Understanding Corporate Twitter, a post from an employee of EMC, got me thinking about the role of corporate culture in implementing the social learning platforms I’ve been calling learnscapes.
Traditional training programs are a reflection of their designers, authors, and instructors. Social learning platforms are more a reflection of the people who use them, sprinkled with a corporate culture and the ability to make good connections.
We have an extended core of “social people” at EMC. They participate vigorously on the internal social platform. They tend to blog proficiently inside and outside of the company. You’ll see them leaving comments on other people’s blogs and comments. Wherever you go, you’ll generally find the same EMCers participating and engaging.
They’re out there in force — representing themselves and EMC quite well, thank you!
And so, when Twitter (or whatever) comes along, there’s really no need for us to do anything. The EMC social people find out about the service, set up shop, and do what they normally do — engage in discussion.
Shouldn’t that be at the heart of any corporate social media strategy? To find, encourage and enlarge your internal group of proficient “social people”? So that — regardless of the platform or context — they’re out there representing your company well?
Thus, improving the effectiveness of social learning rests in part on finding, encouraging and enlarging your internal group of proficient social learners. Traditional instructional design overlooks these natural supporters of peer-to-peer, collaborative learning at its peril.
