Susan, thanks for the academic perspective. Tho’ I do think formal education should start looking at performance support and stop assuming everything’s got to be in the head. There’s a longer story, but my short version is that I’m all for open-book tests.

Larry, good point about teasing out the different ways social can be worked into a course. Does this mean there’s a semi-formal? I’d put your 1) as formal, and the other 2 as informal.

Nick, thanks for weighing in with valuable nuances. I think, in regards to your number 1, that there are totally asynchronous formal courses that have no social. If social isn’t designed into the course (the left version of my second diagram), I’m simplifying it as informal (rightly or wrongly). I think you’re right that when you create your own performance support, it’s a different case (from the learner’s point of view it’s informal, but in this case it’s also informal from the L&D department perspective). If it’s community developed, to me it’s out in the social space, but you’re right it’s really both performance support *and* social (and, from the L&D perspective, still informal since it’s out of their mitts).

And you’re definitely right that social media isn’t the same as informal learning. Nor is social learning the same as informal learning, but much of what happens. I think the difference between 10 years ago and now is that we can decouple social learning from proximity and tap into distant resources *via* social media. And yes, there are more ways to do informal than social (e.g. searches). Which begs the question raised above by Chris: what’s social and what’s performance support in the space that’s not what L&D does?

Your example of feeding the informal up for processing in a formal way is intriguing, and something we’d like to see more of. Harold Jarche has a nice model of flipped management where it’s about looking at ways to support emergent processes. I think we can and should begin to ‘formally’ start finding ways to blend formal and informal until it all becomes ways to facilitate performance. But first we have to help clarify what’s being said so we can do as you suggest and migrate from these peculiar contexts.

Thanks for the great contributions!

1) The formal box isn’t entirely red: turns out what people value most about formal (f2f) courses is the ‘networking’ i.e. informal/social learning – or just the simple pleasure of the shared experience. The corollary to this is that if, during the course of a formal course or team meeting you show a video of peers – the kind of ensuing learning may be more informal than formal.

I’ve been struggling with the distinction for a while; not sure of the precise answer but it has something to do with tone and whether or not the content is teacherly/top-down and inflicted (push) or collegiate/peer-to-peer and sought (pull).

2) Performance support can be – and usually is – social in nature. You make the point yourself when you say “The latter, resources and people, are to them informal learning”. You can’t easily separate performance support and social. What tends to happen in practice is the training department produce ‘job aids’ which are formal and top-down in tone which may well be ignored in preference to the resources developed by or delivered by peers. So the emphasis for learning professionals needs to shift from being the guardians of knowledge to the honeybees of best practice – as I think you yourself suggest.

3) Social media is a bit of a distraction: I have watched with a growing sense of unease regarding the alignment of informal with social media. Informal learning accounted for about 85% of learning in organisations around ten years ago – so clearly is not a function of social media. It does have a large social component to it, though so the prospects for social media are encouraging – however there are many more ways to do informal than social media and this is the point I would like to make.

To give a simple example – if you gather a series of compelling ‘critical incident’ stories from a peer group, then give these to managers to show and discuss at team meetings, then this is more informal than formal learning (depending in part on the tone the line manager takes).

In summary, I think it’s a fair assumption that formal learning is the exception rather than the rule and largely confined to the visible artifacts that are chalk&talk classroom and powerpoint-style e-learning. The core question, which I think you raise here, is how learning professionals can migrate from these peculiar contexts into a more natural world of learning.

In relation to social learning I’d simply note that social learning is sometimes,

1) embedded in formal courses (learner-generated content, polling, discussion forums, or social bookmarking resources that provide learners with a social ecosystem of others currently experiencing the same course)

2)wrapped around courses (learners are provided ongoing support from a social ecosystem involving others who currently, or previously, experienced the same course, or content covered in the course)

3) and sometimes it stand alone (can include customers in brand communities, business partners, other employees, or outside experts in communites of practice focused on innovating through collaboration)