The ‘SOCIAL’ in Social Learning

A couple nights ago at the SAO’s IPSIG meeting, one person mentioned that the social part of Social Learning is getting out of hand and killing productivity. Afterwards, as we were talking, she shared an experience where she left the desk of one of her employees, waited a bit and then came back around. Quickly, the employee make one swift keystroke to cover up what was on the screen and then looked at her with that look of, “I am pretending nothing is wrong although I was surfing but I don’t want you to know that.”

She is concerned, and has seen evidence, that too many people get on the internet and blog or comment or …(?) about useless information not pertaining to their work; information that may be personal or just a self satisfying indulgence.

I agree – to an extent. I guarantee this WILL happen, as it has happened with the Internet when it was first introduced (and to some extent now); as it happened (and is happening) with teenagers and texting; as it happened when the hoola hoop was introduced. We tend to over indulge on the new, really taking it out of context and creating a fad until later it equalizes out and is used for its intended purposes. (There is a whole sub-discussion on how this ‘fad’ stage expands the usefulness of any thought/product for other uses, but that is another discussion.)

This attitude helped fuel the first internet bubble (some say we are in another now).

What we should not do it get so worked up that this is THE solution for learning. Years ago e-learning was the next BEST thing – then it was the LMS. Now, we are realizing that we have applied both of these to areas that should have been left alone. That will happen again with Social Learning, to be sure. We just need to keep this in mind and make sure we will have a level head on as we go through this learning bubble.

I am not trying to down play Social Learning’s effectiveness, but we just need to be realistic and moderate.