This past week I, together with my friend Shari Rager from American Medical Writers Association, did a session at Tagoras’s Learning*Technology*Design conference on designing for social learning. Of course I meant to blog about it before it happened, but we all know how that goes…so I figure better late than never.
This was the session description:
While social learning and social media are different things, the two go hand in hand. Associations have always been in the social learning business, but social media is new to many associations and often considered the domain of the marketing or communications department alone. This session will explore social learning, how social media technologies can be an intentional part of your organization’s overall learning toolset, and ways to design social learning interactions so learners get the best out of the experience.
I created this resource list to accompany the presentation, which I figure I’d share here on Mizz Information since social media and social learning are hot topics in the association world. Here’s a link to the list, which includes articles on social learning and the difference between social media and social learning, then a list of social media tools and platforms that I think go hand-in-hand with social learning.
Articles about social learning and the difference between social media and social learning
- Defining and Designing Social Learning
- Social Learning in the Association Space
- Social Media is Not Social Learning
- Social Learning vs. Social Media
- Using Social Media to Drive Social Learning
- 7 Reasons Social Media Boosts Social Learning
- 10 Ways to Use an Enterprise Social Network for Social Learning
- Learning and Collective Knowledge Construction With Social Media: A Process-Oriented Perspective
Social Media Platforms and Tools for Social Learning
- Social Media Stats and Research–Social media usage continues to soar across all demographics, but it’s a good idea to stay on top of the latest research on social media trends. Pew’s research is always good, comprehensive and updated frequently–the most recent Social Media Usage: 2005-2015 report gives a great overview. Here are 96 Amazing Social Media Statistics and Facts for 2016. Here are The Craziest Social Media Stats from 2015. These change constantly so stay up to date on emerging platforms, trends, user demographics and, most importantly, how your organization’s members and potential members are using social media.
- Symplur–this is a great, free resource for healthcare or medical-focused associations, as well as a great example of the power of Twitter to advance collaboration and learning around specific topics. Even if your association isn’t in the healthcare space, take a look around Symplur to get an idea of the ways organizations and individuals use hashtags to connect and share information and ideas around specific topics. If your association is in the healthcare space, be sure to register your org’s conference hashtag to take advantage of Symplur’s great free features, including transcripts of tweets and other analytics.
- Hashtracking—Hashtracking is a free tool (well, free with limited capabilities) that lets you track your event’s hashtag across Twitter and Instagram and access analytics around influencers, number of tweets and other insights. There are lots of paid social media listening and analytics platforms out there, but Hashtracking is good to try if you’re just getting started and/or don’t have any resources dedicated to social media.
- Twitter–In case you’re still holding out, thinking Twitter is just people talking about what they ate for lunch, it’s time to get past that! Twitter is one of the best tools for social learning and collaboration, enabling associations to both follow conversations around topics of interest to members and to lead those conversations by establishing hashtags around events, topics of interest, or specific learning objectives. If you’re not familiar with #assnchat–no, it’s not a dirty word!–it’s a weekly Twitter chat for people and organizations in the association sector. Or #Eventprofs, for event and learning professionals. What hashtags do your members use to connect and collaborate with each other?
- Periscope…and Livestreaming in General–Livestreaming apps are all the rage and offer a great, easy, free way to incorporate social media into your events or as learning channels. Here are some good tips for using Periscope to broadcast live from your event; here are some more good basic tips. Twitter is about to make using Periscope easier by adding a livestreaming button inside its mobile apps. Periscope is not the only livestreaming platform/app–Facebook Live,Google’s current livestreaming options and upcoming YouTube Connect…I’ll let you Google the rest, but you get the idea. Livestreaming is hot.
- Blab—Blab is a livestreaming platform that enables a public video chat among four participants at a time. If you are familiar with the likes of Periscope, Meerkat and Google Hangouts, it basically combines all three. Here are some good beginner tips on using Blab; here’s a great video on how associations can use Blab. And you can see it in action each week with #assnchat.
- Breezio—Breezio is a new private community platform that I’m kind of obsessed with, and that I think is a great example of how private community platforms can be used to enable social learning. This brief video illustrates how it works. Even if your organization doesn’t use this platform (it’s brand new and costs money) it can give you some good ideas about how you can use your organization’s existing community platform to engage members around content and to foster social learning. Higher Logic’s HUG is another great example–if your organization has a private online community and you’re looking for ways to encourage members to use it to collaborate and learn from each other, take a look around HUG for some ideas.
- Talkshow—Talkshow is a brand new app that I personally think could be great for associations to use to foster social learning. Here’s an example of Talkshow in action.
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