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4 social learning habits you should form

LEARNING IN THE SOCIAL

AGE:

PART ONE

by Totara Learning in association with Julian Stodd

www.totaralms.com

SOCIAL LEARNING: THE COMPLETE GUIDES, FROM TOTARA LEARNING

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We live in the Social Age: a time when the ways we work and learn have changed beyond recognition. United and connected by collaborative technology, we are able to discover new things, solve problems, more widely share new ideas and our stories, effortlessly and directly. In this Guide, we are going to explore learning in the Social Age and think of ways to help you be more effective.

IT’S FOR:

Anyone who wants to make the most of social learning

in their organisation, especially new comers to the social learning space

1:Sharing ideas

2:Building your reputation

3:Solving problems

4: Sharing your learning story

IT’S ABOUT: Four best practices in

social learning, and how tools such as Totara Social can help you apply them:

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Why social learning and why now? Social learning has emerged in part because technology has enabled it to occur at scale. But of course social learning is not a new concept. Any collaboration in a classroom or discussion about a book is social learning. We see four workplace trends driving the current focus on social learning.

• Time pressure The time available for discrete, formal learning is under threat

• Technology enablers Tools and platforms create more opportunities for collaboration than before

• Societal changes Social collaboration and sharing on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are the norm outside of work. The trend to‘workify’ tools in other contexts is well underway

• Rising to challenge Workplace problems are increasingly global and complex, requiring more collaboration to resolve them

Social tools like Totara Social aren’t like systems of old: they are easy to use, intuitive and match the expectations we have from Facebook or LinkedIn. The challenge isn’t getting them to do what we want them to do: the challenge is that there’s almost too much we can do with them.

To help you step into the social flow, here are four social learning habits you should form – and how tools like Totara Social can help you.

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Social tools let you share ideas: you can post updates, share your stories. But you don’t just want to be part of the noise. You share for a reason. You want to share stories that are relevant to specific communities or, indeed, specific people within a community.

1. Sharing IdeasIt’s called ‘social’ because it’s all about communities: different communities that inhabit different spaces. If you sit in an office, that’s one type of community; a physically located one, united by shared space and a shared coffee machine. If you work in a particular function, like Marketing, that’s a different community. You may share a physical space, or maybe you are connected online, through email groups or shared projects. Indeed, teams that work on a project form another type of community: this one more transient.

Social tools enable you to share your ideas: ideas for how to do a project better, ideas for strategy, ideas for where to go for lunch, but you need to ensure that it’s the right story in the right space.

So think about the communities you inhabit: think about what adds value to you in what people say and what’s just noise in the system. Then share ideas that add value.

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IN PRACTICE:4 WAYS TO SHARE IDEAS USING TOTARA SOCIAL: • You can create connections with individuals or groups to share ideas

• You can create blog posts, ideas, questions and generate valuable comments and feedback from your chosen community

• You can propose an idea to a group and invite people to vote on it

• You can recognise how others have added value to your knowledge and ideas by adding a ‘Like’ to their contributions.

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2.Building your Reputation

We all have a reputation: it’s based on our actions, over time. Maybe you’re generous. Maybe you try to keep the peace. Maybe people turn to you for your expertise in a particular subject or with a particular piece of software. Maybe they turn to you to organise the social calendar or when they are upset. Reputation is a function of our actions, but it’s also something we can curate. We impact our reputations through our actions.

Social tools carry our reputation into online spaces. Our reputation is impacted by how we behave, respond and contribute, through our status updates, what we choose to share, and what we write. So think about how you want to be seen and act in ways consistent with the reputation you’d like to develop.

You can build your reputation effectively by thinking about relevance and timeliness of what you share: if you contribute in ways that are timely to individuals or groups, and if you make your content relevant and practical, you’re likely to build a stronger reputation than if you just throw stuff out to everyone. It’s about making sure that what you add is value, not noise.

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IN PRACTICE: 3 WAYS TO CURATE CONTENT USING TOTARA SOCIAL: • As an individual or as a group you can collect together and store information

items in Totara Social about various topics; files, documents, images, links, ideas, blog posts, and much more

• Create your profile showing what you know and what you have shared – a live stream of what you consider shareworthy

• Post status updates, sharing content with your groups

Choose your space, then curate your content and take your actions within it. Be consistent.

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3.Solving Problems with a community

Got a problem? Time to draw on the capability of your community. After all the effort you’ve put in, supporting, challenging and enlightening others, now it’s payback – you use some of the social credit you’ve built up to ask for help. Communities are great at problem solving: but don’t just throw it out there. Curate it and invite collaboration.

1 FIND THE RIGHT PEOPLE Browse your network

and decide what subset of people may have the expertise, skills, motivation and time to help. Then establish a group and throw out the question. People have an option to engage or not, but it’s a tight, focussed and purposeful effort. The system can provide you with the space for problem solving, but ultimately it’s your reputation and engagement style that will determine success.

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IN PRACTICE: 3 WAYS TO USE GROUP KNOWLEDGE TO COLLABORATE ON PROBLEMS USING TOTARA SOCIAL: • The ‘Ask a question’ function in Totara Social enables you to pose a

question and share that question with a specific individual or group in your community

• Use ‘Propose an idea’ to share an idea, receive comments and votes from the group

• Transfer from formal learning – ask a question of a group following a learning experience in the LMS (e.g. a blended leadership programme) to keep the community connected, and move into action learning to apply what’s been covered

2 GIVE THEM A REASON Having trouble getting people to engage? Think about whether

you’ve worked on your reputation and offered support yourself. Have you invested enough in the system to expect it to work for you? Is there something in it for people to participate, do they have a shared interest in solving the problem?

3 REWARD COLLABORATION – BE NICE Reward input with social recognition when your problem

is solved. The group you’ve curated is a closed space. Share your thanks and gratitude with respect and acknowledgement back in the public spaces. Endorse them where it matters. Explain how they helped. Gratitude and etiquette are part of the new social

currency. Keep building your social credit. What goes around…Key to this is finding a currency of reward that has value for people in your organisation, and engendering a culture of collaboration. We are now seeing organisations where helpfulness in a social context is part of the performance review process. If you want it to count, then keep score.

4 CREATE THE RIGHT CULTURE Does collaboration come naturally in your business? Or do

people regard their knowledge as their powerbase? Is helping or sharing viewed as a distraction? If so, or if your team feels like that, then you need to work on that before you introduce a tool. We elaborate further in the next guide on engagement.

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4.Sharing Your Learning Story

It’s called #WorkingOutLoud. Learning is about change, and working out loud is about sharing your story of change over time. It’s about reflecting, pondering, making decisions and sharing consequences. You can do it on an enterprise social network, through status updates, asking questions or even creating a dedicated reflective group. Or you can blog, and share your posts to some or all in the the organisation.

Sharing your learning story is a way of actively reflecting on what you’re learning and how you’ve developed. The point of a learning story is this: you read it at the end of the year and, whilst it’s familiar, you recognise what’s changed. You see how you’ve learnt, how your ideas have been challenged, what you are doing differently. Self-awareness at this level is good for you, your team, and your organisation.

Organisational culture is at the core here. It takes a certain mindset, trust, and an organisational culture to foster openness and authenticity. You can’t expect to transform a culture overnight, but you can be sure of one thing: you won’t be the first person to have made that mistake and someone out there is ready to hear you and help you. Working out loud can transform your professional practice and make your company a lot more competitive.

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PRO TIP: GET YOUR LEADERS TO WORK OUT LOUD

The best CEO blogs are open, honest and authentic examples of leaders working out loud.

What they start, their teams will follow.

“I’m encouraging the executives in my organisation to post real work problems to our activity feed and ask for help from the crowd in solving them. This in itself is a challenge, but as they say, we’re on a journey.”

– Ryan Tracey @ryantracey

IN PRACTICE: HOW TO TELL AND SHARE YOUR LEARNING STORY USING TOTARA SOCIAL

• Create a blog post to share your reflections, for example on a collaboration project

• Ask a question to see how others are working out loud

• Share your to-do list on your personal page – let others see what you’re working on

• Update your personal profile to add what you’ve learned – formal courses or insights, and display your continuous learning story to your groups

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Takeaway BE SOCIAL – MAKE SENSE

The social communities we inhabit are sense-making entities: they help us make sense of things and do stuff differently as a result. Social technology isn’t about access to knowledge. Today, knowledge is everywhere; easily accessible, easily discovered, easily shared. But knowledge is not enough. We need to create meaning, to make sense of things and communities are great for that.

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BUT HOW, AND WHAT’S OUR ROLE?Social learning is about evolving our thinking by sharing our learning stories and ideas. It’s about the challenge our community gives us and the support we give them. It’s about improving our ideas with the support and collaboration of our peers, refining them over time as we move theory into practice and sharing our learning story as we do it.

It’s worth thinking about the ways that communities make sense of things, partly to understand how others can help us, but especially to understand how we can best help others. The more we help, the more we get back. Through social learning we achieve a shared understanding of a topic or challenge. We can add our own research, share our stories, comment on the ideas of others, add links to external sources to help others and in doing so build our reputation in the community. We should be fluid in our role: at times challenge, ask questions, refine ideas, and offer direct support.

Social learning tools help us to this: the collaborative spaces allow us to easily share, comment, edit and refine, but it’s our mind-set that makes us effective. We have to develop and value social learning habits to build effective learning communities. PRACTICAL STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO MAKE SENSE OF SOCIAL:

1  Share valuable, relevant and useful content and ideas, with the right people, at the right time. Watch your own signal to noise ratio.

2  Ask for help, and give help where you can.

3  Thank others when they help you. Build connections and help others make connections to solve their problems.

4 Work out loud: show that you are learning, making mistakes. Set an example of being open.

These actions all contribute to your social reputation. Live those values, use the tools, and reap the rewards.

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GET IN TOUCH:

Contact Totara Learning or your Totara Partner to see Totara Social in action

www.totaralearning.com/social