WHY #3: Social Learning Discovers the Expterts.
Social learning also discovers the experts instead of experts being appointed. Some authority doesn’t come down and say “Hey you there, you are going to teach a class in PeopleSoft and you need to be an expert at it.” This just doesn’t happen because there are already the experts out there that most people didn’t know about. If they see a need for someone to learn, they can help out, for example, in a forum by answering a question.
We are all experts at something. Now we can let that expertness out and let others take advantage of it.
Again, back to the BarCamp example, experts automagically emerge from the croud. This happens online as well. Those who know often speak up. Those who don’t listen and ask questions and start great conversations. But no one is dictated an expert. They just are. It is like being a leader. If you have to say you are a leader for other people to understand that, chances are that you’re not a leader. Here, no one appoints an expert or SME –they just are and are socially recognized as such.
Traditional training can – not always, but often does – drown out the experts so they are not discovered on a larger scale. They may be know very locally, not on that larger scale.
What is the benefit from this? Your company is already paying these people. You don’t have to hire more to help others learn. And even better is that they will automatically help each other – often times without prompting from you or another higher power.
Example: Our Customer Support doesn’t know all the answers – they already admit that. But what was happening before is that the customer voices were not heard on a larger scale. As soon as we gave them a way to interact, they started answering each other’s questions! Our customers are some of the best experts. They use our product every day in ways we may not realize. We learned from them, they learn from us, they learn from each other. Experts are discovered.
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