collaborative learning Archives - Chief Learning Officer - CLO Media https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/tag/collaborative-learning/ Chief Learning Officer is a multimedia publication focused on the importance, benefits and advancements of a properly trained workforce. Fri, 28 Apr 2023 17:40:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/cropped-CLO-icon-Redone-32x32.png collaborative learning Archives - Chief Learning Officer - CLO Media https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/tag/collaborative-learning/ 32 32 Design for collaborative learning in the metaverse  https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2023/05/03/design-for-collaborative-learning-in-the-metaverse/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2023/05/03/design-for-collaborative-learning-in-the-metaverse/#respond Wed, 03 May 2023 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=127535 Leveraging the technology and design of an environment like the metaverse can ensure global participation and maximum engagement of all learners.

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Online learning was gaining momentum slowly but steadily prior to the pandemic. Then, in 2020, it was fast-tracked and has been on the rise ever since.

But just being on the digital platform is not enough to have an effective learning experience. An important aspect of the learning experience is collaboration.

Learning and development functions built for collaboration achieve greater success. Decades ago, collaboration was restricted to learners physically in the class. Nowadays, technology bridges this geographical distance. However, we also need to use it to provide a social touch and interact within a community at large.

L&D in earlier times was mostly individual. Learners are expected to find, develop and show their knowledge and skills individually. However, it is not possible for a person to master everything independently.  Also, in modern times, knowledge must be absorbed faster, and skills must be developed quicker. Therefore, there is benefit to collaborate and learn from each other.

Collaborative learning had its breakout year in 2021. In 2022, it was established as an essential for effective learning, and in 2023, we will see technological advancements for enabling easy collaboration. One of these advancements is the metaverse.

Collaborative learning is built on the premise that pooling of knowledge accentuates learning and increases it by a huge delta as compared to individual study. The SPA benefits (social-psychological-academic) lead to a multi-dimensional impact. Leader boards, jigsaw puzzles, discussion forums and group projects all encourage learner access to peer knowledge. Sharing, brainstorming and reviewing all lead to high order thinking that adds new knowledge and builds upon existing knowledge. Working in a group enhances problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. Global in-person participation is restricted by geographical barriers. In the online modality, it might be cut and dry, but the benefits of a real-time environment are missing. 

The metaverse can bridge not only the geographical gap but can also bring in the best points of face-to-face interactions. True to its definition, it can provide a classroom experience in an immersive three-dimensional virtual space, where learners can experience learning in a way that they cannot in the physical world.  

Immersive and engaging lessons, interactive discussion forums and more responsive faculty engagement in a virtual environment can add to the learning experience. For example, a faculty interacting in a metaverse where the learners can come and discuss at specified times and leave comments on a whiteboard at other times will be more fun and engaging as compared to a simple textual discussion forum. Below are some key benefits of collaborative learning, and how the metaverse can further enhance it.

Reduced time gap between learning and application 

I’ve developed a “Learn-Observe-Practice-Implement” model, which is based on the premise that besides learning by reading through concepts and hearing from the experts, a lot of learning happens from observing experts as they perform a task. Imitation learning contributes a lot toward learning the unsaid aspects.

In the metaverse, learners can observe and practice a real-life scenario within a virtual replica. For example, as part of an effective communication course, the practitioner can showcase effective skills by presenting to a live audience in a metaverse environment, and then the learner can practice with their peer group. This will help reduce the time gap between learning and application.

Improved learner engagement

Collaborative learning leads to open dialogue and expression of ideas and opinion by all in the group. Learning from the perspective of peers not only creates positive inter-group bonds but also makes the members more aware of diversity. 

The metaverse can enable creation of a diverse peer-group with participants from across the globe, in which learners can interact real-time and gain a global perspective and experience. Building “virtual interaction sessions” or “metaverse office hours” in the learning design can not only lead to social learning but also foster diversity and inclusion. 

Enhanced learning experience

Collaborative learning requires participation from all in the group. However, there may be a few members in the group who are not comfortable expressing their views in face-to-face interactions. We need to have environments where everyone gets the opportunity to communicate.

Group interactions in the metaverse can be more fun and result in active participation by all. You may build in cues for the group to focus on the topics of discussion and learning. Avatars can also be used to bring out your interests and personalities besides adding the fun element.

This, in turn, leads to success as a group-centric variable. Sharing of knowledge and skills leads to new learning, building upon existing learning and clarification of unclear concepts. It also improves communication and articulation skills.

Important aspects of collaboration 

There are certain aspects that need to be considered while designing group activities. These become even more critical in the virtual environment so that it is a win-win situation for all learners. 

Group size — An appropriately sized group will be able to establish a good bond and act as a cohesive team. Too small a group will not bring out diverse perspectives and too large a group will not be able to consider all perspectives.

Group goals — It is important that all members of the group work toward common goals, so all efforts are structured and in the same direction.

Group roles — With multiple people working toward the same goal, it is a good strategy to divide the tasks and allocate roles. This also enables directing of individual efforts and experience toward achieving bigger results.

Group communication — Open communication through agreed-upon channels of communication lead to effective exchange of thoughts and ideas.

Conclusion

Collaboration leads to synergies, and synergies open doors to creativity, out of box thinking, new ideas and improvements. It is important that individual efforts get the impetus in a group so that combined efforts can achieve greater results.

For an effective learning experience and to make knowledge connections, collaborative learning must become an integral part of curriculum design. Leveraging the technology and design of an environment like the metaverse can ensure global participation and maximum engagement of all learners.

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A system approach to training that sticks https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/11/09/a-system-approach-to-training-that-sticks/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/11/09/a-system-approach-to-training-that-sticks/#respond Tue, 09 Nov 2021 12:00:11 +0000 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=68341 What is required to build an ethical, quality-focused, productive, successful and collaborative group of working people?

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The past year produced many organizational disruptions. The focus for some industries was surviving with less business. For others, it was finding innovative ways to meet a higher demand while operating within new parameters.

Whatever the organization’s status or size, the majority of their senior executives and managers began thinking outside their existing work culture box. Now there is a new disruption and challenge. Referred to as the Great Resignation, the World Economic Forum projects a 41 percent turnover of existing employees. A study conducted by Microsoft raises the number to 42 percent in the United States, and another study reports a projected 38 percent turnover in the U.K. and Ireland.

This sounds dismal, but there is great opportunity here.

This article proposes a strategic, collaborative approach to learning and development founded on four years of business, education and psychology group dynamic research and subsequent validation to address the question: What is required to build an ethical, quality-focused, productive, successful and collaborative group of working people?

A superior approach embraces a collaborative intersection of these three disciplines. It supports the business case for connecting L&D with business initiatives while tracking measurable outcomes in an organization’s financial bottom line.

This intersection presents a collaborative sweet spot — an advantage of a human-centric system designed to further organizational goals and initiatives with fewer employees. Sustainable collaborative learning systems promote psychologically safe training follow-through that streamlines how learners advance through the four stages of the learning curve. The four stages are unconscious Incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence and unconscious competence.

The results of these efforts are measurable when they are tracked. They are visible in the financial bottom line and often appear as cost savings and productivity improvements.

As an example, perhaps you or your colleagues have attended day-long trainings and team building events with the hope of improving how employees and leaders communicate. The training or event was fun and engaging, but when you returned and applied what you learned in the workplace, nothing changed. In addition to what you already know about how much information people retain from training or events like this, there are two additional reasons why there wasn’t sustainable learning retention and change. The first reason is workforce inertia, and the second is recognition.

Inertia

Inertia is the tendency for things to stay the way they are. Or, if something is already moving in a direction, it continues to move that way.

An infant’s mobile moves when you push it or a breeze catches it, but what eventually happens to that movement? Unless you continue to push it or apply energy to wind it up, it stops due to resistance. The same thing happens in organizations with regard to how people learn and what they retain.

Employees already have predictable and known ways of doing things. They have their relationships and connections, and know who irritates them and why. Perhaps they have had past experiences with offering suggestions or making mistakes and were punished or ridiculed. Perhaps colleagues were fired or humiliated. As a result, they don’t want to practice new behavior that leaves them feeling vulnerable or unprepared.

This is especially true when a work culture is internally competitive rather than collaborative with high levels of employee cooperation already in place. In internally competitive organizations it is often rare for employees to feel psychologically safe enough to make mistakes as part of their growth and learning. The fear of repercussions is often too great.

So, a couple of weeks after an excellent team intervention or training, everything returns to the status quo. The exception is when there is continued focus on transferring new skills and knowledge to improved skills, behavior and attitudes, or — and this is a big reason — people want it.

One strategy that transforms inertia into improved skills and attitudes in a sustainable way is developmental coaching and preferably developmental peer coaching. 

Let’s take this concept a step further. When it comes to coaching, you reinforce what employees learned by overseeing the performance of the new skills and attitudes and by giving them something to practice. Depending on the training course, what employees practice or work on should benefit your organizations’ bottom line. A couple of examples are tasks that result in cost savings or productivity improvements for the organization, which are outcomes that can be measured.

Our licensed professionals report how the employees and leaders they work with love challenging practices. When they use what they have learned, it sticks. When they are recognized for being successful at the conscious incompetence level of the learning curve, they understand what to do next time and repeat it. This moves them forward more swiftly in integrating new skills, behaviors and attitudes.

The exponential value of post-training learning circles

One of the best ways to help a group of employees integrate and transfer team process skills, such as problem-solving course work, is to create a problem-solving post-training learning circle — a topic-specific learning affinity group formed around a shared interest or common goal. When filled through employee self-selection as a post-training event, you engage employees who want to practice what they learned because they see the career advantage in it. It also builds better cohesion and work relationships between virtual and on-site employees.

Provide a meeting facilitator, perhaps one who attended the same topic-specific learning circle previously, to lead the group. Ideally, this person is someone you are considering for a project team leadership, cross-functional team appointment, or supervision or management role. This gives your potential leader-in-training practice in facilitating helpful, employee development conversations and helps them demonstrate their team leadership skills, too. This also gives your leader-in-training a team to facilitate and reinforces their own problem solving skills. 

Now, let’s expand this concept a bit wider. When employees from different departments fill learning circles for post-training follow-through and practice, you have laid potential groundwork for cross-training and cross-functional problem solving teams by simple default. You have also introduced positive new employee relationships.

At the post-training leadership level, you spark the potential for enhanced interdepartmental cooperation. The psychological advantage of employees who have friends in other departments is that they tend to be more careful in handing off their work to a department where their friends work. This is measurable. It can show up as less shrink and rework, improved information flow and more timely delivery on goals.

Then, in this problem-solving coursework example, give the learning circle some uncomplicated problems that keep resurfacing in your organization to practice solving at the root cause. It can produce a huge benefit for your organization with opportunities for team recognition. It also helps your senior executives and directors understand the importance of training and L&D follow-through on employee learning retention and organizational improvement. This is because the business case could produce measurable improvements in your organization’s bottom line.

Here’s an example. Early on in my career, an organization hired me to develop five high transference day-long leadership trainings for new supervisors as part of a merger and reorganization. I met with the organization’s chief financial officer and we discussed this project and how the supervisors applied their new skills and attitudes from the training and where it might show up in the organization’s bottom line.

I brought some HR statistics with me about the costs of turnover, and we found where these costs show up in the balance sheet. When I asked what the next biggest cost was aside from employee HR expenses, I was told risk management and insurance rates. We noted that sick days overlapped between HR and risk management.

The leadership training did have a positive impact on HR. There was less overtime, sick days and turnover. When I asked about the nature of the sick days and risk management the CFO was eager to share. Here’s why.

Improved leadership skills resulted in fewer upsetting disrespect episodes for employees. Employees were more focused and less distracted and, therefore, paid better attention to what they were doing. There were less injured fingers, pulled muscles, back issues, OSHA reports and sick days. After two years and the roll out of the pilot program to 25 of their locations, the ROI on my fee was more than 500 percent in cost savings and productivity improvements in risk management alone.

Learning and performance management interventions that improve collaboration between employees and departments benefit from coaching — preferably peer coaching — and practical application that is measured.

This leads to the second reason why learning and high-performance teamwork often fails to transfer to training that sticks, which is lack of recognition.

Recognition

The best strategy for ensuring recognition is to give your employees the measurement feedback that you are tracking. When they see how transference is helping the organization and how their learning circle involvement is helping their own career development, it builds personal satisfaction and the recognition received is personal validation.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you simply want to see an improvement in collaboration over internal competition. One of the benefits of improved collaboration is an increase in discretionary actions. Discretionary actions are any helpful action taken because a team member wants to help your organization or another employee whether it is part of their job description or not.

An example is jumping in to help someone with their most profitable goal after personal work is done. This helps the entire team achieve a goal ahead of schedule. Being ahead of schedule is the measurement. This saves money and clears the way for new goals. The number of successful goals accomplished during the year is another measure.

The psychological advantage of employees who feel validated and who understand how what they do makes a difference displays as less stress and more happiness, engagement and cooperation.

To review

A sustainable collaborative system is tied to business initiatives that benefit the organization as a whole. The system impact is measurable through cost savings and productivity improvements that are visible in the organization’s bottom line.

Unless employees apply and practice new training in a meaningful work-related way, your performance training might not transfer to improved skills and attitudes. Further, you must track and manage for improvements through training.

When you are transparent in sharing the financial impact of improved skills, behaviors and attitudes along with the employee experience of success in their new skills, they want to repeat it. The end result is human nature and motivation working for you and not against you.

Training sticks when there are opportunities for practice in a psychologically safe way. Post-training follow-through structured for employee self-enrollment and selection helps employees receive coaching from their peers as they practice new skills. It also builds more cohesive work relationships between virtual employees and co-workers who work on site while laying foundations for future cross-functional teamwork and cross-training. Celebrating small successes after training and in a structured learning circle helps employees move through learning curves faster and with more confidence.

A collaborative system for training that sticks will reward you with the ability to do more with less with fewer employees and help organizations improve within the collaborative learning design.

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Collaborative online learning breaks down silos https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/08/17/collaborative-online-learning-breaks-down-silos/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2021/08/17/collaborative-online-learning-breaks-down-silos/#respond Tue, 17 Aug 2021 11:00:46 +0000 https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/?p=67671 “Learning on your own is, frankly, dull,” notes a senior learning leader at a global payments technology company. “Every learning experience, when you go do things in-person in a conference […]

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“Learning on your own is, frankly, dull,” notes a senior learning leader at a global payments technology company. “Every learning experience, when you go do things in-person in a conference room, and now virtually, you really want to walk away with a roster of people you can ask questions of; people who expand your own diversity of thought and experience, people you can think through business problems with. You always go to the learning event for the knowledge and the capability building, but so much of that can be 10x’d because you had a conversation with a person who challenged your assumptions. That kind of learning allows people to grow much faster.”

This is the heart of the power of collaborative online learning, and those networking connections can happen across organizational silos like departments, title levels or geographically — basically, any way in which an organization, purposefully or by happenstance, has silos of people who work with only each other in limited groupings.

“Breaking down silos across geographies and divisions, getting people connected across a company was very much a goal of our programs in 2021 and today,” the senior learning leader adds. “The collaborative learning experience gives people designed opportunities to network and get together online in simple but effective ways of connecting, for example with discussions boards, and team-based competitions based on simulations.”

Collaborative online learning offers learners experiences that utilize the best of social and team-based learning technologies in one place. Without a collaborative digital approach, companies can miss taking advantage of the different skill sets of associates around the globe.

By using online tools that foster working together while learning together, learners can view each other differently across demographics and break down any cross-global preconceptions. In addition, the training team gets to hear directly from all the learners they’re solving for and hear what they truly need in training, so it’s easier to make it more inclusive. 

Time-based events that use an ecosystem of virtual technologies that support collaborative learning can break down silos as well. For instance, Grant Thornton hosted a conference on diversity, equity and inclusion in October 2020 successfully on a collaborative platform, using Webex and Teams as supporting technologies.

As Rashada Whitehead, Grant Thornton’s head of colleague experience, people and community, explains: “The platform was open for people to do pre-reading before live webinars, get to know the speakers and each other through social profiles and discussion forums, and submit questions. It also served as an ongoing post-event hub for additional resources. In fact, we monitored the discussion boards and if topics were trending, folded those into the live events and had the subject matter experts comment directly. It really expanded the power of an hour-long live panel, having the collaborative wrap-around. And since people were able to choose their topics of interest, which ranged from allyship to bias, recruiting, fostering a community of belonging, and more, folks from different geographies, levels, lines of business, and interests came together in ways they normally wouldn’t have — especially during a pandemic and remote working environment.”

And what about the post-pandemic future for digital approaches? The senior learning leader at a global payments company believes that, “digital, collaborative, team-based, applied learning has become de facto standard and in-person one-off events will be much less of the norm than they used to be. I think in-person will be used for some sort of an extra-special event perhaps, but not standard for day-to-day anymore. Birthday parties over Zoom are surely lacking, but online collaborative learning is such a rich experience, it’s worth continuing past the pandemic.”

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Learning Your Way Out https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/03/21/learning-your-way-out/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/03/21/learning-your-way-out/#respond Wed, 21 Mar 2018 05:00:09 +0000 https://www.clomedia.com/?p=42071 Action learning can develop leadership as a collaborative practice.

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Joe Raelin holds the Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern University and is principal of the firm The Leaderful Consultancy

Leadership in the current knowledge era can no longer rely on a single source of expertise; rather, it needs to be a collaborative practice distributed across a range of individuals. We need to respond to complexity in our internal and external markets through the contribution and creativity of all stakeholders who can provide a dynamic concentration of management and knowledge while lowering the risk of suboptimal decisions.

At the same time, let’s consider how we might bring this focus on collaboration to a practice-based method of learning. Instead of relying on traditional teacher-to-student instruction, we would need to expose learners to live engagements and then have them collectively reflect on those experiences to expand and even create knowledge while working to improve the given practice.

Perhaps most prominent in the domain of practice-oriented leadership development is action learning, which consists of group projects, team members working and reflecting on problems occurring in their projects and workplaces, and other interpersonal experiences, such as coaching and mentorships, which encourage learning dialogues. Through conversation with trusted peers, learning dialogues allow the emergence of social, political and emotional reactions that may be blocking personal development and operating effectiveness.

When it comes to developing practice-based collaborative leadership and management, therefore, it is axiomatic that we begin by immersing managers in their own practices, not removing them from their lived experience. For the sake of learning, we may choose to accelerate the process by having facilitators place managers in problem domains or dilemmas to see how they might “learn their way out.” The critical change facilitators would make is to introduce novel forms of conversation that can bring out the skills of collaborative learning and dialogue. Learners would engage in empathic listening, understand the value of reflecting on perspectives different from their own and entertain the prospect of being changed by what they learn. This collaborative learning process opens up space for innovative ways to accomplish work or even reconceive how the work should be done in the first place.

Consider the case of Jim, senior vice president of sales for a large retailer. Jim was involved in a project to determine the reason for the heavy turnover of part-time check-out clerks throughout the company’s chains but had been unsuccessful in diagnosing the source of the problem. Fortunately, he was a member of an action learning team as part of a leadership development initiative, and the facilitator invited his team members to share their views on Jim’s problem.

It turned out that Jim had spoken to a number of clerks but hadn’t realized that his executive rank caused most of them to clam up during conversation. He subsequently hired outside interviewers to survey the clerks and found the clerks felt they were treated like “second-class citizens.” Jim then may have worsened the problem by sending out communications that tried to inspire the clerks, not realizing, according to feedback from his action learning team facilitator and colleagues, that the clerks likely wanted behavioral accommodations rather than sweet talk.

Additionally, consider the collective leadership model used by the most successful national men’s rugby team of all time, New Zealand’s All Blacks. A case study of the team conducted by Thomas Johnson and colleagues attributed the team’s 75 percent winning record in test matches over a 100-year period to its leadership, which produces a team commitment to total honesty in self and team evaluation and reflection. Bottom-up collaborative learning accompanies its philosophy, as evidenced by one of its coaches, who said: “As we become more aware of the need for player-centered coaching rather than coach-centered, we try to recreate and simulate pressures of the game … and throw them in unpredicted events, and get the players to solve that problem.”

These examples demonstrate how “learning your way out” can develop leadership as a collaborative practice. The most critical meta-skill it enhances is developing in learners a peripheral awareness of one another. They seek out and learn from others’ views. They see value in sharing leadership.

On project and learning teams in particular, action learning allows team members to begin to make use of the team’s resources and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of others — for example, who provides support to team members, who knows where to find answers to the most intractable problems, who fosters team spirit, who explores and reports on opportunities outside the team, and so on. These issues are learning issues, and practice-based learning does not insist they be lodged within any one person; rather, they become the knowledge responsibilities of the entire team. The team becomes a collaborative enterprise.

Joe Raelin holds the Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern University and is principal of the firm The Leaderful Consultancy. He can be reached at editor@CLOmedia.com.

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Invest in Collaborative Learning to Foster Engagement https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2016/11/28/collaborative-learning-foster-engagement/ https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2016/11/28/collaborative-learning-foster-engagement/#respond Mon, 28 Nov 2016 20:06:52 +0000 http://live-clomedia.pantheonsite.io/?p=35549 Provide content with context.

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Business People Working with TechnologyType “collaborative learning platforms for business” into a search engine, and numerous pages with countless links leading to different collaborative learning solutions will pop up. Each solution was created to streamline the way people discover new information and work with their peers.

With all the options out there, it’s easy to become overwhelmed when searching for the right system to best fit an organization’s needs. But one of the most important elements to consider when determining which platform or set of tools to adopt for employees is weighing its overall engagement factor: What system will continuously attract and retain employees’ attention? Which tool will increase engagement in learning programs across the company?

In April, Brandon Hall Group released its 2016 “Learning Technology Study,” which indicated that 48 percent of companies expressed a desire to find a new learning technology. Perhaps the reasoning behind companies wanting to switch solutions is that older technologies only deliver specific content through courses. Or, maybe the systems don’t provide popular avenues for informal learning and collaboration.

Whatever the reason, statistics like that one from Brandon Hall allude to the need for innovation in the learning and development space. A significant number of learning professionals promote learning through search and peer-to-peer collaboration. Learning solutions and systems need to adapt to support these preferences, especially if we want to increase L&D program engagement — and engagement with the systems we spend so much money on.

Deloitte’s 2016 “Global Human Capital Trends” report discusses employees’ demand for continuous learning opportunities through innovative platforms. The platforms that will have the most success supporting L&D programs provide 24/7 access to quality, custom content, and they are paired with professional network and collaborative tools. Incorporating these three key features enables a well-rounded, self-directed learning experience that encourages open engagement within the platform.

The following points on combining expert content, professional network and collaborative tools can help increase employee engagement in L&D programs and with learning systems, thus eliminating the need for CLOs to re-evaluate methods and technologies every few years:

  • Right from the beginning, employees can engage with each other in groups by creating their own profiles and becoming a member of the network. By pinpointing topics of interest to receive relevant content recommendations, and joining groups related to their areas of expertise — which can be recommended by the CLO — employees will see more long-term value in the learning experience.
  • Along with having access to expert content in multiple formats, employees have the ability to upload their own content, comment on it, and share it with others for open feedback. This is a great way to gain reactions to early-stage projects, to collaborate with colleagues and to develop new business ideas together. Employees also can collaborate with clients or industry experts who are part of the professional network. These types of activities help CLOs identify employees who are emerging as thought leaders.
  • Lastly, as employees gain more experience, they can build their own lean learning modules to help others grow by uploading personal content and pairing it with snippets of expert content already hosted inside the platform. By creating lean, focused, customized learning modules, employees will not only emerge as thought leaders in their organizations, they’ll benefit others by sharing knowledge for bite-sized consumption.

In the learning industry, there are many solutions that only provide content, and some that only provide collaborative tools. To set learning programs up for success, CLOs may want to consider a platform that provides content pre-installed in the platform, combined with collaborative tools and a professional network. With this type of setup, employees will have access to content with context. When individuals can actively participate in the overall learning process — to develop themselves and help others grow through collaboration — learning program engagement grows stronger.

Mike Conner is chief evangelist for BlueBottleBiz, a collaborative learning platform for business professionals.

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