The tech enablers and culture / perspective shifts ‘social’ channel are breaking down the learning silos in some (many?) cases. I guess my apprehension with jumping on the social train with all my bags is — social isn’t everything. It’s got a lot of potential but it still takes the right implementation, it still takes the right facilitation, and sustainment isn’t a zero sum game. There are also strategic advantages to formalized structuring of instructional content, artifacts, etc..

I’d make these points:

1. The future isn’t exclusively social. And the social perspectives we have today are pretty nascent. Some of the talk sounds reminiscent of the industry’s eLearning silver bullets and snake oil speak. Separating the good from the bad, identifying honest use cases, and relying on good technology and talented folks (vice technology for dummies and the dummies that buy into ‘anyone can do it’) will ensure we don’t fall into the same traps that the eLearning industry has fallen prey to.

2. If we keep trucking we might hit reliable saturation beyond the niche areas that social currently supports well (I think it’d be a challenge to prove that social can work in any context.) Social is successful in part because the concept resonates either with the organizational category or the culture of the organizations that are using it with success. I’d also wager that without the visionaries that drive, facilitate, and maintain the leadership energy within these organizations forging a path with social technologies — the organizations simply wouldn’t be. And to say ‘anyone can do what these folks do’ really doesn’t align realistically in this plane of existence. Finding folks that have those talents and organizations that are willing to employ them in this way is a magical combination. Rare. Magical.

3. If quality batting average of formal learning packages was closer to 1000 than it was to 5, then I’d also argue that the quality of social sourced learning support couldn’t compare in many / most cases. One might contend that part of socials appeal is that anything looks good compared to the state of affairs we’ve brought ourselves to in the non-traditional performance interventions space. Regardless, there will be some things that social will always do better. The same will hold true for f2f, eSolutions, etc.. As we mature, the lines between these should begin to blur and the labels can come off.

There is a lot of potential, but if we don’t go in with our eyes open and unglazed we’ll end up exactly where we’ve landed with other e-silverbullets of the week. Nobody wants that mess.