Examples of Real Social Learning
Go here to read about real world stories of Emergent Learning.
Go here to read some real world stories of Collaborative Learning.
So this is a post I have been meaning to write for a long while: case studies of companies who are using social learning to drive real business results. For the record, all of these stories are about Social Learning, and yet none of them would be described that way by their companies, and to my knowledge, none of them were spearheaded by learning organizations. This is why I’m getting a bit freaked out by IT and Marketing groups taking the lead on this stuff. Really think about those stories below and ask yourself why these couldn’t or shouldn’t be led by the CLO. At the very least, CLO’s and learning leaders should have been at the table.
Update: I decided to scrap this post and instead added a whole new section to my blog based on this article by Jay Cross and Harold Jarche. In a nutshell, they argue that the future of learning will rely on three models: emergent practices, established tools and process, and real-time workplace collaboration. See image below for a visual. Naturally, they also argue that trainers should be at the table and even driving all three of these models.
Image courtesy of Jay Cross and Harold Jarche
A point I agree with entirely (as I’m sure you’ll know if you have followed any of my blogs, podcasts, webinars, conference sesions, or published articles… ; )
Harold and Jay got me so fired up, I significantly added to my list of case studies of companies already doing social learning. I also reorganized the stories according to Emergent and Collaborative examples. Some of these are Mzinga clients, but they are legit stories that are just as valid as the others. Where possible, I have included source links so you can track back and source to the original when you are putting together business cases, presentations, papers etc… Please let me know if you have other examples that you think should be included in these master lists.
Go here to read about real world stories of Emergent Learning.
Go here to read some real world stories of Collaborative Learning.
Social Enterprise Blog 
Dave, awesomely valuable, thanks! And then there’s the CIA, with it’s Intell site, eh? Also, re: Intel, I hear that they’ve seen massive use of their site just for new hires getting up to speed on internal acronyms and vocab. Again, great stuff!
Thanks Clark. Glad this was helpful. I’ll definately add the CIA one. I always find them hard to distinguish: Intelpedia vs Intelipedia. Good info on Intel. Not really all that surprised; I was once asked to build out multiple hours of training for a big company, but after I dug in and did a good HPT sesssion, I realized that all they really needed was a dictionary for all the acronyms they used. So we did an electronic dictionary of acronyms, and subsequent sales performance of new hires went up by 20%… ; )
From Inside Intel, I can tell you that I access Intelpedia more than Wikipedia. It started as a grassroots effort but is fully supported and featured on the employee portal.
I created an entry on semiconductor processing overviews to address a common training request that we receive. This provides links to a wide range of self-study learning resources for all levels. The site has received over 5,000 views in 10 months and we avoided developing any new training materials.
here is another exmple of social learning in practice: http://www.towardsmaturity.org/article/2009/03/20/bt-dares-share/
Really nice posts. I will be checking back here regularly.