For the last few days I've been reading Marcia Conner and Tony Bingham 's book - The New Social Learning. It's an intriguing read, with several interesting case studies from organisations that are using social media to advance their business goals. As I've posted stuff to my network, I've realised how being social is inherent to not just my personality, but also to everyone of us. We've always been social learners, and modern social media is just helping our natural tendencies. That said being social is hardly dependent on technology alone. MORE >>

Social media continues to grow worldwide. As learning consultants, we need to take a tip from the social media craze, and determine ways to leverage it in our online courses. One way to do this is by using social media as a tool to supplement collaboration online. Group collaboration has aided in the success of classroom learning for a long time. However, with the introduction of online learning, not all the instructional strategies that apply to the classroom are as effective in the online environment. Social Learning MORE >>

A few days back Nikhil Nulkar and I were discussing the need for social media in the enterprise. As Andrew McAfee says, "Email is freeform, multimedia (especially with attachments), WYSIWYG, easy to learn and use, platform independent, social, and friendly to mouse clickers and keyboard shortcutters alike." Mailing lists are one of the first forms of social collaboration on the web, and sophisticated groupware like Google Apps make searching easy. So why do we need social platforms in the enterprise? social learning lrnchat Let me explain. Web 2.0 MORE >>

ThoughtWorks University (TWU) is our graduate induction program where we've traditionally flown our graduate hires from all across the world into Bangalore, India for an intense six weeks of collaborative learning. While I'm in my 11th TWU, this term is really special to me for the enhancements we're making to the experience - primarily in the area of social and collaborative learning. The Right Social Environment A few years back Andrew McAfee wrote an excellent article about the enterprise bulls-eye. Not much time to learn anything, huh? Here's what I think. MORE >>

As a standalone metric, it ranks right up there with measuring learning effectiveness by the pound of learners served. I think also at least for some social learning interventions. strategyI was defending Kirkpatrick’s  levels the other day, and after being excoriated by my ITA colleagues, I realized there was not only a discrepancy between principle and practice, but between my interpretation and as it’s espoused. Perhaps I’ve been too generous. whether the recipient can demonstrate new ability after the intervention. So where did I go wrong? MORE >>