In recent times I've seen and heard much discussion around informal and social learning. For example, is informal learning necessarily social in nature? Has the rise of new technologies altered the traditional view of social learning? How can we harness new technologies to foster a culture of learning within our business? And so on.
Firstly some definitions - mine.
Informal learning is learner driven and takes place when and how the learner decides. As it is driven by individuals it can look quite different from learner to learner, the main test is whether learning occurs. You may also read a recent post of mine, Informal Learning - it's not new.
Formal learning, by contrast is driven by organisations and/or learning institutions, there are expected learning outcomes and syllabuses. Think text books, structured courses, face-to-face or online.
Social Learning occurs in a sense through osmosis. One person observes another performing a task, they will be motivated to learn this task if they see that a benefit in learning this skill (for example the possibility of promotion). A good example is learning to cook! You will be motivated to learn how to cook a delicious chocolate cake but you wouldn't be motivated to cook horrible tasting goo!
None of these ideas present any earth shattering revelations, people have learnt in these ways for hundreds of years (thousands in some cases). Why then has there been a rise in interest within business about informal and social learning?
I think it is fair to say that formal learning was the dominant approach to learning throughout the 20th century. Formal learning is fine when knowledge is static, constant and fairly unchanging, however since the late sixties the rate of new ideas, innovation and plain new knowledge has increased to the point that this alone could spell the end of formal learning. Add to this a desire to control business costs and you can see a pretty powerful motivation for businesses to look to other ways to help their teams and organizations learn.
Now let me borrow some thoughts from Marty Neumeier, design thinker extraordinaire. In his book, The Designful Company he talks of 'Creative Collaboration', Marty explains that this is made up of two processes, team creativity and individual creativity - this brings to mind social and informal learning. The key, he says, is to find a collaborative rhythm between the team and the individual, a rhythm that looks a bit like a concertina, working together, then separately, then together... The learning benefits of this are enormous, individuals have an opportunity to reflect deeply when working alone and can then bring their experience to the group when learning collaboratively. All this leads to greater shared thinking and increased business knowledge.
So, this is what I mean by Learning Concertina Style! It is using the advantages of informal and social learning together so that all benefit!
