Book learning vs. practical experience.

You might have assumed this, but research shows that formal learning only accounts for 10% of a person’s knowledge. The other 90% comes from social learning—which is real-world experience and learning from others.

So, how does that sort of informal social learning happen in a structured and standardized learning management system (LMS)?

Simple enough: a modern LMS empowers learners by giving them the ability to talk to one another. They upload their own content and interact with other content.

More than just completing lessons

Social learning features are familiar to anyone who’s used social media. They’ll see newsfeeds, comments, user uploads, and chats, to name just a few.

But a good LMS doesn’t include social learning tools just because it’s a trendy thing to do. It includes them because informal learning is integral to how people learn in the social media era.

The ability to share content with your colleagues brings people together and gives learners a feel for the big-picture direction of an organization. Conversational threads boost efficiency since learners find exactly what they need to know when they need to know it.

It turns the LMS into a source of institutional knowledge and eases the learning curve of a new employee.

Think of social learning as a self-directed curriculum. Each learner pokes around for what’s relevant to them.

A topic-specific forum, for instance, allows learners to seek out exactly what they need to know when they need to know it. They can go right to the in-house expert and get advice on how to solve a particular problem.

The teamwork fostered by social learning tools creates a sense of community and a culture of learning within the company. And this may be the most important part of social learning. A sense of community drives learner engagement. It encourages them to come back and keep using their LMS.

It’s the difference between a successful learning strategy and one that sputters out.

Other FAQs

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Difference Between eLearning and an LMS
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LMS Reporting and Analytics
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