To continue my thoughts on the "Deepening Process" of Turning Social Learning to Work Performance, I think we have plenty of opportunities in training to start small social learning experiments.
In #1A of the schematic I suggest trainers start their experiments by doing the following:
Part I - Preparation and Set up
1. Set up a social learning tool for your project. You can use the software in http://www.facebook.com/ or http://www.trainingpayback.com/. Learn the essentials of these tools to use them effectively as a facilitator. Be minimally proficient with the functions.
2. Prepare the site by completing your profile, publishing a brief statement of goals and suggestions on how to benefit from the group interactions.
3. Create two discussion rooms:
Discussion 1:
A discussion room to welcome participants and explain briefly how they can benefit and the experiment's methods. See the welcome invitation below. The welcome discussion and the invitation have the same message.
Discussion 2:
Open a discussion on "Essentials of Web 2.0 and impacts on learning." Populate the group with the basic content on introduction to Web 2.0 (CommonCrafts) and social learning.
Post a micro-question: Ask the group to respond to a micro-content, small provocative question that engages people.
"How does social learning and Web 2.0 change the way we learn?" (Or similar and follow-up questions.)
4. Invite participants. This is done by using the tool's invitation process. In your invitation explain briefly what the experiment is all about. Furthermore, ask participants to join the group and be active. Include: Topic, goals and outcomes, start date and end date, roles, learning approach, etc. Emphasize that this is an experiment in a new learning method called "social learning."
Part II - Implementation (to follow in next posts)
References: Micro-Elements in Social Learning
Ray Jimenez, PhD
http://www.vignettestraining.com/
http://www.trainingpayback.com/
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way" "Helping Learners Apply Learning"
