Informal Learning with Tomoye (IIL07)
Eric Sauvé, of Tomoye, presented on informal learning in the enterprise. Tomoye’s clients include the US Army. Initial questions from the audience were:
- How do you prove that informal learning has value?
- How do get management’s buy-in?
- How do you ensure accuracy of content?
- How do you track legal issues & HR units/credits?
Eric views informal learning as something that adds value or augments formal learning in an organisation (I would say the opposite, but I’m just a learning radical). He also discussed the notion of employing workers/learners as a primary source of learning content; or the “YouTube-ification” of content. Other advice for implementation of Tomoye’s system, which looks like a blog/discussion forum mix for your Intranet, is to keep you tools simple . This follows the Web’s small pieces loosely joined design philosophy. Other points were to add a mechanism for positive reinforcement of good content and to use informal environments to validate the formal training that has been conducted.
Eric closed with a short discussion on collective intelligence or the wisdom of crowds. Overall this session was quite practical advice with some examples of one way to facilitate some aspects of informal learning.
Filed under: Informal Learning
