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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Social Learning Designer

Out of the conversation in Learn Trends around making informal learning concrete, Cammy Bean asked:
Cammy Bean: So is there a market for Social Media Instructional Designing Consultants?
Jane Hart suggested that we use the term Social Learning Designer to describe the role. But what was fantastic is how well this crystallized the central question in my mind. Be it as an individual or as a function in an organization, we need to define what the whole business of social learning or informal learning is all about.

Using a common marketing template, I thought it would be a great exercise to have people define our:
  • Buyers
  • Benefits
  • Services
  • Differentiation
Here's the template ...

For _________ (buyers) we help in their desire to __________ (benefits)
by ________ (services) unlike others we _____________ (differentiation).

How do we fill this in for a social learning designer or a social learning organization?

I would very much like to hear your answers.

Here are a couple of examples from the chat to maybe help you get started:

Jane Hart: i work with learning depts to help them create more participatory, collaborative approaches to learning - rather than just shoving content at people

Colleen Carmean: for learning orgs, we help in their desire to increase knowledge within the org by shaping systems that make info needed availalble to anyone at anytime. Unlike others, we do this by creating distributed spaces, places and tools for sharing, finding and creating knowledge.

3 comments:

John said...

I like the idea of Social Learning Designer. My only concern is the terminology overlap with "social learning theory" and "social cognaitve theory". Or maybe nobody remembers social learning theory these days.

"For learnng organizations we help build productive, skilled, thinking individuals and teams. Unlike others we do this in a collabortive, active, constructive manner."

Tony Karrer said...

John - I'm not 100% sold on Social Learning either as a term, but it does seem like that's what we've collectively landed on.

Good construction of the marketing pitch.

Nick Howe said...

Tony - slightly off topic, but this is the first time I've seen an explicit differentiator in a value/position statement. Usually it is 'we do X for Y by Z'. It really makes a difference, (no pun intended) and makes one think.

As those of us in the learning professions seek to carve out our place in the melee that is the social media space clear differentiation is both key and incredibly difficult.

Keep up the dialogue.