Harm told me about his team’s experience with informal learning in an engagement with Sara Lee. Sara Lee wanted to invest in technology in the domain of learning. At the beginning of this century, learning management systems were quite dominant, and therefore dominant on the radar screen of Sara Lee. Three years ago I talked with a former KPPG consultant, Harm Wegstra, at Online Educa Berlin. Here’s an extract of an email Harm sent me.

Every morning, my email is littered with very basic questions about informal learning. I’ve been ranting about informal and computer-supported learning in organizations for twelve years now. I’m the Johnny Appleseed of networked, social learning I make 95% of my work available on the net at no charge.

Informal learning takes place outside of traditional settings like classrooms, training rooms and self study programmes. Although humans have been learning informally for thousands of years, recently there has been a huge increase in technology enabled informal learning. Examples of such informal knowledge transfer include instant messaging, a phone call, an Internet chat room, a chance meeting in the kitchen, a scheduled It is essentially tacit knowledge which we obtain or locate from talking to the correct person. Virtually all real learning

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of “formalizing” informal learning. We all seem to be trying to figure out how to use informal learning to support our workplace learning agendas. If informal learning is unstructured, and unscheduled, and learner-driven, then what are we doing mucking around in it anyway?  While it’s true that we could just open up the internet connection and let employees consult with whoever is closest, a more prudent approach would be to give employees a vetted set of resources as a starting point. 

Blended learning is now inadequate - it is only mediocre. Blended learning assumes some characteristics. typical example of the delivery method of blended learning would be a combination of technology-based materials and face-to-face sessions used together to present content. The term can also be applied to the integration of e-learning with a Learning Management System using computers (WARNING - this is an unusually long post for me. And, as Mark Oehlert pointed out recently, I echo Mark Twain ’s quote, “I didn’t have time

Published in Chief Learning Officer, August 2009 Informal Learning 2.0 Corporate approaches to learning have to change, as well. Until the shift from industrial to network dominance, corporations could compensate for crummy learning by hiring experienced people and managing ingenious command-and-control structures. Effectiveness – Jay Cross Jay Cross

Allen Tough,  a brief talk at the 3rd New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL) Conference Ontario For me, one of the fascinating things was it doesn’t seem to matter where you are or what group you study, you get a very similar picture of informal adult learning, and that for me has actually been the highlight of all this research, as I read all these different studies, is that there seems to be a common pattern, that informal learning just seems to be a very normal, very natural human activity, and that’s why I think we’re all dealing with the dichotomy between that fact and the fact

There's a fantastic post by Stephen Downes - New Technology Supporting Informal Learning . In his post, he really is looking primarily at the University of Manitoba's Connectivism Course that he designed and delivered with George Siemens to 2200 students in Fall 2008 and you can tell that he's busy thinking about the technology behind the Fall 2009 course. So as you read this, keep in mind that Stephen was primarily talking about technology that can support a Formal Learning Event that heavily leverages Informal / Social Learning as it's primary mechanism. It's definitely

Sometimes guilds helped apprentices learn by doing things under the eye of a master, but there weren’t any trainers involved. Orders from the top of the organization kept everyone on the same page. Xerox Learning, DDI, Forum Corporation, and hundreds of other “instructional systems companies” sprung up.  The latter 20th Century was the golden era of the training department. Before the 20th Century, training per se did not exist outside the special needs of the church and the military.

A recent survey that found that employees (in the UK, at least) are more interested in innovative learning and collaboration than the HR and training people in those same institutions. More HR professionals (42%) than employees (38%) wanted to see more classroom learning. Having been in both learning and HR roles, (not to mention being an employee for most of my career), These results The study, conducted in March, found that 44% of employees want to see collaborative tools like blogs, forums and wikis developed, while just 32% of HR professionals agree. HR is in charge