- Bank on the appeal of microlearning. This way of learning relies on very short training content, no longer than 5 to 10 minutes, breaking learning down into small sections that are easy to access and share. Teams can readily create, share and update these knowledge modules themselves: Beedeez mobile capsules are an excellent illustration of this.
- Put play at the heart of learning. Like serious games run in physical mode, virtual group games are perfect for boosting learners' motivation and involvement. Gamification mechanics are increasingly popular: use them! Leaderboards and progressive badges, for example, can reward those who are most active in exchanges or in sharing expertise. Contests or challenges can also stimulate participants in their learning journey.
Animating the community
Social learning thrives on learners' autonomy and spontaneity, yet it's essential to guide the interactions so that exchanges are not only started but, above all, fruitful.
Dedicating someone to the scheme will determine its success. Whether you call them an educationalist, trainer, tutor, administrator or social community manager, this person is essential in order to:
- set up and manage the various tools chosen to make exchanges easier;
- organise physical and/or virtual workshops to encourage interaction;
- start the discussions, choosing themes that can spark enthusiasm, raise and sustain learners' interest and therefore their involvement over time;
- animate the exchanges to give them rhythm, restart them, round them out, and refocus them where needed.
This facilitation role is particularly essential when launching a social learning scheme, in order to build the community and make members want to take an active part in it. The central challenge is very often to have questions and answers: the facilitator will therefore need to ask questions themselves, share content, and reach out to learners to encourage them to interact.
Chapter V
Is Social Learning a generational practice?
Because it's innovative, increasingly digital, and fits the collaborative learning trend popularised by the explosion of social media, you might think social learning is an approach reserved for younger generations. Yet everyone can find something in the practice of social learning, which, by its very nature, also fosters intergenerational cohesion within the company.
For baby boomers: a give-and-take system
These employees born after the Second World War are now the most senior on the job market. Logically the most seasoned, they can naturally take on the role of « experts » within a social learning approach, and let the more junior benefit from their expertise deepened over the years.
Conversely, they themselves can gain from their exchanges with colleagues of different generations, who often hold valuable expertise that complements their own, in particular technological or digital... A perfect intergenerational give-and-take!
No doubt the last generation that can still consider spending a whole career within the same company, baby boomers are in principle more loyal than younger employees and more inclined to professional stability: no need to look after their engagement, then? Not necessarily! It's important for the company to keep all its employees' skills up to date, and it may be necessary to stimulate the motivation of these elder members, whether they're already sure of their knowledge or not much inclined to train late in their career. Social learning then offers serious advantages: informal interactions incidentally make involvement easier, depending on the chosen formats the learner can train on an ongoing basis without academic heaviness, and the recognition of everyone's knowledge is appealing enough to encourage sharing.
For Generation X: an appealing solution
Born between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s, members of Generation X tend to place a high value on the work-family-leisure balance and to show a certain independence of mind. Adapted to a job market they entered during a crisis, they have a good capacity to adapt. Having seen the internet emerge, they're comfortable with most of its uses, as with technological tools in general.
For these employees, social learning is an appealing way to learn, in particular because it's freed from the space-time constraints inherent in traditional in-person training. The approach thus meets their appetite for professional and personal development, without weighing down their workload too much or encroaching on their personal life.
The interactive way of learning, the sometimes playful dimension introduced by gamification mechanics, the use of digital tools and of habits already embedded by social media are all so many extra hooks for them.
For Generation Y: the ideal way to learn
Those also known as « millennials » were born during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Now at the heart of companies, they're even more connected and digital than their elders. Particularly marked by a culture of zapping and instantaneity, they like things to move fast, and it's essential for the company to find a way to captivate them and look after their professional attachment.
Constantly searching for information and seeking autonomy, they find in social learning the ideal answer to their expectations when it comes to learning. Provided the rollout of the process relies on tools accessible online, available anywhere and at any hour, they'll appreciate being able to learn according to their needs and at their own pace, wherever they are.
Although shaped by an individualism that puts their personal fulfilment first, they're nonetheless steeped in collaborative habits through their virtual habits and are therefore also receptive to the dimension of sharing between peers, which they take to quite naturally.
For Generation Z: a requirement and a given
Born after the year 2000, these employees are still, by force of circumstance, relatively new to the job market. But their arrival comes with the necessary adjustments to their ultra-mobile, ultra-interactive and ultra-demanding profile.
Used to instant ways of communicating, and more broadly to a lifestyle where speed comes first in everything, members of Generation Z take to social learning without reservation, and push it towards constant evolution.
Independent and autonomous by nature, they reserve their engagement for companies that know how to spark their interest. The relational matters here: which is just as well, since it sits at the very heart of social learning, which feeds on it and feeds it without end.
Deeply rooted in their various professional and personal social networks, young Z employees naturally think collectively, and here again social learning is a perfect fit. Just as it suits their taste for self-directed learning, made obvious by the spread of MOOCs, wikis and countless online tutorials. Used to seeking out the answers to their questions themselves, as well as to commenting on what others say or answering their queries, they'll have no qualms about sharing their knowledge or drawing on what their peers put out, quite the opposite.
Chapter VI
Is Social Learning the future of professional training?
A practice in step with how society is changing
As we've said, you can link the rise of social learning to that of online social media. The values of sharing on which these habits rest do indeed show an obvious closeness, and the tools born on social networks have, moreover, greatly benefited social learning.
But social media, though it has certainly become essential for a great many of our fellow citizens, is only one expression of a far broader phenomenon: the growing power of the collaborative across society as a whole.
The Ouishare collective, a « think-and-do-tank » founded in 2012 and now an international network present in twenty countries, has a purpose that says a great deal about this societal trend: « Creating a network of peers, a horizontal organisation and bringing about a more open and collaborative society ». Its values are just as telling: experimentation, openness, collaboration, autonomy, participation, awareness and attention...
From the sharing economy to the sharing of knowledge
Today, beyond the new habits of online communication, the practice of sharing is shaking up many areas of the economy: car rental between individuals or car-sharing, flat rentals via Airbnb or even home swaps, pooling household equipment or bartering skills between neighbours... Initiatives are flourishing, and the field of knowledge is no exception.
Learners' demand is growing for captivating, participatory training, equipped with the latest digital innovations that make exchanges and the sharing of expertise between peers easier. So social learning is perfectly attuned to this major shift in society, and should logically carry on expanding in the decades to come.
An approach to be blended
The potential of social learning is immense, and its applications within the company are probably only just beginning. That said, the challenges of professional training are complex, and can't find all their answers in this single way of learning.
More than the ability to take on the principles of digital social learning at the expense of any formal and/or in-person training, the real innovation will no doubt come from learning managers' ability to make these different teaching formats coexist, along with the many digital solutions at their disposal.
An essential module in an à la carte training offer
In all likelihood, tomorrow it won't be a matter of forcing social learning into everything at any cost, but of making good use of its mechanisms and dedicated tools, depending on the context, the needs identified and the objectives to be reached. Social learning is becoming an essential component for creating a culture of continuous development within the company, but it isn't, for all that, the only component.
Training will also have to take into account each employee's learning preferences and abilities, in order to meet their expectations as closely as possible. The future will thus lie in an offer that includes social learning but stays multimodal, ever more personalised and tailored to each person in order to stimulate their engagement and optimise their upskilling.
A look ahead: what new uses are to come?
Because it lives to the rhythm of the digital revolution, social learning is destined to be enriched by future innovations. The tools developed tomorrow will inevitably change how it's used, inventing new ways of connecting learners and letting them exchange in new modes.
The widespread use of video is already well under way. Fully integrated into the learning space, it should help smooth and develop interactions between learners by making it simpler to share queries as well as answers. A simple click on the webcam is more intuitive and quicker than writing a message or a piece of written content, and this kind of use should become widespread.
The refinement and spread of virtual reality should also make it an essential technology of future digital social learning. You can imagine virtual meetings of learner communities located at the four corners of the world, kitted out in reality with virtual reality headsets, and whose avatars would take part in collective games of all kinds. Immersion, already sought after today in physical role-play, will be heightened until it becomes a formidable vehicle for learning. What, indeed, could be more memorable than having the group live through the emotions of a shared adventure where they must pool their knowledge to move forward together?
Logically, gamification techniques should develop in parallel, with the emergence of such collaborative games built on a need to share information.
Finally, identifying and recording the full range of individual expertise could become a must of future social learning. Every employee holds, at their own level, specific knowledge: recording it in a comprehensive skills base and making it available to the community may perhaps allow learners, tomorrow, to find straight away the expert peers able to answer their questions precisely.
Supporting the evolution of jobs through social learning
We're living in an era where the brisk pace of technological innovation is driving certain jobs to disappear and speeding up the obsolescence of skills, while also bringing about the emergence of new jobs. On a job market in permanent flux, being highly adaptable is imperative: training is becoming a crucial issue.
On the one hand, individuals are now expected to learn throughout their lives to safeguard their employability. On the other, companies absolutely must equip themselves with effective training systems in order to keep their employees' skills up to date. They sometimes even have to take on the training for new jobs themselves, the only option for covering certain unprecedented labour needs.
Social learning to stay up to date
In every case, social learning is a particularly interesting solution. By its very nature, this way of learning prompts the creation of an ecosystem that keeps a constant watch on new knowledge, nourished by exchanges and content endlessly enriched by the community, encouraging employees to train daily to keep their expertise up to date and to round it out over time, in a more or less informal way.
By encouraging sharing between peers, social learning makes it possible to spread, in real time, the changes affecting jobs. Its digital tools allow every holder of a piece of micro-knowledge to capture it and pass it on to the community: very useful for informing employees about new product or service pitches, or for training them in new technical gestures in particular.
Beedeez's Tips feature is a perfect example of this benefit. It allows any employee to capture their expertise on video, enrich it with diagrams, comments or games, then share it, all in a few minutes. On the principle of the YouTube tutorials everyone knows, the community can thus very easily discover the work gesture needed to use a new machine, the presentation of the latest product launched by the company, or a new safety rule to know about, and so on.
Such a democratisation of knowledge sharing, in direct connection with the realities of the field, stands every chance of becoming an essential element of companies' strategy for adapting to the ever-faster evolution of professional environments. So, how do you create a social learning strategy in your company?
