eLearning Guild Research: How Important is Informal Learning?

You may not (at first) think thatinformal learning is so critical to workplace learning until you stop to thinkabout how you learn almost everything you do at work. It’s probably not in a classroom or from eLearning,right? Let’s say you need to figure out how to fill out a new travel form. Whatdo you do? Sign up for a class? Nah. You ask someone who has filled it outbefore. Or see if there’s a document that explains it.

The first report under our new researchreport framework (see last month’s article where I explained how we’re doing researchreports now) came out in August 2012 and is SmartCompanies Support Informal Learning (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The eLearning Guild’s Smart Companies Support Informal Learning.

In this article, I’ll providesome food for thought from that reportthat I hope will get you thinking about informal learning and why it’s socritical to the success of the people working inside your organization. Theanswer to the question posed by the title of this article is VERY IMPORTANT!(Keep reading, okay?)

Is “informal” what’s left over after defining formal learning?

The first issue the reportconsiders is defining informal learning. Michael Eraut, professor of educationat the University of Sussex Institute of Education in Brighton, UK, says thatwe too often treat informal learning as a leftover category to describewhatever learning “does not take place within, or follow from, a formallyorganised learning programme or event.” So Eraut starts by defining the term“formal learning” as having any or all of the following characteristics:

• a prescribed learning framework
• an organized learning event or package
• the presence of a designated teacher or trainer
• the award of a qualification or credit
• the external specification of outcome

But unfortunately, Eraut, like somany others, defines informal more for what it isn’t (i.e., formal) than whatit is. I was therefore on a quest to find a better definition for informallearning and found it in Saul Carliner’s book, Informal Learning Basics. I adapted one of Dr. Carliner’s definitions:Informal learning includes situations where the learner determines some or allcombinations of the process, location, purpose, and content, and may or may noteven be aware that instruction has occurred.

If it’s not defined by what it’s not, then what is it?

Why was it so important to have adefinition? Because informal learning is a really big deal when it comes toworkplace learning. Numerous studies show that the vast majority of learning in the workplace happens not in formaltraining environments but informally. In fact, these studies show informallearning as a proportion of all workplace learning at a whopping 50 to 80percent.

Think about how you typicallylearn and work and you begin to realize how much you depend on co-workers, conversations,networking, the Internet, collaboration, and so on.

Informal learning is what workers rely on most

One part of the reportthat was especially interesting, and probably aggravating for most people inour line of work, was the examples where workers were asked what most supportstheir workplace learning. Formal training was not high on the list. Forexample, sales and marketing representatives and representatives of managementand the HR department at Sara Lee were asked to rate the relative importance ofa number of workplace learning activities—the results are shown in the piechart in Figure 2. As you can see, job experience and networking were higheston the list.

This result wascomparable to a survey compiled by Jane Hart that showed that collaboration,self-directed study, conversations with others, networks, and blogs wereessential and very important ways to learn in the workplace.

Figure 2: From the Guild’s Smart Companies Support Informal Learning.

Source:https://www.elearningguild.com/research/archives/index.cfm?id=159&action=viewonly and
https://www.informl.com/2010/01/26/an-example-of-informal-learning-from-europe/

Since this research report clearlypoints out how critical informal learning is to workplace learning, I asked Dr.Carliner to share some important takeaways from his book about how to supportinformal learning in an organization. One caveat that I’ll share with you inthis article is that it’s critical that training and development professionals not go overboard with command andcontrol when they support informal learning. If they do they are likely to killit. And since informal learning makes up the bulk of learning insideorganizations, this could be a truly perilous move.

Got your interest? Stay tuned for the report on social learning!

I hope this information from theGuild’s Smart Companies Support InformalLearning research report has improved your interest in learning more about howto support informal learning in your organization. One of my conclusions, whenwriting this report, was that we ought to put a greater percentage of ourtraining and development dollars towards supporting informal learning, and Ithink you’ll understand why.

Ben Betts’s research report onsocial learning will be released midday today, and you won’t want to miss it!My goal is to provide you with rich and accessible research resources to helpyou improve your practice and make important decisions. If you have any questionsor comments about the Guild research reports, don’t hesitate to contact me at[email protected].