How to Create a Dynamic Social Learning Space with High Engagement

There’sa lot involved in building a community: you can put up houses, roads, bus stopsand shops, a village green, town hall, and school, but until people move in andstart talking to the neighbors, you just have an infrastructure. You needpeople to make a community, but here’s the funny thing: you probably don’t needthe infrastructure to do it. People and the conversations are what counts.

Sociallearning is a term that describes the semi-formal layers of dialogue thatsurround the formal. It’s a term to describe conversations: conversationsbetween individual learners, conversations within groups and conversations backto the organization. If we get it right, it’s a dynamic and engaging way ofbuilding and embedding learning, but if we get it wrong, we build a ghost town.

Sohow do we create engaging social learning spaces? What can we do to make themwork?

Focus on the essentials

Let’sthink about four key areas: technology, conversations, engagement, and legacy.

Agility rules

First,technology. It may sound counterintuitive, but our key message here is that it’snot about the technology! Technology may facilitate the formation of community,but it won’t guarantee it, and, if we get it wrong, it will certainly activelyinhibit it. The first step for many organizations that want to implement sociallearning is to try to procure a solution, to buy a system that will deliverwhat they want. This desire to purchase and own technology is outdated: firstlybecause the old days of dinosaur systems that tried to do everything is gone,and secondly because there are already so many great spaces out there that youcan squat in. In social learning, we don’t try to bring the conversations tous: we have to go where the conversations are.

Whydid the dinosaurs die? Because it cost a fortune to implement them, it tookforever and always overran, and they never really delivered what was promisedanyway: how many organizations invested heavily in a learning management systemthat failed to actually deliver a change in the quality of learning? The riskwith making your social learning venture a project about procuring technologyis that you may just end up hitting technical challenges. I’m sure you’re notafraid of a challenge, but let’s at least make it a challenge about engagement,not systems.

Today,it’s about agility: agile systems and agile learners. Sometimes that agilitymeans we don’t own the systems at all. It’s okay for us to walk over to wherethe conversations are rather than try to bring them to us. The value of asocial learning community is in the interactions, not the hardware or softwarethey take place upon and within. Certainly at the planning and pilot stage, asthe organization finds its way with social, it makes sense to be very light offoot: creating groups on LinkedIn or similar and learning some lessons beforeinvesting.

So,while technology is important, it’s not the be-all and end-all of social. Theconversations are what counts, so let’s think a little more about conversation.

Relevant, specific, and real—but not yours

Informal learning spaces, we are looking to convey a message to the group: weusually know what the meaning is, and we are looking for them to understand it.Social is different: it’s the conversation around the edge, and we expect thegroup to be constructing the meaning. It’s an emergent reality.

Forexample, in formal learning, within a classroom or piece of eLearning, we maydemonstrate key behaviors and skills. In the social learning space, we arediscussing how we may implement them, providing support and challenge to eachother as we do so and building a shared understanding of what the key messages are and what we can do withthem.

Takingfootsteps out of formal learning and back into the workplace is where we havethe highest level of attrition. By using the social space to make the meaningmore immediate, relevant to your or my everyday reality and role, that’s how wemake the message stick. Of course, it might not be our exact message: the pointof social learning is that the group takes our formal message and makes itrelevant, specific to them, grounded in their reality. After all, they livetheir lives all the time; we are only visiting.

Thekey thing to remember is that within the formal learning space, we can own theconversations. Within the social spaces, we can participate, but not own them.Not even with moderation: if we moderate too heavily, if we try to steer it toofar, we simply make the informal formal. We kill the dialogue and make it alecture.

Whathave we learnt so far? That technology is important, but it won’t deliver theanswer, and that we have to go and visit the conversations, take part in them, but notown them.

Now,let’s think about that most elusive of qualities: engagement.

Why do people engage—or not?

Engagementis something that we can see all around us: some people are engaged with theirtown gardening club, some with their local pub quiz, some with shopping at Ikea,and just about everyone is engaged with Facebook. It’s easy to spot engagement:one of the main things to look out for is investment of time and investment ofenergy. If people are spending both of these valuable items in your sociallearning space, you’re winning. If they’re not, you’re losing.

Sohow do you win? Relevance: the conversation needs to be relevant to a person’srole and needs, and this is a conversation that may change over time. Tworeasons why people fail to engage in social spaces are because they think thecontent is irrelevant and they don’t see the value from investing their timeand energy in this area. And, of course, if the content is not relevant tothem, they are probably right.

Weavoid this by giving ownership of the subject to the group: pulling instead ofpushing. Whatever the topic, there’s no harm in asking what the groupwants to talk about, andrecognizing that the needs of the group may not align perfectly with the needsof the organization. For example, we may be trying to get people to have bettersales conversations, but they may want to talk about how poor the CRM (customerrelationship management) system is. How do you deal with that? Simple: byengaging in the conversation … but with structure. It’s okay to talk about the negativesas long as the group is willing to construct a story about what can be done toimprove it. You have to be open to the conversation. At the very least, byengaging in this conversation you gain permission to have the other one, theone you want.

Engagementcan be driven by providing access to expertise. People engage in social learning spaces for various reasons:some to demonstrateexpertise, some to learn, some to challenge, some to lead. These roles are notstatic; they can flex between projects and over time. Providing space andresource for subject matter expert conversation can resonate with many people.For example, when workingin pharmaceuticals, getting experts on hand to answer questions can reallyhelp.

Andan important thing to think about is how we reward engagement: how is taking part reflected inyour annual performance review? What gets rewarded gets done: the worstsituation is when on the one hand we are asking people to participate, but onthe other we are heavily rewarding other activities. Why would a sales teamtake time out for conversation if they are only rewarded for meetings? In thatcase, disengagement is not their fault: we are actively rewarding them not toengage.

Passing it on with moderation

Finally,let’s think about legacy: how do we narrate stories out of the learning, andwhat are the benefits of doing this? I’m very keen on narration of social learningstories, community-generatedmemories, something with a purpose and legacy within the organization. Often,with discussions in these spaces, they run their course: there is a point atwhich the conversation becomes so long that it’s hard for new people to joinit, or it goes off-topic.There is a lot to be said for time-limiting conversations and actively drawingall the threads together and tying them off. This is part of the role of themoderator.

Viewthe moderator’srole at this stage as a journalist and newspaper editor rolled into one: theyare writing the stories based upon the learning of the group, narrating theconversations, and writing up the articles, as well as curating the messages.It’s a key role.

Application

Tosummarize, a healthy social learning community needs to be nurtured andactively managed. We have considered four dimensions: technology,conversations, engagement, and legacy. The best way to be successful is to beopen to learning: create a small space and try your hand at curating thedialogue. To build community takes time and effort. Technology alone will notdo it.