Week 3 Discussion Prompt

What uses might a collaborative wiki or blog have in your chosen (current or desired) work environment? How would they support learning and/or performance? What would be the design and implementation challenges if management tried to do this? What would be the design and implementation challenges of a user-initiated effort?

We do use wikis in our current work environment.  When we hire news sales executives, they participate in a 3-month long onboarding program in cohort groups.  It is a distance learning program with synchronous and asynchronous components.  Each week they download an activity guide and complete the required activities which include elearning modules, discovery activities, performing demonstrations for their managers, turn-it-in assignments, virtual classroom discussions, and collaboration using wikis.

Here is one example of how we use the wiki in the program:    In our library of elearning courses, we have 21 modules related to selling skills, negotiating, and the sales process.   Since we typically hire experienced sellers, we don't require them to complete all of these modules.  However, we do want them to learn the basics of our sales process, and we want them to get some exposure to the library so they can use it for individual development needs if they so choose.  During the week we focus on selling skills, each class member is required to complete one of the six modules related to the six steps in our core selling process.   They then write an online review and post it to a wiki page for this activity.  Since many of our classes have more than six participants, we often have multiple reviews for the same module, which provides some added perspective.  The learning participants also write comments and questions next to each other's reviews.   What we accomplish through this is:

• the learners are exposed to the library - they learn how to access it, and see its full contents
• the learners get the benefit of completing at least one module - they learn from the content of the module, and how to navigate through the library and the course.
• the learners get the opportunity to share and collaborate about what they have learned with the rest of the class on the wiki
• the learners get the benefit of reading each other's reviews on the wiki and gaining some knowledge of the content of the other modules - if they are motivated to do so, they may take all six core modules, or the full 21 in the selling library.