I recently read this article in CLO magazine – Social Learning Unleashed
Article link http://www.clomedia.com/features/2010/April/2905/index.php

Reinvented, redefined and re-imagined, social learning has the potential not only to shape tomorrow’s enterprise, but also to powerfully enhance workforce performance.

Victor Restrepo, a technical sales professional at Sun Microsystems, completes sales training during his 90-minute commute each day from New Jersey to New York City. He simply searches Sun’s Social Learning eXchange (SLX) for videos from his peers, who share best practices on how to sell a particular product or service, and downloads them to his iPod Touch.

Imagine being able to do this easily and cost effectively for any business regardless of size? Welcome to my world. I am at Interactyx and that’s exactly what our social eLearning software platform, TOPYX, does across all businesses regardless of size.

In the new world of learning, the big question of, “How are you helping me learn?” may be the secret to competitive advantage. According to a 2003 study by Peter Lyman and Hal Varian from the University of California at Berkeley, knowledge is now doubling every three years, and the interval for doubling appears to be getting even shorter. As if that weren’t enough, analyst firm IDC reported in a recent study that knowledge workers spend on average 2.3 hours per day — 25 percent of work time — searching for critical job information.

For a growing number of companies, the way to help employees keep their skills up to date is social eLearning — collaborative, immediate, relevant and presented in the context of an individual’s unique work environment. The heart of social learning is usually a social computing platform that includes many of the capabilities of social networking sites that employees use outside of work, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to tag, rate, comment and network.

As all of us continue to use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in our personal lives, we will bring a set of digital expectations to our employer. These expectations will shape how and where we learn, network and collaborate on the job.

“Human beings are social creatures — not occasionally or by accident but always,” wrote professor and consultant Clay Shirky in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. “Sociability is one of our core capabilities and it shows up in almost every aspect of our lives as both cause and effect.”

Let’s use 2010 as the year to reinvent, redefine and re-imagine learning for the organization. To learn more about utilizing all of these collaboration tools, internal and external, and to learn more about TOPYX join me for a free webinar April 28th 3PM EDT:

Free Webinar - Collaboration Shift - what is it and how to make it ...

Jodi Harrison
Vice President, Business Development and Affiliate Partners
Interactyx Limited

jodi.harrison@interactyx.com
www.interactyx.com