Social Media to help collaboration / learning - are you doing anything in this space ?

Posted by Mike Collins on November 24, 2011 at 12:00pm

I know there is a group on social learning but I'm interesting in hearing from members of this group who have plans to or are using socia media or collaborative platforms to support learning or to enhance how you work / communicate across your business

 

Here's an article I've come across that's prompted me to look and find stories we can share and learn from in this space

 

Social Media & Workforce

 

Mike

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Tags: collaboration, enterprise, social
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Replies

  • Sumeet Moghe December 1, 2011 at 3:29am
    Hi Mike,
    We've had a social learning infrastructure from 2005-2006 onwards and we've iterated through our application stack as times have changed. From 2005-2006 we had team wikis for knowledge sharing. 2007 to 2009 we were on Confluence and used that as an organisational knowledge sharing wiki. 2009 onwards we moved to the Google Apps stack for knowledge sharing, running communities and media sharing. In 2010 we've brought all those use cases under one social business platform.
    Sumeet
    • Mike Collins > Sumeet Moghe December 29, 2011 at 1:15pm

      Thanks Summit and again apologies for the delay in responding.

       

      I remember you did a short webinar looking at wiki's for a few members of the group maybe a couple of years ago and I remember the stand out thing was how integrated everything was. It sounds like this has moved on again and you now have everything under one roof. I'm assuming this is done by SSO as one of the difficulties I'm finding with using any systems is security and not having the integration to have SSO means multiple passwords, frankly it's a barrier to be able to access anything as it puts people off. One day I'm sure we'll have one log in and everything will be linked but until thyen it's going to feel a bit fragmented.

       

      Does your organisation have a L&D function who do inductions etc or formal training events? How much would you say the dependence on training has decreased since 2005/6 and your social learning journey began.

       

      How would you say your people and culture has developed because of this approach in terms of your people having automomy, feeling empowered, sharing information, collaborating, transparent etc

       

      Finally (sorry) - have you had to overcome any challenges or barriers to where you are now, people or technology? Or both?

      Thanks in advance

  • Tim Drewitt November 30, 2011 at 5:04pm

    Hi Mike!

    We've now run three Yammer groups for our Real Estate trainee lawyers that each tackle a different case study prior to a related virtual classroom session that builds on what was discussed. 

    We're finding that the quality of the learning generated is high.  The discussions go deep into the issues and off on useful tangents.  The facilitator guides from the side and ensures that each contributor adds something extra to the conversations.  She is also able to ensure that the learning sits in the context of their day jobs, ensuring that the discussion outputs reflect the realities of their roles. 

    This would be difficult to achieve "the old tick box way", where there would ideally have to be right or wrong answers, with little chance to funnel down or even contemplate any "shades of grey". 

    The case study documents are downloaded from within the Yammer group, so everything is self-contained.

     

     

    • Mike Collins > Tim Drewitt December 29, 2011 at 1:08pm

      Thanks Tim and apologies for delayed response

       

      Yammer seems to be an app used by many orgs. Are you using the free or paid account?

      Are you finding that the early engagement via Yammer provides a more quality and in-depth discussion during your virtual session? Do you follow up the virtual session with Yammer in anyway or once the groups have been done do they get archived?

       How are you measuring the learning when you say it's high, is this referring to knowledge transfer or engagement and are you just asking for feedback or have you seen an improvement in the way these cases are handled in anyway?

      What sort of shift has your facilitator had to go through from moving from f2f communication to online discussion and virtual setting. Do they also get benefit from delivering this way?

      Cheers 

  • Ray O'Connor November 25, 2011 at 4:50pm

    Hi Mike

    We've experimented with a view things which you could class 'social'. For example a Mgt Devel skills programme incorporated e-newslterres, Moodle resources and Twitter feeds of good articles. We've also tried Facebook pages for specific grpoup Induction - our Trainee Secretarial Programme. Also, social bookmarking sites such as delicious for tagging useful articles.

    Hope this gives you an idea. Something else to check out - I like how the London School of Business & Finance use Facebook as their 'LMS' for posting content etc.

    Cheers

    Ray

    • Mike Collins > Ray O'Connor November 25, 2011 at 4:55pm

      Thanks Ray

       

      How are you found the reaction of your people when using this tools / functionality? Would you say it's added benefits, are you continuing to use and is it now BAU so to speak?

       

      Have you used anything to support formal programmes or just to support communication?

       

      Sorry for all the questions but very interested to hear real stories and learn from them.

       

      Mike

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