Research from Future Workplace, an executive development firm, and the IESE Business School at the University of Navarra in Madrid reveals some interesting trends for the future of tablets, such as the iPad, for social learning. Consider these facts from Future Workplace and the IESE Business School:

• By the end of 2011, almost 40 percent of executives plan to utilize media tablets in their learning and development programs.
• During the next four years, 37 percent of HR execs say they will utilize mobile devices not only for learning but also for coaching and mentoring.

Gartner, an IT research company, projects that worldwide sales of tablets will increase from 19.5 million units sold in 2010 to an astounding 208 million units in 2014. Far from being used just to watch movies or play “Angry Birds,” these tablets will innovate and profoundly change the way social learning takes place.

Tablets provide the ideal platform for expanding social learning in the workplace. More functional and powerful than a smartphone, yet smaller and more portable than a notebook computer, tablets allow unprecedented freedom for learners to discuss topics outside of the classroom setting — on the train or on the couch, wherever it is convenient and conducive to their learning style.

The late Patrick Wilson, dean of the UC-Berkeley School of Library and Information Sciences and author of the 1983 book Second-hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority, would approve. Wilson’s seminal concept of cognitive authority said learners construct knowledge in two ways: first, by means of their own experiences and firsthand knowledge; second, by what they learn from others. In order for learners to accept secondhand knowledge, the learner must first recognize the source of that knowledge as valid and trustworthy: a cognitive authority.

In today’s world in which so much information is shared and imparted by non-professionals (for example, CNN’s “iReporters”), amateur accounts and secondhand knowledge are becoming increasingly accepted by the public as valid sources of information. This will likely carry over into the social learning sphere in which fellow learners’ takes on the information provided by instructors will hold equal validity with the instructors themselves. Ideally, the hashing and rehashing of information by means of online discussions will provide learners with new perspectives on the information that they’d otherwise not have gleaned firsthand. It will also help break down preconceived notions that condition learners’ responses and the way in which they perceive their own firsthand knowledge.

Are you developing any learning modules for tablets in 2012?