Engaged Learning

Changing Skills for the Learning Facilitator

Aug 5, 2008 Learning 2.0, collaboration

THIS POST asks, “Do you need to be a subject matter expert to run subject-based community?”  If I were to change it slightly, “Do you need to be a trainer or SME to be a Learning Facilitator in the social learning world?”  Then I got thinking, what are the skills of this Learning Facilitator?  How are they different than an instructional designer or a trainer?

Here are some initial thoughts.  A learning facilitator will:

• Connect people together
• Encourage discussion and conversation, while at the same time monitor to make sure that the conversations are appropriate
• Listen to what the community of learners is saying in discussions
• Listen to their suggestions and then adjust accordingly
• Monitor discussions and flag the bad apples to keep it appropriate
• Measure and report out on activity
• Be an internal champion
• Be an advocate for the learner as well as a consult to management
• Have a strong understanding of the language and be able to express him/herself very will in written form - an experienced communicator
• Understand and have a good grasp on the technology used
• Be forward thinking and strategic to recognize other ways to increase the conversation and learning - technically and the good old fashioned way
• Be a fresh perspective from their unique position of ‘listening’ to many different conversations
• Be trusted and continue to build that trust
• Help shape and create ground rules by using the learners
• Be able to create goals and have a clear understanding of what they are and why
• Be a Simplicity Maker - too often things like this can get too technical too fast.  This person will have to keep their mind on the end user and keep things simple
• Engage and personalize
• Have a personality and use it
• Help everyone learn how to use the new technology, why they might (and in some cases should) use it
• Not give up
• Face opposition, take a smack in the face, and keep trucking (later they will come back and kiss you)
• Understand motivation and how people work and why they make decisions
• Know the world of the company or customer, how they work and how to best suite the environment and opportunities to allow for maximum ease of use and adoption

Just some stuff off the top of my head, from experience and gleaning information from other sources (here, here, here).  These part ways with the traditional training role, yet many are very similar.

Can you add to this list?  Which are more important than others, do you think?

UPDATE: This does not need to be just one person.  After thinking about it I think I made this out to be more of one job - which it could be.  This could certainly be many people, however, focused part time on this for a specific learning context.

Tags: learning facilitator, skills