There are those who can’t avoid the temptation of beer, salt and sugary snacks at night and there are people like me who treat new learning and collaboration platforms infectiously. I wish I could turn my eyes away from these calorie-induced sites or applications, but I just can’t. Perhaps at the core I yearn to learn, but that’s another post for another day. Let me introduce you to my latest microbrewery friend, Learnist. Brought to you by the makers of Grockit – an online social learning test prep service for items such as GMAT, SAT, ACT and GRE – Learnist is an attempt to crowd-source knowledge, information and content into a manner that is a cross between Web 2.0 sites like Pinterest, YouTube, Wikipedia and
social learning Archive
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” Henry Ford In the corporate world where deadlines are rampant, constant innovation is indispensable, workloads are mounting, and financial pressures are omnipresent, it’s no wonder the employees of many organisations feel as though they are disconnected from one another. Many employees have become disenfranchised or disengaged and as a consequence, it has led to poor business results and lost opportunities. In late 2010, the Corporate Leadership Council released its quarterly engagement trends report. Results indicated that only 22% of employees planned on staying in their current positions. Supplementing the point, 21.6% of all employees surveyed described themselves as highly disengaged. As a consequence and according to Gallup Management Journal, this disengaged and disconnected
For the past two and half years at my real job as the head of learning and collaboration, we’ve been early adopters of a virtual world product called AvayaLive Engage, developed by a company named Avaya. It was formerly known as Web.Alive, and although I’m not a fan of the name change, that’s about the only negative comment I have with the product. If you’re unfamiliar with virtual worlds, you are missing a very important aspect of workplace collaboration. At its core, virtual worlds are online 3-D computer-simulated environments in which users are depicted by avatars and interaction between them can mimic either a given real-life scenario or in some cases a fictitious and alternative world scenario. I won’t delve into the latter and will
Best Buy, a renown electronics retailer perhaps better known for its khaki pants and blue shirt dress code, could be viewed analagously with that of an evolved corporate learning structure. Imagine that you’re at one of their corporate stores. What do you see when you enter the store? There she/he is, the greeter: “Hello sir, how are you today?” As you pass the greeter in this vivid, brightly lit and humming environment there are a number of learning sherpas … the guides on the side not pestering you to buy something, rather, able and available when you require assistance. There are no commissions at Best Buy to make a sale. Employees are there, quite literally, to help you as necessary. Sure, it’s a formal environment with walls, electricity and so on, but it is