Many thanks to Maddie for highlighting the video below featuring Tom Hood, CEO of the Maryland Association of CPAs. I’ve been preaching Learning 2.0 and social learning for years now, but it is much more meaningful to hear directly from an association leader about the value he sees in it. I’d recommend watching this one with as many others in your organization as you can convince to join – including your executive director or CEO.

Not seeing the video? Click through to http://www.tagoras.com/2011/10/18/social-learning-executive-view/

I’m not sure how I have never come across this before because apparently it has been around since 2007. Drawing upon the example of Helen Blowers (who I highlight in Learning 2.0 for Associations and  routinely use as an example in presentations), the Maryland Society of CPAs put together a “43 Things” type discovery learning site to help members learn about social media: CPA Learning 2.0.

MACPA’s provides 34 “things” in its discovery learning process. It’s designed to be explored over a 9-week period, though really how fast you go through it is entirely up to you. Basically, these are “34 lessons that will help you explore and become better acquainted with Web 2.0 technologies.”

I note the CPA Learning 2.0 effort here for a number of reasons.

• First, while social media and “Web 2.0″ have obviously been around for quite a while at this point, I find that many organizations could still use a tool like this help their members learn about social media. You can point them to this, or better yet, you can “hack” it for your own use – MACPA did, so did Helen Blowers for that matter. That’s the beauty of this sort of open approach to education.
• Second, I am a fan of the whole discovery learning approach. As you take a look at this, think of ways this approach could be used by your organization for other topics.
• Third, while I have noted before that social learning and social media are not the same thing, certainly familiarity with social tools helps a great deal to increase the possibilities and potential for social learning. One of the points I typically make when I talk about social learning is that organizations need to do a better job teaching their stakeholders to use social tools as learning tools. That’s not really the focus of the MACPA site – nor is it as social a learning experience as something like 43 Things or Helen Blowers’ initiative was – but you can see the potential.

So go, explore, discover – and consider how you might leverage a similar approach in your learning initiatives.

Jeff

I ordered a bunch of copies of Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner’s excellent The New Social Learning as a registration incentive for our most recent Leading Learning breakfast. As it happens, I still have 10 copies sitting on my desk and will happily mail one each to the first 10 people who comment on this post (subject to a small but important condition noted below).

In case you aren’t familiar with it, The New Social Learning provides a thorough, thoughtful explanation for “why social media is the ideal solution to some of the most pressing educational challenges organizations face today, such as a widely dispersed workforce and striking differences in learning styles, particularly across generations.”

As noted previously here (and also – to be clear – noted by Bingham and Conner in their book) social media and social learning are not the same thing, but there is no doubt that social media has had and will have a huge impact on social learning. If you are a serious educator or serious about being in the education business, this book is a must read.

So, please let me know if you want a copy. There are only two small conditions:

1. You must be involved in some way, shape, or form with education provided by trade and professional associations. No offense to corporate trainers or academics, but my aim here is to spread the word about social learning more in the association community. You don’t have to actually work for an association, though – i.e., vendors, consultants, and volunteers are welcome.

2. You must actually submit a comment here (e.g., rather than e-mailing me directly or tweeting, etc.). This is purely to help me know easily who submitted when. Please provide your e-mail address when you comment (this is visible only to me, not to the reading public) and I will e-mail you to get the address where you want to receive the book.

That’s it.

Jeff

P.S. – If you are interested in social learning, you will without a doubt also be interested in our free eBook Learning 2.0 for Associations.

I’ve found in the course of much travel and conversation that it is not uncommon for association educators to not engage on the topic of social learning because social media is the responsibility of someone else in the organization. This raises my eyebrow on at least two points.

The first is the apparent confusion between social learning and social media. They are different. Social learning – the idea that we build much of our knowledge through our interactions with other human beings – has been around since people first started communicating with each other In other words, pretty much as long as people have been around. Social media has arrived only in the last decade (okay, earlier if you count discussion boards, but still…)

Associations have always been in the social learning business. Indeed, a significant part of their value has been as orchestrators of resources for effective social learning – primarily in the forms of meetings and events. The problem is that that this value has been disrupted at its core. Communication is no longer expensive; organization is no longer expensive; the production of content no longer has to be expensive. Associations no longer have a corner on the social learning market in adult continuing education and professional development, but associations that hope to thrive must still understand and excel at facilitating social learning.

Social media is a huge factor in that disruption, so it stands to reason that associations hoping to not only survive, but thrive might want to invest heavily in understanding social media as a social learning toolset. Even so, whether or not they embrace social media, association educators simply cannot ignore the concept of social learning and do their jobs well.

The other eyebrow raiser is the idea that social media is the responsibility of someone else in the organization. It often is true (sadly, in my opinion) that social media is controlled by marketing, but that does not relieve education of learning about and experimenting with the tools from the viewpoint of supporting learning. In more progressive organizations, one person or department may have responsibility for coordinating social media usage, but all major functions within the organizations are sitting at the table when it comes to deciding how social media can support key parts of the organization’s mission. Like, for example, learning.

Jeff

P.S. – See Defining Social Learning for a fuller definition of social learning. Also, check out our Learning 2.0 resource center for a lot of free resources, including the free eBook Learning 2.0 for Associations.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanspoldoja/5001818922

I usually save this sort of geeky stuff for a link in the monthly ALT Digest, but I’m a huge WordPress fan (this site is built on it) and I have been following Sclipo with interest for a while. The two together seem worth much more than a newsletter link. Here’s the basic run down from Sclipo:

With Sclipo’s new “Embed your Campus” feature, you can now transform your WordPress site, or any Content Management System like Joomla or your custom-coded website, into an Online Campus in just a few minutes! The Sclipo Online Campus provides powerful e-Learning apps, including a course manager and live web conferencing, as well as a social network and promotion tools. It has been especially designed for continuing education helping independent teachers and education organizations to teach and collaborate better, as well as to attract new students.

We created this feature because many of our current users have a website to promote their educational services. Now, their webs can also offer an Online Campus, providing a better learning experience for current students and helping to win more new ones.

(Get the full story on the Sclipo blog: http://sclipo.com/blog/feature-note/transform-your-wordpress-site-into-an-online-campus-with-sclipo.html)

While Sclipo or Sclipo+WordPress is probably not an answer for continuing education providers with bona fide LMS needs, it does offer some very interesting possibilities at a very reasonable price.  I think it is well worth taking for a spin if only to see what ideas it sparks.

Jeff

P.S. – As with all of the technology providers we cover here at Tagoras, we have no financial relationship of any sort with Sclipo. This just struck me as pretty cool and worth noting.

Interested in connecting with peers and getting expert insights into how a new wave of social learning will impact your professional development and continuing education programs? Then please join us on August 26 for our second Leading Learning breakfast.

This time around, we’ll be joined by Tony Bingham, President of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and co-author of The New Social Learning. We’ll get Tony’s perspectives on how new approaches to “social” are re-shaping the way organizations approach learning and the critical role this shift may play for forward-thinking associations.

• Find out more and register: http://leadinglearning0811.eventbrite.com/

As an incentive to go ahead and register, we’re offering a complimentary copy of The New Social Learning to the first 25 people who sign up. If you aren’t familiar with The New Social Learning (or even if you are), I encourage you to visit the Web site for the book – www.thenewsociallearning.com – to find out more and explore the resources.

We’re grateful once again to CommPartners for sponsoring the event and making it possible for us to record it for those who can’t be there. (We’re also considering the possibility of offering a live video stream from the event. Be sure to visit the registration site to find out more: http://leadinglearning0811.eventbrite.com/)

We had a great session the last time around, and this one promises to be just as good.

I hope to see you on August 26.

Jeff

[tweetmeme] As I was putting together slides for our recent Webinar on Learning 2.0, I decided at the last minute to leave out a slide that offered a definition of social learning  I happen to like. It seemed a bit too complex to dive into in a brief Webinar, but I want to offer it up here, because I think it cuts to the core of why I feel social learning is such a central concept for any organization that sees itself as a learning leader in a particular industry or field. The definition is adapted somewhat from an article in Ecology and Society. Here are its three major points:

1. Social learning occurs through social interactions and processes between actors within a social network
2. Social learning facilitates change in the individuals involved
3. Social learning potentially becomes situated within wide units or communities of practice

Stated differently: People learn through interacting with each other; this learning – like all learning – changes them as individuals, but it also has the potential to change the broader groups within which they participate. I find the last part particularly powerful. While I don’t feel all social learning has to generate broader change (I added the qualifier “potentially” in point 3), I think the fact that it can has tremendous strategic implications.

A key implication, I believe, is that organizations need to pull back and look at the full range of educational options they offer and consider the broader learning conversations to which they connect. Are the seminars, Webinars, and conferences you offer isolated events, or do they tie tightly into a broader vision for how and where you hope to lead your members? How do the less formal elements of your contact with members – blog posts, posts on social networks, tweets – help to tie together the formal educational elements and contribute to the overall vision?

When you start thinking about your education in this way, you are engaging in social learning, even if this is not terminology that your organization has traditionally used.

Jeff

P.S. – Whether or not you represent an association, there is a good chance that if you found this post interesting you will also like our free eBook Learning 2.0 for Associations.

We ran a survey earlier this year to gauge the extent to which associations are or are not incorporating social media into their continuing education and professional development programs – not for marketing purposes, but as part of the actual educational experience. We didn’t get quite the level of response we would have liked, so we are running it again (with a few tweaks). Participate and you will get a copy of the data and be entered for a chance to win a $120 Amazon.com certificate (enough to buy a Kindle).

Note: Your participation is important even if your organization does not currently use any social media in its education programs.

Here’s the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X9XF7SR

The survey takes anywhere from a couple of minutes to 7 or 8 minutes, depending on your responses. It closes at 5:00 PT this coming Tuesday (August 2) because I plan to talk about the data in a presentation at the ASAE annual conference, which starts on August 6. I’ll also discuss results at our upcoming Leading Learning (http://leadinglearning0811.eventbrite.com/) event with Tony Bingham, author of The New Social Learning.

Please help spread the word!

Jeff

On August 26, we’ll hold the second event in our Leading Learning breakfast series. Clyde’s of Gallery Place will be the location once again, and we are also putting out feelers to see if there is any interest in a video stream from the event.

This time around, we’ll be joined by Tony Bingham, President of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and co-author of The New Social Learning. We’ll get Tony’s perspectives on how new approaches to “social” are re-shaping the way organizations approach learning and the critical role this shift may play for forward-thinking associations.

• Find out more and register: http://leadinglearning0811.eventbrite.com/
• Let us know if you are interested in a video stream: http://leadinglearningstream0811.eventbrite.com/

As an incentive to go ahead and register, we’re offering a complimentary copy of The New Social Learning to the first 25 people who sign up (for the in-person event only). If you aren’t familiar with The New Social Learning (or even if you are), I encourage you to visit the Web site for the book – www.thenewsociallearning.com – to find out more and explore the resources.

We’re grateful once again to CommPartners for sponsoring the event and making it possible for us to record it for those who can’t be there.

We had a great session the last time around (recording and materials available at: http://www.tagoras.com/leading-learning/materials/) and this one promises to be just as good.

I hope to see you on August 26.

Jeff

I spoke on Learning 2.0 this week at the Association Forum of Chicagoland’s annual meeting and once again used the Association of Cable Communicators as an example of an organization that has leveraged social learning in a simple but highly effective way. You can get details on this in our free PDF Association E-learning: Six Snapshot Case Studies (by theway, if you haven’t tuned into this and other great resources over in our Resource Center, what are you waiting for?!) What I’d like to highlight today, however, is another simple approach to social learning – namely, using the incredibly easy, user-friendly, and low cost discussion list tool CCtoMany to put together on-the-fly learning communities and collaborative groups.

For this one, I give a nod to Seth Kahan, who has been using the tool very effectively to bring together people in his mentoring community (of which I am a part).  Seth started using CCtoMany as a way to quickly and efficiently share ideas and resources for success and it has quickly evolved into a small but vibrant community in which people are collaborating on articulating and achieving important goals as well as sharing a wealth of advice and experience.

Now, this approach to learning tends to work best when you have an intrinsically motivated group that includes a good number of people with significant experience under their belts and at least one expert to help facilitate the learning. Seth has that in spades, but I’m willing to bet there are any number of scenarios you could come up with among your membership base or customers where the right pieces are basically already in place and just need a simple platform – like CCtoMany – to get things going.

Give it some thought. Cook up an experiment. You are bound to learn a lot from the experience, and the cost of failure – should it come to that – is very low.

Jeff

P.S. – If you have any issues with the links (a few e-mail subscribers have reported this, you can copy and paste the URL below for CCtoMany and for the case studies:

http://www.tagoras.com/docs/Association-E-learning-Six-Snapshot-Case-Studies.pdf

http://www.cctomany.com/Discussion/Discussion