Work Literacy of Social Learning Implementors

I have been reviewing the blog discussions on Work Literacy Gap and Frameworks between Harold Jarche, Tony Karrer and Michelle Martin. The discussions are very helpful in formulating my thoughts on the issues of social learning tools, technologies and impacts on performance.

The exchange of ideas is very rich with practical stories and theories.

Michelle asks this question:

"In talking with various experts in the worlds of Information Literacy, Information Seeking, Personal Information Management (PIM), Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), Personal Learning and others, it seemed that there’s a fairly consistent opinion that once you drill down with most knowledge workers, there’s a gap between how they do their work today and how they might be able to do their work if they took advantage of new(ish) methods, tools, information/expertise sources, collaboration techniques, etc."

Furthermore, Michelle asks:

"Who should we be talking to when we talk about work literacy and how should we be talking to them? What messages resonate with which groups and how should we differentiate them so that people see “Ah–this applies to ME!”?

I must admit that I am quite late in following the conversations. However, some of my observations and thoughts are:

1. The areas I am often asked is: "How do we use social learning and networking to improve performance at work?"

2. What is the role of the leader, trainer and manager in implementing the social learning process? Who is to lead? What are the skill sets? What process or discipline does he/she apply?

There are many more issues in the discussions, but the two issues above are foremost to my mind. Social learning is focused on interactions of users. An equal amount of focus should be on the implementors.

Ray Jimenez, PhD
http://www.vignettestraining.com/
http://www.trainingpayback.com/

"Helping Learners Learn Their Way" "Helping Learners Apply Learning"