So, tell me. If I happen to go to the water cooler down the hall, and bump into George, who tells me about the new software I could use, is that informal learning? Sounds like it.
We don’t know what position Social Learning plays on this team. And you know what? I don’t give a damn, and neither do the customers and clients of trainers and educators.
But if the manager sets up a daily meeting at the water cooler to share new tools, let’s say at 11 a.m. each morning, does that make it formal learning? It’s organized, after all, structured with intent to cause learning. I dunno, is at shortstop.
If I go to a seminar, we’d consider that the learning would fall into the “formal” category, yes? But what do we call the learning that occurs through the casual conversation I have with Jane, while we are waiting for the other groups to finish their groupwork? Who’s at shortstop?
One of the tests of the usefulness of a concept, and a phrase involves the clarity of it. You test the clarity by seeing how big the “gray” area is, where it’s really not clear whether some object or process falls into one “category” or it’s opposite, or one end of a continuum or the other.
If you take 100 people who embrace the term “informal learning”, you will find they cannot agree on where specific learning processes and situations should be placed in terms of whether they are informal or formal learning exemplars.
There’s nothing wrong with those 100 people, really, except that until challenged with a task of putting learning exemplars into formal and informal categories, they actually believe the distinction is meaningful. Or, they don’t care.
It’s a bad concept. A useless concept that provides no actionable insight into how to help others learn beyond making learning material available at all times (Duh!).
Social Learning Another Terrible Term
It’s not surprising that the same people who tend to trumpet about informal learning, also embrace the term “social learning”. Once again, the 100 people in a room test applies. You could reasonably make a case that every learning context on the planet (or almost all) is an example of social learning, as defined by the promoters of social learning.
Is reading a book in a classroom social learning? How about if one reads it in the privacy of one’s bathtub? It’s the same book, right? What if I discuss the book in the classroom with others? Sounds like social learning. How about if I discuss it through email. Is that social learning via proxy? Or how about if I discuss it via regular post? Or write a review of the book that my professor reads and comments upon?
We don’t know what position Social Learning plays on this team. And you know what? I don’t give a damn, and neither do the customers and clients of trainers and educators.
But there is a bottom line:
Learning is a process that begins with life, occurs all the time a person is conscious, and ends with death. It is a characteristics of being alive. Humans are also social. It is a characteristic of being alive.
Informal learning, and social learning (the stupid use, not the proper use as defined by Bandura) have no meaning. They simply state the obvious. We learn all the time, since it is a basic function of our brains, and everything we do is ultimately social, because that is how we are both wired, and brought up. So informal learning goes on every minute of the day, and social learning does also. Even if there are no people present(?)
You cannot go 5 seconds without “learning”, and you can’t go 5 seconds without accessing information about another human being, overtly or not.
#1 by Steve on October 21, 2009 - 1:36 pm
I largely agree with you here, Robert. I think the discourse, regardless of perception of tone, is healthy and necessary to shaping any emergent approaches and opportunities.
I think that the views of thought leaders (and real leaders:)) are maturing to the point of regression away from techno-zealotry and refocusing where they need to be – on people and what people need. I believe the new terms (L2.0, Informal, Social) indicate a latent epiphany (one I hope we will soon see.) There’s a lot of crap out there. I built some of it. Admitting to fault is a necessary step to evolving perspective.
Within my organization, I’m working out some conceptual materials that I hope will articulate the stovepiping and result of snake-oil sales over the past couple of decades. The maturation processes and churn have served to compartmentalize solutions and have marginalized the healthy things that happen in the organization.
I categorize things like this:
1. Traditional (the solution classes that the organization is most used to)
2. Non-traditional (emergent stuff that the organization hasn’t integrated into the traditional set)
3. Natural (the stuff that happens regardless of strategy or resource allocation)
I’m trying to express to the organization that our focus on traditional and our flighty focus on non-traditional elements, without a systems focus, has caused us to lose grip with natural structures. We’ve convinced ourselves and our customers that we own learning. This, combined with other factors, has caused the erosion of the apprentice journeyman master structures in the organization and we’re losing top end qualifications (and the people that are able to propogate and grow more solid performers) at an alarming rate.
We shouldn’t try to control the stuff that occurs naturally, necessarily. But we should work to adjust the culture to make things work smoothly. We should fish for people when that works best, teach people to fish when that works best, restock the pond if needed, and just leave things alone the rest of the time – while maintaining awareness of the needs and reality of the worlds of work that we serve.
I can dig it, Robert. But I do think there’s value in exploring how we can best serve each of these categories. This might include exploring, validating, testing, and evaluating emergent technologies that support the things we’ve been doing for centuries without technology. And as you point out, it’s always good to connect what we think we know, or think we have discovered, with what has been proven by previous efforts.
Steve
#2 by Robert Bacal on October 21, 2009 - 10:58 pm
Steve, that sounds good. Please keep us/me informed as to the status of your work.
I’m not sure that the “recognized” thought leaders are backing off from the zeal that makes them sound incredibly ignorant and stupid. The particular thought leaders I come across are adept at using social networking platforms to get their messages across, and as a result have developed large followings, based on 1) their zeal and 2) their manipulative expertise.
I suspect the real thought leaders are working more quietly in the background, and hence they don’t have and may never have the influence of the expert zealots, simply because they aren’t interested in marketing themselves via social media.
It’s amazing. I was looking at Josh Bersin, and have also looked at Jay Cross and Elliot Masie, and after spending less than 30 seconds on their sites or reading quotes, I’m wondering why people don’t catch their errors.
The most common is misinterpreting data, but, golly, you must want to be a true believer to swallow the swill these folks dish out.
#3 by Steve on October 22, 2009 - 7:53 am
Hmm… I don’t think that Bersin, Cross, Masie, or any of the other vocal pundits supporting the next big thing are bad people, nor are they unintelligent or uneducated. In almost every way I look up to folks with this ability to communicate and draw hypotheses.
I’ve been trying to make my own sense of all this talk and I am not quite there. I think there’s something to just about everything that ends up as a trending topic. But I can’t yet make the logical connections between the terms, conceptual theories of application, and the practical application in my contexts.
Perhaps this wave isn’t about a grand new scheme of control, technology, and change. Maybe it’s an opportunity for folks to reconnect with the things we’ve forgotten about. That it’s not about the technology or about the shift in control, it’s about remembering that we are dealing with people. That the learner and performer are centric elements (the centric element) in the end game. The concern for the dollar has outweighed the concern for long term impact to the detriment of both the dollar and people. There are few that don’t feel the overwhelming drive to change ’something’.
Maybe the talk of social and informal are just a way for folks to say ‘hey, it’s about people, stupid – wake up.’ I see a great force multiplier in preparing and empowering folks to take control of their own direction. Giving folks the tools to learn. Empowering performers at all levels to share what they know with others. Making it easy and acceptable to connect with peers and mentors. Making it clear how to seek out feedback and the many ways to process that feedback for improvement. Stuff we should be doing all along, but have made excuses for not doing so. There’s seems to be a focused opportunity to confront those excuses and barriers.
There has to be something to it. Maybe that something isn’t anything new at all. But there’s value in figuring out how to fit new opportunities to old problems. I agree we need to use real supported cases and unexaggerated claims, but I’m unconvinced that the trend doesn’t hold some value.
Good discourse either way. Let the debate rage on.
#4 by Robert Bacal on October 22, 2009 - 11:21 am
To be clear, I don’t think there is a grand scheme, but I do think there are some shared elements amongst the vocal that are scary. The hidden (and not so hidden agenday) behind almost all of the vocal “experts” is that they want to put “control” of learning in the hands of learners. This is primarily a political agenda (much like the humanistic agenda of the 60s-80s), and NOT a learning agenda. It hasn’t worked, and it doesn’t work, at least to the extent they want it to.
Most have no background in learning theory, or in the history of education and training, so they can’t avoid the mistakes of the past. They are the “true believers”, and for that reason (and their ignorance about things they need to know about), that I don’t want them anywhere near children, schools, or in any position of influence in fostering learning, because, also as I said before, we can’t afford them.
We harmed countless people with the shift to “self-esteem” in education, not realizing that true self-esteem comes from accomplishment, not protection from failure!
And, now we will shift to “nobody knows best about what and how to learn than the learner”, which is clearly a pile of horseshit (no offense to my neighbor hourses). We can’t afford this.
There are certainly elements of usefulness in all fads and trends, but as I said elsewhere it is the vocal experts who are damaging their own causes by linking to political agendas rather than learning ones, and making almost daily errors in the material they put forth.
Steve, do you have a blog or website?
#5 by Steve on October 22, 2009 - 1:55 pm
No Website, other than the convenience domain I use to share files and documents. I’ve been entertaining setting up a Blog, but haven’t justified it by my criteria:
1. Have something interesting to say that’s worth talking about – not sure I’m in that place.
2. Write well – my style is more brain vomit than comfortable prose.
3. Ultimate litmus: Would I read it – I probably wouldn’t.
That said, I think for nothing else but improving performance for #2 – if I can find folks that will provide great feedback – I might get something setup.
Have been tossing around the idea of a set of pieces on toxic leadership practices and the contexts where the level of impact of the practice varies. Maybe it’s time for me to start writing for personal development purposes.
#6 by Robert Bacal on October 22, 2009 - 3:32 pm
I’m looking for some guest contributors, so if you want to use us as a venue, let me know, and I’ll set you up with access.
#7 by Milan Davidovic on October 21, 2009 - 2:10 pm
“Accessing information about another human being, overtly or not” would be an explanation for “being social”, yes?
If so, do you think that the informal/social learning crowd would at least agree with you on the point that learning and being social are inherent human traits?
#8 by Robert Bacal on October 21, 2009 - 11:02 pm
That could be one way to look at it. Or one could simply say something is social if it occurs in the presence of one other person. But you’d have to deal with people by proxy (phones), and on and on.
The reality is doing formal definitions is a incredibly mind-bending process, the complexity of which, none of these people grasp.
As for what they would agree with, I don’t know. It’s hard to take any of them seriously, so I’m not sure I care.
As for common meaning, I think we can actually examine that empirically, so I might give that a go. At least it would be fun, and if it works out, we’ll all have things to think about.
#9 by Jess Sanders on November 5, 2009 - 5:52 pm
I am a student in Allison Rossett’s graduate course on Instructional Technology at SDSU. She shares your distaste for the ‘informal learning’ label. As a class assignment, she asked us to investigate the claims about twitter and social learning, and we started a discussion on the topic. We would very much appreciate your comments and involvement.
Please consider stopping by http://pinotnet.ning.com/group/microblogging and sharing your thoughts and opinions!
thanks! I will continue to enjoy your blog posts!