Davenport University's internal learning technology group deployed a social learning community to a significant portion of its employee base, spread amongst multiple campuses in Michigan. One department that embraced the learning community was the admissions department. Admissions reps—a university's equivalent of sales reps—swap tips and best practices using Bloomfire's built-in Q&A mechanism. Managers can also post helpful materials, giving admissions reps what they need for success straight into their pockets.

eLearning Guild members know what social learning is in theory, and those who are looking to implement it want to hear from people who have been there and done that. Participants in this case-study session will learn how Davenport University is implementing social learning. You’ll get real-life knowledge from Davenport trainers who have been there and done that. You’ll also be able to use what you learn to pitch your supervisors and get internal buy-in.

In this session, you will learn:

• How a real-life organization is doing social learning
• How you can apply social learning to employee training
• How to get organizational buy-in for social learning
• What the journey to social learning looks like

Audience: Basic familiarity with social learning will be sufficient.

Organizations are looking for easy and inexpensive ways to drive informal learning and alert students to upcoming formal training opportunities. However, many organizations do not know where to start that process, or what it will cost. Blogs often make great informal learning sites. They are simple to use, flexible, and a free-to-low-cost solution. As they become more popular with learners, blogs become easy-to-use content management systems that allow non-technical people to post content online easily. Also, many free tools (plug-ins and themes) allow you to easily modify blogs.

Participants in this case-study session will hear how SunGard is using informal-learning sites to promote formal learning. You’ll get numerous ideas on how to create blogs, both as informal-learning sites and as drivers of more formal learning. You’ll learn the types of content to which students will respond; with the focus on usable, effective, and inexpensive-to-build blogs.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to set up a blog as an informal learning site
• How to internally promote an informal learning site
• How to promote formal learning from an informal platform
• How to use tracking to determine the value of an informal learning site
• How to avoid potential downfalls when setting up a blog as an informal learning site

Audience: Novice-to-intermediate participants. A basic understanding of the Internet, Web browsers, and informal learning would be beneficial, but is not required.

This session offers case studies describing how Kaiser Permanente (KP) included social media in their learning strategy for two projects. In the first project, Articulate training, they were looking for a way to improve the content development and delivery for Articulate. KP saw a steady increase in the number of learners needing training, but having only one instructor who could deliver training and provide ongoing support was a constraint. In the second case study, they had project managers of all knowledge and skill levels, who did not have training or support for their professional development.

For each study, session participants will learn the situation, the challenges, what KP did as a solution, the results, and the lessons learned. You will see best practices and the strategies used to encourage adoption of Social Media into training programs.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Kaiser Permanente's Learning Solutions team uses social media
• Best practices for using social media in your learning strategy
• Strategies to encourage adoption
• How to start and effectively implement social media into your training programs

Audience: Participants should have a general knowledge of social media and its functions.

There is strong interest in creating a social learning culture where employees are empowered to share the expertise they have acquired during their daily work, yet there is very little guidance on how to actually do it. You need to know where to start, the requirements for a successful launch, and best practices, but real hands-on, descriptive guidance is missing. In this session you will learn from someone who has a proven record and experience gained over the last four years running Microsoft’s Academy, a social-learning initiative consisting of a “YouTube of the Enterprise” with 100,000 downloads per month. It is where 70,000 employees generate more than 10,000 pieces of content per year to share with their peers. Microsoft’s average cost savings per year are $17 million, and this is growing year on year as the Academy becomes pervasive around Microsoft globally. The Academy is the largest social learning program in North America.

Participants in this session will learn how to incorporate social media for learning and knowledge dissemination within an organization, how to successfully launch an employee-based learning culture and program, and tips, tricks, and examples based on real experience.

In this session, you will learn:

• Practical guidance to initiate an employee-generated learning culture
• The steps needed for a successful launch
• The business case for creating an employee-generated learning culture
• The benefits, such as a more nimble organization, better connected workforce, and talent discovery

Audience: Intermediate participants should be generally familiar with traditional forms of learning and what social learning is.

On-boarding of new employees is critical for both employer and employee, and can be a taxing operation for key staff of geographically dispersed employees. Collaborative tools such as blogs and micro-blogs can aid in increasing engagement with fellow employees, maintaining manager-level contact throughout a start-up period, leverage organizational expertise, and extend training and development initiatives.

In this session, participants will learn about the implementation of social media tools to quickly build community, create collaborative nurturing environments, and enable expert sharing. These tools help to reduce on-boarding and initial training durations, maintain morale through community development, improve the capture of formative evaluation data, and connect senior knowledge experts with novices.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use SharePoint Blogs to encourage collaboration for geographically dispersed new hires
• How to create asynchronous training extension (knowledge checks)
• About the steps to implement a successful slow-growth strategy for implementing social media tools  in the organization
• How to use micro-blogging tools like Yammer to more quickly ramp up new employees

Audience: Novice-to-intermediate participants should be familiar with social media concepts and social learning foundations.

Building a community of practice after a learning event is critical to the learning transfer and development of skills. Many learners are not familiar with personal learning networks, or PLNs, and consequently miss out on opportunities to further develop critical business and management skills such as coaching. Social media is a platform for the delivery of learning and developing of these communities of practice, but many instructional designers do not know how to engage the learner and encourage the development of the PLNs.

Participants in this case-study session will learn the needs analysis, design, development, and implementation of the coaching-development program, and you’ll review the key learnings from the program. This program addressed the need to incorporate activities into the design of the program to build a community of practice with remotely based coaches using social media. 

In this session, you will learn:

• The considerations when incorporating a social media platform into a program
• The activities that engage and encourage participants to use social media platforms
• The benefits of using social media
• The details of a blended learning case study where social media was a component

Audience: Novice participants.

Social learning is gaining widespread popularity, especially in the use of collaboration and communication technologies. American Bankers Association has developed an instructor-led online training program that effectively integrates asynchronous discussion groups as a key component of learning. This creates a tandem training experience with the convenience and efficiencies of self-paced online training, but not at the cost of relational learning.

This case-study session will give participants an overview of ABA’s highly rated multi-week online courses that give learners access to a fully integrated learning experience comprised of readings, assignments, and tests and keeps them actively engaged in their learning through vibrant class-discussion groups. You’ll learn guidelines that you can follow to create instructor-led online courses with the ability for learners to share ideas and ask questions of their instructor and peers across the country when it best suits their schedules.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why it is important to engage the learner in an online course
• How to effectively seed a discussion with a discussion-activity question
• What strategies you can use to encourage learner participation in class discussions with peers and the instructor
• How to prepare instructors to successfully moderate and manage vibrant online discussions surrounding online course activities

Audience: Intermediate designers, developers, and managers who possess basic instructional design skills.

Social Learning brings a lot of opportunity and challenge to the table when it comes to learning. Are your employees blocked from interacting on Facebook or LinkedIn due to a firewall and legal department? Is your learning content static and non-engaging? Does your organization nurture a true learning community? Are you interested in leveraging the knowledge of multiple subject matter experts, with minimal effort and cost? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, this session is for you.

This session will show participants how to make eLearning accessible, encourage participation from various users, and provide an interactive platform. This is easy to do through the synergy between Microsoft SharePoint and Articulate Rapid eLearning. SharePoint extends the life of your learning courses by incorporating threaded discussion forums, Wikis, and document libraries, all tied to your eLearning module in real time. You’ll learn how to connect SharePoint Web services with Articulate training modules, thus creating a dynamic learning environment. Participants with SharePoint and Articulate skills will learn how to employ a tool they can use immediately at their workplace.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to incorporate outside Web services into Articulate courses
• How to apply different SharePoint Web parts to your particular training needs
• How to familiarize yourself with different options to make your training material more compelling
• How to create dynamic data sources
• How to maintain and administer the data sources you create

Audience: Intermediate to advanced participants with some Articulate presenter knowledge.