The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media [Paperback]

Tony Bingham (Author), Marcia Conner (Author), Daniel H. Pink (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2010

Most business books on social media have focused exclusively on using it as a marketing tool. Many employers see it as simply a workplace distraction. But social media has the potential to revolutionize workplace learning. People have always learned best from one another—social media enables this to happen unrestricted by physical location and in all kinds of extraordinarily creative ways. The New Social Learning is the most authoritative guide available to leveraging these powerful new technologies.

Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner explain why social media is the ideal solution to some of the most pressing educational challenges organizations face today, such as a widely dispersed workforce and striking differences in learning styles, particularly across genera-tions. They definitively answer common objections to using social media as a training tool and show how to win over even the most resistant employees. Then, using examples from a wide range of organizations—including Deloitte & Touche, IBM, TELUS, and even the CIA—Bingham and Conner help readers sort through the dizzying array of technological options available and decide when and how to use each one to achieve key strategic goals.

Social media technologies—everything from 140-character “microsharing” messages to media-rich online communities to complete virtual environments and more—enable people to connect, collaborate, and innovate on levels never before dreamed of. They make learning dramatically more dynamic, stimulating, enjoyable, and effective. This greatly anticipated book helps organizations create a contemporary learning strategy that is as timely as it is transformative.
 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tony Bingham is President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), the world’s largest professional association dedicated to the training and development field. ASTD is focused on helping members lead talent management, build their business skills, understand the impact of social media on informal learning, close skills gaps, and connect their work to the strategic priorities of business.

Marcia Conner, Partner with Altimeter Group, works with leaders every day to bridge the gap between the promise of collaborative technologies and the practice of putting them into action. She aligns digital strategy with corporate culture, engaging people and invigorating the value chain across an organization. Former Vice President and Information Futurist at PeopleSoft and Worldwide Manager at Microsoft, she now advises corporations, writes the popular Fast Company column “Learn at All Levels,” and is a Fellow at the Darden School of Business. Follow her on Twitter @marciamarcia.

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: ASTD & Berrett-Koehler; 1st edition (September 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1605097020
• ISBN-13: 978-1605097022
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #75,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Computers & Technology > Web Development > Web 2.0

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Social Learning - The New L&D Imperative, September 13, 2010

By 

William Cushard III "Bill Cushard" (Mountain View, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media (Paperback)

If your profession is learning and development, The New Social Learning is a must read.

Even if you are one of those people who are suspicious of social media or one who thinks social networking is a place for wasting time or if you think Twitter is a place where people tell you what they are eating for lunch, you will read the book and understand exactly how social learning is a new imperative for how we enable organizational learning. You will find this book to be a practical guide to implementing social learning in your organization.

At the end of each chapter, there is a list of common objections and how to overcome them. I found this to be the most useful part of the book. Just like a sales person needs to overcome objections from prospects, any organizational leader who intends to implement a new thing, must prepare for the inevitable objections that arise from the skeptics and curmudgeons. And there will be many. The list of objections and the ways to overcome them are, by themselves, worth the cost of your time to read this book.

The other idea that I infer this book is that people will learn what they want to learn when they want to learn it despite our best efforts to design and deliver training. Too many L&D professionals are hung up on the need to control the instructional design and training delivery process, believing that people simply do not learn properly, unless proper instruction is used in proper training delivery. Well this book is one step in the direction of proving that idea wrong. Our job is to not deliver instruction, but to enable people to learn what they need to learn to get their jobs done now.

Although the New Social Learning does not propose that instructional design and classroom training will be replaced (far from it), Tony and Marcia weave tales of company's that are using various elements of social and collaboration technologies to enable people to learn and most importantly grow and improve job performance....which is what this is all about in the first place.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Serious learning using social media, September 30, 2010

By 

John Gibbs (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media (Paperback)

It is well known that social media are good for keeping in touch with friends, networking with business contacts, disseminating your opinions, sharing embarrassing photos, and wasting idle time. However, they can also be important tools in the field of collaborative learning, according to Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner in this book.

Social learning, the authors say, is learning with and from others. It occurs at conferences, in discussion groups, and over tables in the café. Now, with social media tools, it can happen over Twitter, via Facebook, or through the agency of a myriad of other tools, in a manner unconstrained by geography or time differences. The book goes on to describe a number of examples of companies implementing virtual communities which have enabled connections and sharing between people who would never have been able to connect without social media tools.

Notwithstanding the various examples given, I still wonder whether most organisations can be "transformed" through social media as promised in the subtitle of the book. Social media certainly facilitate connections in very large organisations, but I am less persuaded by the use of Twitter as a serious learning tool. Video is undoubtedly a powerful teaching tool, but video is not necessarily "social media". On the other hand, immersive "Second Life" type environments seem to have enormous potential as interactive learning environments. I would recommend this book to anyone involved in workplace training.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Building Professional Learning Communities, September 13, 2010

By 

Michael G. Sansone "Mike Sansone" (Des Moines, Iowa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media (Paperback)

The NEW Social Learning (@newsociallearn) is a guide to creating your own "community of learners" by embracing and integrating social and mobile tools in the training and learning process.

This book offers real examples and guidelines in how to implement engagement, listening skills, and most importantly, how to build collective intelligence from within and outside of your organization's silo.

Some professions are ahead of the curve (marketing pros and educators come to mind), but there are many cubicle centers and manufacturing mobs, retailers and customer service sectors who are keeping their blinders on tight, doing training like it's still 1989.

The NEW Social Learning can assist in a transformation that makes sense and creates a learning environment that makes meaning.

Whether the boardroom or the classroom, this book should be in your hands and under your yellow highlighter - and definitely part of your organizations training & development curriculum.