Social Learning: The technology choices

In the "From E-Learning to Social Learning" Cafe Session at the L&SG Conference on June 9th, we looked at some of the technology choices for supporting formal and informal social learning in an organisation. 81 of the participants in the room expressed their preference (numbers shown in brackets) as follows: 0 - LMS - Stick with existing system and only support formal non-social learning (3 = 4%) 1 - LMS 2.0 - LMS with social media elements to manage formal social learning, e.g. commercial LMS like Saba, SumTotal or open source course management systems like Moodle (19 = 23%) 2 - Stand-alone social media tools - e.g. delicious, Google Docs, PBWorks, Twitter, etc, or tools hosted inside in the firewall like Wordpress, Yammer, Mediawiki - for use in both formal and informal learning (17 = 21%) 3 - Social media platform - integrated suite of social media tools in one platform, e.g. commercial platforms like Mzinga, CornerstoneOndemand, and open source platforms like Elgg (42 = 52%) Thanks to all those who participated in the Cafe session. Here is my comparision of the pros and cons of these different platforms. What is your technology choice/preference and why?

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  • Can I chuck in an option 4?

    Use a set of stand alone tools, each of which is the most appropriate for your organisation, but integrate them such that your audience doesn't know that they're using different tools. To do this you would most likely be using tools that you host yourself (rather than hosted services like Google) because of the degree of control needed.

    I'd like to go one step further and just hide all of this behind an intranet so that users don't have to start using a separate set of tools for anything relating to learning. Anything that means a user has to do something different to their day job is an obstacle to learning, and I'm a firm believer that we should be adapting our toolset to fit their working environment and not vice versa. That's not to say we can't introduce new tools, but we should be doing so because the tool itself is insanely useful and will make it easier for them to do their jobs - which after all is what we get paid to do.
  • In my organisation, the approach needs to be developmental. the end point is likely to be a social media platform (like ELGG) so some sections of the organisation. But we see it as a developmental process and are starting "small" by introducing tools to address specific business needs: MediaWiki & Wordpress. The wiki is to allow for the development of a corporate knowledge repository & Wordpress is being used to provide organisation-wide updates on specific projects.

    To ease their introduction, we have even avoided the terms "wiki" and "blog" - referring to them as the "Knowledge Bank" and "Project Diaries" respectively. This has certainly assisted in their acceptance by the less tech savvy staff in the organisation.

    Once these are embedded in the organisation, I can see the potential for moving to a mlore integrated platform - but for the moment, it's small steps ....
    • Thanks for your response Keith. The issue of using the right terms and technology is very important As I think I said in the Cafe session, I avoid the use of the term "social networking" at all costs when referreing to social media platforms. I'll open a new discussion on this topic and please contribute again to that discussion there.
  • Some LMS 2.0 providers also include social networking tools that will enable informal social learning so my own response on this question for my current employers was no. 1.
    Maybe there's an extra option of LMS 1.5 for those who don't do this? ;)
    • If they provide support for the management of both formal social learning and support for informal learning then that would point them in 3 wouldn't it? Or do you see a difference between them and the providers in category 3?
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