Why #2 – Personalizing Learning

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WHY #2: Social Learning Personalizes Learning.

The next verb of Social Learning is that it will personalize your learning.  I don’t know how many training classes I have been to that I was told what I was going to learn instead of learning what I felt I needed to learn to do my job.  Some of the instruction I definitely needed – other instruction I didn’t.  But in the end I may not have received the answers to my questions.

Learner distraction often is high in training classes because their mind is on their work, yet they are being pulled away to learn something that is not relevant to them at that moment.  No wonder they only take away and use 10% of it! (or so)

So we need to ask ourselves, who’s agenda is it that a person learns a particular subject or information.  If the answer is not ‘the learner’ then it is not social learning. Instead of forcing someone to learn a subject, it is discovered by the learner.

Like BarCamp, social learning is personalizes the learning to the individual, not to the training class or even to the company as a whole, but to the individual.  I want to know something – that topic now becomes my quest for information instead of it being spoonfed.  And I want it in the amount I want it, not through some large training class.  Training classes have their place, but I learn MUCH more outside of them than I ever do inside.

Experience:

My clothes washer was leaking.  In order to skirt the Maytag repairman coming out, I went online and found a forum.  It not only let me to the problem, but let me to the solution.  I followed the steps and solved the problem.  In the steps it said that one task would take two people.  I figured out how to do it in one.  That is something that I can give back.

This experience we very personal to me. I didn’t have to take a class on repairing washers.  The learning happened how I needed it, when and in the amount I needed it.  No more, no less, perfectly personalized for me.

Have you had similar experiences in a professional setting?

Tagged as: Maytag, why