A New Model for Informal Learning: Communities 2.0

The knowledge-driven economy hasbrought with it a major transformation in which jobs involving the most complextype of interactions make up the fastest-growing segment in many industries.

When the goal posts move constantly, and situations change rapidly, formallearning once or twice a year doesn’t provide the experience or knowledge thatworkers require. I contend that there needs to be a significant shift ofbudgets and resources from formal learning settings to informal situations,where the majority of learning actually takes place.

Making informal knowledge transfer a reality: communities of practice

With the growing importance of informalknowledge transfer, organizations are increasingly looking to Communities ofPractice (CoPs) as a solution. CoPs are distributed groups of people who sharea common concern, problem, mandate, or sense of purpose.

CoPs build on existing formalcontent tools such as portal and learning management systems, and on team and productivitytools. Communities of Practice enable organizations to add a new dimension —the informal organization. Communities offer a way for peers to not onlyconsult learning materials from the institution, but also combine informationwith learning materials they create and share amongst themselves. Communitymembers attend question and answer forums, and participate in professionalnetworking where peers, mentors, and subject matter experts connect and conferto solve problems.

CoPs deliver unique benefits:

• The peer-to-peer environment fosters employees’ natural trust in advice from someone in their situation. It encourages emotional and instructional support.
• The focus is on context-specific information sharing, rather than on broadly applicable advice. Users seek information to solve immediate problems, so there is enormous benefit in the information being available almost immediately.
• A CoP replaces the one-way flow of information that is typical of training programs, and offers fluid, multipronged conversations instead.

In the current climate,organizations looking to create a community need to do more than implement afluffed-up portal solution. There’s a growing need to leverage the power ofcommunities within an enterprise. Such an effort will only be effective if it takesinto account new workforce and technology trends, as well as new businessmodels. One such model is Chris Anderson’s Long Tail which explains new businessmodels that are changing the economics of doing business through the Internet.(See Figure 1.) Just as the “Long Tail” has changed the rules for the flow ofproducts on the Internet, it is changing the rules of learning and training inthe enterprise.

Figure 1 “The Long Tail” illustrates how much learning takes place outside the training organization.

Time-consuming, inflexible, andexpensive formal learning approaches trap most organizations in theireconomics. Much as the Internet changed the economics of book distribution, theeconomics of learning content are changing within organizations. The Long Tailis allowing organizations to tap into the next source for enterprise learningcontent — the learners themselves — by empowering them to teach each other incommunity environments. With less organizational oversight, these groups canproduce an amount of learning resources equivalent to the formal approach in a cheaperand more flexible way.

Implementing Communities of Practice

Successful communities rely in parton actual community process and structure, and in part on the actual technologyplatform that underpins the community system.

On the process side, consider thesequestions up front:

• What communities will offer my organization the highest potential return?
• How will we find and train community leaders?
• How will we continue to engage new users beyond the launch of the community? For many organizations, technology has been a stumbling block when it comes to setting up a CoP. Organizations often look to implement a CoP based on systems designed primarily for purposes other than communities.

When addressing technology as partof an overall CoP strategy, enterprises should consider the following:

• Is this technology platform designed to address Community-specific challenges?
• What type of functionality does this platform offer the organization? Does it deliver advanced features such as ranking, filtering, and other smart tools?
• Does the technology provide features and benefits that address the participation of leaders, contributors, active members, and lurkers in the Community?
• How does this technology integrate with our other learning and collaboration systems?

Conclusion

Formal training has been stretchedto its limit when it comes to successfully supporting learning for workersfacing non-routine and complex work. Organizations must address the need forinformal learning systems that provide access to critical information andexperience on-demand, while addressing the need for collective intelligencestrategies. Communities of Practice offer organizations a proven model forcombining collaboration and learning in order to gain a significant competitiveadvantage.