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.
In a shocking study recently published in the Journal of Training and Development, meta study review reveals that over 95% of breathing is done without formal structure, or outside interference. Not only is breathing informal, but it was discovered that training in breathing did not effectively cause breathing and neither did the absence of training result in cessation of breathing.
The Association of Training and Development (ASTD) has announced that they will be partnering with a number of vendors to provide training in informal breathing techniques. Head of ASTD Bingham says: Continue reading
Traditionally educators and trainers have not been leaders in intellectual pursuits. For example, tradionally SAT scores for those entering faculties of education have been the lowest among all university attendees. Why? That’s a complex question for another time, but it is clear that many people who are becoming “experts” in education and training have little background in learning theory, or hard core research, and their behavior, intellectually, tends to be suspect.
So what do these folks do to make a living. Well, they may not be the intellectual bright spots, but they sure can “invent” silly terms to take things we’ve been talking about (or discarded) years ago, repackage them in fancier terms, and then convince everyone that what they have is special.
In Part I of this series we looked at the first part of Tony Bingham’s post on “Learning Socially” and pointed out that so far in the article, nothing the President of ASTD mentioned is relevant or telling regarding the need or movement towards “social learning. Let’s look further at Bingham’s article to see if there is any substance or valid data in it. We’ll continue with an attempt to deal with what has to be one of the silliest fad terms to hit the training world — informal learning.
Bingham says: Continue reading
For many it will come as no surprise that the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) continues to come up with some downright stupid things. It’s a long standing issue within the training profession, and there are those that hate ASTD and question its function and actions, and those that appreciate ASTD. Mostly I’m neither. I used to be a member, but I’m not now, but for no particular reason.
Still I was surprised at the August, 2009 article posted by Bingham, current President of ASTD, about social learning. The surprise wasn’t so much with the content. After all, ASTD has jumped pretty heavily into the e-learning/informal learning/social learning marketplace, with several of its $695 a piece downloadable guides. What did surprise me was the intellectual weaknesses, and lack of substance in the Bingham article. We’d expect more from a leader of the leading training organization in the world. We’d expect at least some glimmer of intelligence and a little less rah rah cheerleading.
Here are a few elearning and informal learning white papers that have come across our desk. Please note that these offers tend to be available for only short periods of time, so if you are interested, please grab your copies ASAP.
Top 5 Trends in Learning Technology
There have been attempts to make “informal learning” a new buzzword in the training world, and while there’s some obvious sense in looking at how learning “happens” in informal situations (since most of our lives are “informal”), there probably isn’t much new in the term. That said, it probably is worthwhile for trainers to put knowledge and content into multiple forms and have them available in different media.
Actually, what you are doing right now is informal learning. You are learning something even without the intent to do so, because learning is a function of the organism. One cannot stop learning until one is dead. However, what one learns can be presented in a formal structure and with the intent to cause learning, or in a less formal structure that isn’t really intended to cause learning.