Week 6 Discusion Prompt

Reflect on what you have learned in the class and how you will use it professionally as both a lifelong learner and an instructional systems professional (or whatever field you’re in).


There are many web 2.0 tools out there that fit a variety of uses.  The thing to remember is they are just tools.  They enable communication and connnection.   The real excitement of web 2.0 is in the ability of the tools to bring people together to share in their like interests.   The tools enable people to share information, communicate and cooperate with each other, and even take collective action.  That is very powerful.

I am committed to looking at ways to bring that power into our workplace learning environment.  To do so, it is important to recognize how different learning through social media and web 2.0 tools is from the classroom or elearning programs we use today.  Here are three observations that I take with me as I move forward from here:

First of all, the learning that takes place is informal.   People who connect and interact in the web 2.0 world are doing so in pursuit of their own interests.  Each person is going to explore and learn in a way that is meaningful to them.   It is going to take a while for our business leaders and instructional designers to be comfortable with that difference.  We are used to clearly defined paths to meeting learning objectives.   In the web 2.0 world, people will take their own paths.

Second, it is important to recognize that because web 2.0 communities are based on interests, by nature participation is voluntary so communities must be allowed to grow organically - or die out if they are not serving any meaningful purpose.  We cannot force the issue with "manadatory web 2.0 training."

Third, it is important to recognize that how communities develop in the web 2.0 world is very different then how they form in face-to-face settings.   In a face-to-face setting people gather together then share information.  In the web 2.0 world, people share information, and others who are interested gather around it to form the community.  This is an important point for intsturctional designers.   We can help catalyze learning in the web 2.0 world if we give people something meaningful to gather around.  We need to share information that might be of interest to our audiences.

Whether we as learning professionals like it or not, the web 2.0 world is a reality.  Our learners can go out their and grab what they want.  They no longer have to wait to come to a class or sit through an elearning program.  We have to understand that reality and incorporate it into our work.   It requires a shift in thinking, but we've done it before when we moved from primarily designing for the classroom to authoring elearning for the LMS.