704 Beyond Content: Using Mobile to Foster and Manage Informal Learning

2:30 PM - 3:30 PM Thursday, June 9

Design

Lone Star H

Employees learn many of their job competencies from one another. But it’s hard for a manager to know what they’re learning, from whom, and how well they’ve learned it. These informal interactions are almost impossible to track, and it’s hard to keep bad habits from spreading. If managers had a way to track and guide this informal learning, it would become a powerful part of employee development.

In this session, you’ll learn how to use mobile devices and applications to shape peer-to-peer knowledge sharing into a structured development program. You’ll learn how to use mobile applications to assign individual learning paths for each employee, match them up with peers who help them learn, remind them of best practices, validate their new competencies, and track their accomplishments. You’ll learn how to set up a program, get it started, and incorporate it into your other training efforts. You’ll hear about two real-world examples: onboarding new employees and training a sales team.

In this session, you will learn:

  • How to use mobile to manage peer-to-peer learning
  • How to easily create individual informal learning paths for employees
  • How to match peers who can share knowledge with one another
  • How to validate what employees have learned in the field
  • How to track employees’ accomplishments
  • How to incorporate existing formal training into your program

Audience:
Novice to advanced project managers and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Smartphones, tablets, laptops, and applications including calendars, to-do lists, and Pract.us—a web application for informal learning management.

Mike Bleyle

CEO

Pract.us

Mike Bleyle, the CEO of Pract.us, began his career 26 years ago as an officer in the US Navy. As a nuclear reactor training officer, he learned the power of structured informal learning. In the civilian world, Mike has managed and trained teams in product development, project management, and software consulting. He created the certification and training program for Corticon Business Rules software in 2007. In 2014, he developed Pract.us software for informal learning management.

Carol Bleyle

Marketing Lead

Pract.us

Carol Bleyle, the marketing lead of Pract.us, began her career teaching English and linguistics at the university and community college level. She later moved into the speech recognition software industry and developed training courses and workshops for commercial software as well as her own services company. She writes extensively about the cognitive basis of learning, work-based learning, and employee development. Since 2013, Carol has partnered with Mike Bleyle, founder and CEO of Pract.us, to share the vision of guided informal learning. Carol holds a MA in linguistics.

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