The days of informal learning being a shadowy entity unto
itself are gone. Learning on-the-fly is now part of any
well-balanced learning intake.
As the incoming tide of informal learning advances on the tiny
beach blanket of formal learning and seems likely to engulf it,
learning professionals are raising many questions, including the
most basic: what is informal learning anyway, and how does it fit
into a big picture of learning?
A search for a meaningful distinction between formal and informal
learning will take you back several decades to a time when the
class or course was the model, characterized by structure and
control, designed and delivered by a teacher or expert, and set
about with objectives and measurements to determine its
effectiveness. Formal learning in the 1950s was the very mirror of
the industrial society in which it was applied.
By contrast, informal learning in those days was defined by the
ways in which it was not formal, with the implication that it was a
departure from the norm. Research and practice since then has
produced a string of adjectives to describe the "other" kind of
learning: nonformal, informal, tacit, accidental, implicit, and
reactive being just a few.
Writing for the Encyclopedia of Informal Learning, Mark
Smith, a research fellow and tutor at YMCA George Williams College
in London, described the essence of informal learning and how it
differs from formal learning or education:
"The key dimension, in many respects, is intention. Education is a
conscious activity; learning isn't necessarily. People may not have
a clear idea of the knowledge or skill they want to acquire, but
they are committed to a process...My own preference is to separate
those approaches that depend upon the planning and sequencing of
learning (via something like a curriculum) and those that are
essentially dialogical or conversational (and hence hold little
prospect of pre-organizing if we are to stay true to their nature).
The former can be seen as formal and the latter as informal
education...it is best to see these as a continuum."
Out of your head?
Views of informal learning departed early on from the theory that
learning occurs only within one's head. Instead, these theories
focus on cognition that occurs in social relations outside one's
head, especially when using social tools for thinking and learning
with others.
In 1993, Gavriel Salomon, writing in Distributed
Cognition, stated, "The tools and social relations 'outside'
people's heads are not only sources of stimulation and guidance but
are actually vehicles of thought." It is not just the person who
learns, but the person plus the whole system.
It will surprise no one that the practice and encouragement of
informal learning in real organizations is somewhat less tidy than
the theories that drive it. A very broad range of activities falls
under the mantle of informal learning in practice today. Among them
are mentoring, communities of practice both live and virtual,
knowledge capture and sharing, locating experts with the help of
search tools, refining the wisdom of crowds, moderated chats, and a
slew of social-tool-enabled exchanges such as blogging, tweeting,
and yammering.
Forrester Research analyst Claire Schooley, in the report "Informal
Methods Challenge Corporate Learning," identified three trends that
have accelerated the adoption of informal learning practices in
corporations: information overload; the demand for immediate access
to information; and the habits of the Millennial generation, whose
members tend to favor taking charge of learning rather than being
passive recipients.
Whatever it is called and no matter what it comprises, the use of
informal learning is a growing trend in organizations today. Some
estimates place the amount of informal learning as high as 80
percent of all learning in organizations.
ASTD's State of the Industry data, tracked since 2001,
shows steady movement away from live, instructor-led training to
other forms of delivery, including those that are self-paced. In
2008, companies reported that on average, 63.69 percent of learning
was live and instructor-led, down from 76 percent in 2001. This
trend, added to the increasingly intentional use of informal
learning, is likely to take learning even farther from the
traditional and formal class setting.
"Informal learning is increasing in organizations today," says
Rebecca Phillips, vice president of education and training at
Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Medical Center, "because people
have personal technology that allows them to choose where they
learn. The {learning} customer is making the decision, not the
business."
Consistency at risk
Informal learning is not without its risks. In the healthcare
industry, where standards of care improve continually, Phillips
sees a risk that informal learning may promulgate old practices
that no longer produce the best outcome for the patient. "You can't
stop informal learning but you can focus on areas where you don't
want variability," she says. "You can use informal tools to make
sure the right content is being taught. That kind of learning is
informal in the sense that it's not in the classroom, but it's
intentional and not accidental."
In healthcare settings, there are a variety of nonclassroom
delivery modes, including shadowing, precepting, and mentoring.
"But they are formal," says Phillips, "because they have
agreed-upon, expected outcomes, and there can be formality about
pairing people, budgeting, and evaluating these arrangements."
At Cincinnati Children's Hospital, when shifts change and when
patients are handed off from the emergency room or surgery to a
unit, there's a debriefing on what happened and what should happen
next. "You want to take advantage of naturally occurring
interactions such as these and recognize that learning is happening
in them," says Phillips. "We want to build talking points around
these opportunities to learn about patients. We don't know what the
content will be, but there will be the intent to learn."
Seamless at Intel
Intel is a leader in fostering informal and social learning. There,
informal learning is used two ways, according to Allison Anderson,
program manager for learning innovation: One is social learning to
engage people and have them share knowledge. The other use is to
provide "performer support" - a term coined by Bob Mosher, global
chief of learning strategy and evangelism at LearningGuide
Solutions, and preferred by Anderson to "performance support."
"We're not trying to control informal learning," says Anderson,
"but rather to encourage people to use it to increase their
learning." Throughout the past five years, Intel has transitioned
away from learning as an event to learning as a process over the
course of time. "Learning comprises many elements beyond what
happens in a classroom. We think of it holistically," she says.
Anderson offers the example of career development. "You can take a
workshop to get the concept of developing your career, but
implementing that is a process that requires other actions such as
outreach to others. Because all learning is part of a process for
us, the learning unit's goal is to have multiple methods not just
for learning initially but for refreshing knowledge. For example,
we're starting to look at ways to provide opportunities to locate
and talk with experts," says Anderson.
Those efforts will be incorporated into Planet Blue, a social media
platform for Intel employees. An earlier platform for
collaboration, called Intelpedia, an internal wiki described on its
home page as "the Intel encyclopedia that anyone can edit,"
launched in 2006 and now has millions of pages and thousands of
contributors. It set the stage for a culture of technology-based
information-sharing at Intel. Anderson estimates that at least 70
percent of informal learning at Intel is technology enabled.
Anderson's group has been driving informal learning serio helping
it catch on: the solid partnership between learning and IT, and a
culture that has supported communities of practice for nearly a
decade. Anderson, who has led the learning community of practice
for eight years, notes that technology provided the opportunity to
leverage a community mindset that already had a solid foundation.
The next frontier
Next steps in informal learning at Intel will be to continue to
implement it globally in an organization that has great diversity
among its employees; to engage top leaders in social and
collaborative concepts; and to leverage informal learning via
mobile devices. Proximity sensors, anyone?
The farther learning moves from the formal class, the shorter its
duration becomes. With some social tools, learning occurs in
140-character microbursts shared between people with highly
specialized knowledge. No trainer or training theory is involved.
Looked at over time, learning is trending toward the user and the
moment of need. That has some implications for learning
professionals, points out Phillips. "Learners will expect more
currency and relevance. We will be out of the generic content
business. Even if standard practices (for example, the rules for
team building) don't change, the instances and examples will have
to be spot on for the learner and the context of the organization."
For decades, formal and informal learning were partitioned into two
ideological camps until the term "blended" began to be applied to
the union of classroom and other modes of learning, opening some
minds to the possibility that real learning could take place just
about anywhere, could be unstructured, and did not require a
credentialed teacher.
As learning grows closer to the learner, might not biology provide
a more appropriate metaphor - say, that of conjoined twins or a
multicelled organism? Aren't we approaching the day when learning,
in all its multiplicity, will join exercise and a healthy diet as
daily prerequisites for an enhanced life?
This article is reprinted from T+D magazine.
Pat Galagan is editor-at-large for T+D;pgalagan@astd.com.