Fostering Online Learning—Beyond the LMS

By Mary Arnold

The flexibility of Web 2.0 tools provides many opportunities to invent new instructional strategies and to observe the informal learning we always knew was happening but didn’t know how to track.

Even if your organization uses an LMS to deliver training, it’s likely that your learners probably don’t spend a lot of time in that environment. Most online training is short-duration, and most of the features that encourage interaction between learners are notoriously underused.

Not to worry. A growing number of organizations have begun to invest in a suite of tools that provide a more familiar feeling launching pad. Web conferencing has become commonplace for meeting remotely, and investment in collaboration, knowledge management and social networking software is on the rise. For training departments willing to explore all the possibilities, it’s easier than ever to involve learners in a blended learning program.

Blog all about it

If your organization espouses a set of core competencies, then your training department should be coordinating an effort to blog about them—in addition to creating training on how the organization expects them to be enacted. The content might include examples of how the competencies affect the everyday working environment, information you weren’t able to squeeze into the program, or stories about why those competencies were adopted.

That said, the HR and training functions may not be the best group to author the blog, regardless of their writing skills. The purpose of establishing core competencies in the first place is to establish them as a norm across the organization. Invite guest bloggers to write on the topic in their own words, and you’ll demonstrate that the competencies are important across the organization. Until someone else is talking about them, the competencies will be seen as an HR-only initiative. Also because audiences expect blogs to be updated frequently, bringing in guest bloggers can also keep the blog from becoming too big a burden on a small group of people.

To be sure, the primary goal of the blog is to keep the competencies fresh in everyone’s mind. The side benefits are that it will help build consensus around the competencies as more constituents are tapped to provide entries, and it will remind employees what they learned after they’ve left the classroom.

One question that sometimes comes up in discussions about blogging is whether or not to allow readers to comment on the blog entries. Reader comments can be a useful way to find out whether your message is getting through. On the other hand, negative or profane comments are a possibility and have the potential to derail your message.

The right answer for your organization will depend on how comfortable the organization is with risk. If you choose to allow comments, you can mitigate the risk by setting the software to display the name of the commenter, or by making user comments subject to approval before they are posted.

Social networking communities

Software programmers have used the most common element of online communities—threaded discussions—for years to help one another learn to code, work through problems, or code more efficiently.

Establishing a virtual cohort can help learners tease out the nuances of complex or ambiguous subjects in a way that a two-day training session or a 45-minute web-based training program can’t. But getting the virtual community to work as a group may take more than just the ability to share questions and answers, especially if they’ve never met one another in person.

If you’re looking to establish a virtual community, icebreakers can be even more useful in a virtual setting than they are in real life. Games can help establish a sense of presence for users who aren’t quite comfortable with meeting virtually and asynchronously.

Need help getting started? Create a thread where you share three facts about yourself, two true, and one false. Then ask others in the group to guess which item is false, and ask if they’ll provide three facts about themselves.

In many tools, users have the ability to add a profile that includes pictures (or an avatar) of themselves, some biographical information, and tags they can use to describe themselves. If your tool includes this feature, ask everyone in the group to fill out their profile, and suggest a format that encourages them to do more than transcribe their resume. Sharing personal (but not private) information, such as hobbies, makes it easier for the online group to relate to one another, and increases the chance that they’ll be interested in getting one other’s opinions.

The work of getting the conversation started isn’t finished after the group members have gotten to know one another. Just as a face-to-face meeting may require a facilitator or someone to create an agenda, asynchronous groups often need someone to seed the conversation. If your group is part of a blended learning experience, you can ask them to start a discussion thread as a requirement of the class. Otherwise, consider posting questions related to the topic, and ask a few of the group members if they will as well.

In some cases, the tool enables users to embed video or audio clips in an entry. Maybe last night’s episode of The Office is a great way to start a discussion. Many stations host video clips of their popular shows on their web sites.

Alternatively, if the group is meant to provide a reflective learning opportunity, you may want the users to generate and post their own video or audio material. A group for new managers, for example, might ask members to keep an audio or video diary where they post the challenges they face in their new role. The wide availability of webcams and microphones on computers makes it easy and cheap for group members to capture and share their stories with one another. When the experience is finished, the learners will have a portfolio showing how their abilities and attitudes have changed over time.

Wiki-wide discussion

Many wikis follow the example of Wikipedia, using a wiki as a way to catalog what a group knows about a subject. You might, for example, ask a class to compile or update wiki entries based on what they’ve learned in a live or virtual classroom. Working together on a wiki lets later cohorts benefit from and expand on the learning of earlier ones, even if they never have the chance to discuss the material all together.

It’s also possible to use a wiki as an asynchronous breakout group, where each group is assigned to answer a particular question from a reflective assignment. An even less conventional use would be to allow groups of learners to represent different sides of a more ambiguous issue on different wikis.

Because the end result of a wiki is a document created by the entire community, without attribution to individual sections and comments, it’s possible to discuss even contentious issues without personality conflicts between supporters of different sides playing a role in the comparison between the issues themselves. When the documents are finalized, the larger group can vote on which wiki presented the most compelling case.

Bottom line

Even if you see the reasons for using Web 2.0 tools outside of the LMS, you may be wondering how to measure learning that isn’t all in one place. It’s an interesting bias that the same training community that finds Kirkpatrick level one to be an acceptable measure of classroom learning often insists on level two to measure online learning.

In reality, having one user tag another as a “pivot table guru” after getting help with a spreadsheet problem is probably just as good a measure of their abilities in Excel as a quiz at the end of a module on creating pivot tables. You might argue it comes closer to a level three or four, since the tagged employee is clearly using the knowledge in his or her everyday work, and is helping others with it.

The work of determining whether learning is happening within a group can be determined by the group itself. Poll the group periodically to find out what has been interesting, compelling and helpful for them. Some groups will struggle to get comfortable using tags, stars, or comments to designate useful content. A more playful group may go so far as to create their own virtual awards ceremonies to show their appreciation for useful content or helpful group members.

The flexibility of Web 2.0 tools provides many opportunities to invent new instructional strategies and to observe the informal learning we always knew was happening but didn’t know how to track. Collaboration tools have gotten us one step closer.