Engaging With Enterprise Social Media

Engaging with Enterprise Social Media
as a Learning Professional
Pre-Conference Workshop

November 1, 2011

Facilitators:
Brandon Carson brandonc@yahoo-inc.com
Michelle Lentz michelleslentz@yahoo.com

Engaging With Enterprise Social Media as a Learning Professional

Unless otherwise noted, all contents © 2011 by Brandon Carson and Michelle Lentz – All rights reserved 1

Overview

Purpose
Social media has become ubiquitous and is now central to our personal and professional
lives – impacting how we interact with others, consume information, and gain new skills and
knowledge.
Our quest to learn faster and rapidly become ”experts” is transforming how educators
design curricula, and how students interact with it. The use of collaborative learning – the
acquisition of knowledge and skills through methods that are collaborative, immediate,
relevant, and presented in the context of the individual's environment – has evolved from a
nascent spider-web of technology into a structured framework being used in both higher
education and corporate learning.
This guide explores the effectiveness of collaborative learning environments (CLEs), and
presents best practices and tips and techniques for designing collaborative learning
environments.

Audience
Instructional designers and learning professionals interested in and/or implementing
collaborative learning in the enterprise.

Workshop objectives
Participants will learn:
• The most common social media tools entering the workplace
• How the power of social media can be used for both good and evil within an
organization
• How to design a cohesive, practical collaborative learning strategy
• How to understand social media policy in an organization and where existing policy
may fit
• How to drive engagement to solve issues that are similar to those faced by other
organizations when using social media



Workshop Facilitators
Brandon Carson
Brandon is a learning strategist focused on organizational and team
success. At Yahoo! he supports learning and development for Yahoo!'s
Products organization, which includes Engineering, User Interface
Design, Product Marketing, Product Management, Quality Engineering,
and Service Engineering and Operations. He also drives strategic
planning, program implementation, change management and
collaborative partnerships across Yahoo!.
Brandon writes frequently about learning-related topics at http://blog.clsllc.com, and holds
an M.Ed. in eLearning Technology and Design and a B.A. in Business Communications. He
resides in the San Francisco Bay area.
Twitter: @shemp65 LinkedIn: brandoncarson

Michelle Lentz
Michelle has worked in training and development for over 15 years and
specializes in social strategy for learning organizations and marketing
departments.
She has experienced both academic and corporate worlds, teaching
computer science for Miami University and previously held the position of
Director Training at Trivantis. She is also the Director of Marketing for
digital scrapbooking startup, Panstoria. Currently, Michelle runs her own
consulting firm, Write Technology.
Michelle has served on the ASTD TechKnowledge Conference committee for two years and
recently served as co-chair for the Interactive Marketing group of the local American
Marketing Association chapter and functions as a founding member and Technology/PR
chair for the Krystal Pepper Memorial Scholarship.
Michelle maintains three weblogs, including an award-winning wine blog at wine-girl.net,
and is a contributing technology writer for Brian Solis’s Bub.blicio.us social economy blog.
She resides in San Francisco.
Twitter: @michellelentz LinkedIn: michelleslentz



Agenda

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................5
• Predict The Future ...............................................................................................................................5
• The Shift to “Always On” ....................................................................................................................6
• Activity: Social Media Jeopardy (30 min) ......................................................................................7
2. Build a Social Technology Business Case for L&D...............................................10
• Understanding Your Audiences .....................................................................................................11
• Assess Organizational Readiness..................................................................................................12
• Case Study: Suffering the Consequences of Social Media ......................................................13
• Activity: Is Your Organization Ready? (20 min)..........................................................................16
• Develop a Social Media Policy .......................................................................................................16
• Activity: Create Your CLE Business Case (40 min) ......................................................................17
3. Develop Your Collaborative Learning Design Strategy......................................18
• Designing Collaborative Learning Environments .....................................................................18
• Case Study: Sales Learning Community on Jive ........................................................................23
• Case Study: Yahoo! Engage on Chatter .......................................................................................27
• Activity: Formulate Your CLE Design Strategy (30 min) ...........................................................31
4. Implement Collaborative Learning Technology..................................................32
• Activity: Determine Your Technology Features (40 min) ..........................................................32
• Debunking Collaborative Learning Myths and ROI .................................................................34
• Activity: Define Your Implementation Plan (30 min) ................................................................35
• Activity: Workshop Review (30 min) .............................................................................................36
5. Wrap-Up ....................................................................................................................36



Introduction
Our expertise and passions are more important to our career than ever – and our ability to
leverage social technologies can have a big impact on our professional life. In this age of
immediacy – where real-time streams of continual occurrences affect almost every aspect of
what we do – our individual skills, expertise, connections, reputation and authority have
become our personal currency, and in many ways are fueled by how we use social
technologies to connect, collaborate, participate and learn.
In this workshop, we are going to discuss how designing and implementing collaborative
learning environments can extend your learning reach globally, boost employee
engagement, and focus on improving learner capability.

Predict The Future
First, let’s look at current trends and predictions in the social technology area.

Topic Today Prediction
Social Utilities Across Learning Today just over 10% of companies More than 87% predict they would
are using social utilities in their be using them within the next 3
learning functions. years. (“The 2020 Workplace,”
Jeannie Meister and Karie Willyerd)

Blocking Social Media Currently, more than 31% of Companies will create private sites,
companies block or restrict but eventually open to all sites, yet
employee access to social enforcing solid social media
networking websites. (Robert Half guidelines. (Meister, Willyerd)
International survey, 2011)

Microsharing in the Workplace Enterprise microsharing is slowly Enterprise microsharing adoption is
moving toward achieving its full gated by Twitter adoption. As more
potential since buyers do not people use Twitter, more people
understand the value proposition. may use a Twitter-clone in the
It currently takes a time investment workplace, and microsharing
to truly understand Twitter and becomes a more common feature
similar microsharing tools. of enterprise tools, but not a stand
alone tool itself. (Gil Yehuda)

Budgets Today organizations spend 5% of Our prediction is that companies
their learning budgets to support will spend more of their budgets to
“informal learning” 15% on
, support informal learning: from 5%
mentoring programs, and 80% on to 35%, changing mentoring from
formal learning. 15% to 25% and reducing formal
learning budgets from 80% to
40%. (Meister, Willyerd)



The Shift to “Always On”
Our society is now “always-on,” and connectedness is becoming as ubiquitous as electricity.
We’ve been hearing about this moment in digital history since at least 1988, when Xerox
technologist Mark Weiser coined the term “ubiquitous computing,” referring to the point at
which devices and systems would become so numerous and pervasive that “technology
recedes into the background of our lives.”
The first decade of the digital revolution was about personalization, but clearly
personalization has given way to the social network. And we can see the network giving
way to cooperation and participation. The immediacy of this convergence is astounding
when you consider it took the telephone over 80 years to become ubiquitous.
The shift is also affecting how organizations design and deliver training. Today’s demanding
work world requires people to perform better, receive information quicker, and rely on each
other for practical discourse in how to do things better, and people are now more in control
of how they access this information.
In many ways, social media in its common usage is not appropriate in the workplace. Social
media such as Facebook and Twitter is something that should exist outside of the
workplace. Inside the workplace, we collaborate – we don’t socialize just for the sake of
socializing. However, integrating social technologies into your learning strategy can help you
extend your reach, focus on the learner’s specific needs, and more deeply engage them.
Collaborative learning occurs naturally in the workplace. By leveraging social technologies,
you can present an array of opportunities to help achieve your business imperatives and
provide learners with the knowledge and skills they need to reach higher levels of
performance in a manner conducive to how they work.
Before attempting to implement social technology into your learning strategy, it’s important
to assess whether or not your organization is ready for social technology. You should start
small by assessing cultural and organizational readiness, selecting appropriate tools,
deploying, and finally, refining.
We’re going to kick-start the process for you. Let’s get started.



Activity: Social Media Jeopardy (30 min)
At the very least, we use social technology to improve communication between people.
Today’s social utilities are relatively cost-effective (many times free) and allow anyone to
publish and access information.
In today’s corporate environments, social technology is used in a variety of capacities. As an
instructional designer, it’s critical to understand how to integrate social utilities into
curriculum design. To be effective, you should have a basic social media literacy. Included
here are a few terms and services of which you should be aware:

Term Deﬁnition
Always on Continual connectivity to a network.

Ambient intimacy The ability to keep in touch with your social network with a level of regularity
and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space
conspire to make it impossible.

Blog A blog is typically a personal space maintained by an individual or team with
regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as
graphics or video (Wikipedia 2008). Entries are usually displayed in reverse-
chronological order with the most recent posts shown first. Readers often
comment on individual posts and blogs typically link to other related blogs.

Broadband social synapses People have always been social creatures who have needed each other. Our
brains evolved way ahead of others to enable rich complexities and nuances of
attachments, empathy, and self-awareness. Humans have always been plugged
in – connected to one another through our senses and minds and bodies.

Communities of practice Communities of practice are commonly formed on social networking sites.
Communities of practice are forums in which professionals can gather to share
best practices or work together to solve problems. The new capabilities
provided by social networking tools are perfectly suited to support the
creation and maintenance of communities of practice, both internal to
organizations and across industries.

Content tagging Content tagging refers to practice of associating a tag, or keyword, with a
specific piece of content— thus describing the item, and enabling keyword-
based classification and search of information. Content tagging is an
important feature of many Web 2.0 services, such as social bookmarking sites.
Creating tags that have specific meaning to each individual is called
folksonomy.

Focused sharing Specialized social networks designed for users who prefer a more focused way
to share content.

Geo-enabled social A type of social networking in which geographic services and capabilities such
networking as geocoding and geotagging are used to enable additional social dynamics.
User-submitted location data can allow social networks to connect and
coordinate users with local people or events that match their interests.
(Wikipedia 2011)



Term Deﬁnition
Hyper-connected Those who are always connected regardless of where they physically happen
to be—at work, home, on vacation, in a restaurant, in bed or even in a house of
worship. Increasingly their personal and business lives are blurring into a single
extended conversation.

Hyper-real The dimension we tend to uncritically embrace when simulation assumes
more “reality” than the real.

Immediacy design Over-the-air instant delivery of just-in-time learning content.

Intelligent learning Virtual assistants (sociable robots) designed to provide meaningful responses
companions (ILCs) based on your personal profile, interests, concerns. An ILC can be automated,
such as feed aggregators, or manual, such as a smartphone or other connected
device.

Key influencer A person with a long reach, and whose opinions affect a large number of
people. For instance, a person’s Twitter profile with thousands of followers has
the potential to extend its reach multiple times over.

Mashups In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from
more than one source into a single integrated tool. An example is using
Google Maps to display real-estate data, traffic or popular restaurants. In the
new Web 2.0 environment, with the use of flexible coding languages, mashups
are increasingly common and easy to create.

Media sharing Media sharing consists of online exchanges of various types of media, like
photo, and video. Websites like YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook allow users to
easily share such media. Media sharing is the backbone of social networking
based on Web 2.0 technology.

Microsharing Social networking tools and systems that enable listening, awareness,
communication and collaboration between people, through short bursts of
text, links, and multimedia content. Microsharing, exemplified by tools such as
Twitter and Yammer, is a surprisingly powerful way to connect people to one
another for corporate benefit (Fitton, Conner 2008).

Podcasts A podcast is a series of media, either audio or video, that is distributed on the
web via syndicated download. Originally created by combining the words
“iPod” and “broadcast,” the first podcasting scripts were created for Apple’s
iPod, and oftentimes new podcast content is downloaded automatically once it
is available and is transferred to a mobile device, such as an iPod.

Sentiment analysis A limited form of analysis that can measure how people are feeling about your
topic of interest. You can measure sentiment by listening to social media and
monitoring key words. Sentiment analysis is limited because interpreting
nuances such as sarcasm and slang is often up to the individual reader.

Social bookmarking Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search,
and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of
metadata, or tags. Bookmarks are stored remotely on the Internet instead of
locally in a browser. Social bookmarking sites leverage a social network to find
and share websites.



Term Deﬁnition
Social graph The connections an individual maintains via social networking sites and other
social software are referred to as the social graph. The social graph represents
the web of people connected to that individual, directly or indirectly.

Social learning All learning that occurs with and from other people.

Social learning community A social learning community exists when two or more people collaborate to
share knowledge, experience and best practices either directly or through a
system which they create. In a technology mediated environment,
collaboration occurs with other people and with systems.

Social networking Social networking is the act of participating on a website that allows users to
construct a public or semi-public profile that they use to interact with others
on the same website (boyd and Ellison 2007). Social networking is a great way
to stay in touch with friends and colleagues.

Social robots Autonomous robots that interact and communicate with humans or other
autonomous physical agents by following social behaviors and rules attached
to its role.

Syndicated content RSS stands for “Real Simple Syndication.” RSS is a family of Web feed formats
used to publish frequently updated online-works (e.g., your favorite blog or
news site). RSS feeds usually display full or summarized text and metadata like
publishing dates and authorship information. RSS will bring the information to
you in one location so you don’t have to visit multiple web sites to gather the
news.

Tag clouds Tag clouds are visual representations of all tags used by an individual or group.
Font size and boldness usually indicates how often the tag is used.

Virtual worlds Virtual worlds are computer-based simulated environments intended for its
users to inhabit and interact via avatars (Wikipedia 2008b). Two of the most
common virtual worlds are MUVEs and MMORPGs. MUVEs are Multi-User
Virtual Environments like Second Life and is usually intended for collaboration
and social interaction. MMORPGs are Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing
Games, a genre of role-playing game where a large number of players interact
in a virtual world. The most popular MMORPG is World of Warcraft, with more
than 11 million monthly subscribers (Blizzard Entertainment 2008). Unlike
MMORPGs, MUVEs are not considered games.

Wikis A wiki is a page or collection of pages designed to allow multiple people to
edit content using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to
create collaborative websites, such as Wikipedia, and to power community
websites (Wikipedia 2008d). Instructors are increasingly integrating wikis with
their teaching strategies to take advantage of the power of collaborative
editing, which is far superior to the effort of any single individual.
Wikis are used for collaborative project plans and to increase team cohesion by
creating a community space where employees can interact and share
important information with other team members.



Build a Social Technology Business Case for L&D
Many learning and development (L&D) organizations are on a roller-coaster ride, trying to
keep up with a business world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain and growing more and
more complex by the day. As a learning professional, it is incumbent upon you to devise a
learning strategy that is both agile and adaptable to effectively support a workforce facing
constant disruption. The first component in your strategy is a business case for social
technology in learning and development.
Successful implementation of any large initiative usually requires stakeholder buy-in. For
many L&D organizations, implementing social technologies proves to be a Herculean
challenge. To help build your business case for implementing social technologies, first
consider how your audiences perceive training:
• Many L&D organizations mistakenly believe that employees prefer classroom training;
however, only 20% of employees have a strong preference for classroom-based training.
In fact, most employees find eLearning convenient and time-saving because they can
complete the training when their workloads allow it. A 2010 Department of Education
study shows there is no outcome difference (performance) in online training versus
classroom training. This means that classroom training is not necessarily better than
online training. (Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis
and Review of Online Learning Studies, US Department of Education, 2010)
• Not only can social technology expand your existing learning delivery channels, they
can improve:

- Global reach
• Increases access to most employees across the globe, including those working in
remote locations, improving both scalability of providing information, training,
and interaction with peers.

- Flexibility
• Offers many delivery options to address unique learning requirements (e.g., self-
paced modules, communities of practice, blogs).

- Focus on the learner
• Enables learners to have more control over when and how they learn, and allows
them to create content themselves.



Understanding Your Audiences
To be able to effectively implement social technologies that may be new to your
organization, it’s important to first understand how your audiences perform their work. For a
new learning technology to be successful, it must be able to integrate into their work stream
and be recognized as integral to the way they work. You don’t want a new technology to be
perceived as "now, I have to take training" or "I have to go to class". You want to strive for a
natural integration of learning into the work stream. In the real work world, it's natural that
people share and ask each other for help. This is the cultural transformation you’re looking
for when implementing a new learning technology. If you approach the implementation as
an additional tool, platform or process that you want workers to use, and if it becomes
perceived as a "part of that learning thing", you risk achieving a high level of adoption.
People will see it as "another training thing” and then suddenly they will be “too busy" to
engage. As you assess your organization and its culture, develop a strategy for your existing
audiences and for new audiences coming onboard in the near- and long-term future.
Consider some of the characteristics of “today’s learner” and also the type of learner you will
encounter in just a few years.

Today’s Learner
Over the last few years, there has been a fundamental shift in web user behavior, which has
cascaded to alter what people expect of training, and how they choose to consume
training. Traditionally, training developers have erected a formal construct around learning
content. Now the construct is the web itself, and learners are more inclined to see formal
training as material that can be supplemented with content they find on their own and
through their social networks, and that reflects their personal needs and sensibilities.
Today’s learner connects from many different platforms and sources, and seeks greater
control over their learning experiences. This really isn’t a new concept – most people learn
how to perform their job duties from sources other than formal training. However, the
advent of social technology designed to encourage deeper participation is fostering a form
of “hyper-collaboration” in many organizations. A large social network can generate
knowledge and help incubate innovation and creativity far more easily than a small cluster
of non-connected groups.
Today’s learner wants to be engaged, in control, and part of the “story” They consume, but
.
they also create, mash-up and share information with their peers. They seek credibility and
authenticity – and will uncover it on their own if they don’t trust your message. In today’s
corporate environment, every employee is a journalist, a broadcaster, a reviewer, a network
node, and a potential expert.



Tomorrow’s Learner
By 2015, people born between 1977 and 1997 will make up half the workforce. On top of
this, the social technology revolution is changing everything we know about work: where
we work, how we work, what skills we need, what technologies we use. The newer workforce
expects to use social technologies to communicate, collaborate and solve problems at work.
More than likely, they’re not going to be content to rely on traditional training either. They
expect their training to be a combination of formal and informal learning structures.
Tomorrow’s learners will be connected 24/7 and will expect pervasive connectivity while at
work. In 2009, an Accenture survey found that this demographic prefers to communicate via
instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook, and yes, RSS feeds. What’s more, they will
bypass restrictive IT rules if need be to use their favorite devices.
One thing to remember in all this: we will always learn by collaborating with one another.
The social technology phenomenon expands on our innate need for interaction with each
other; however, we know that complex skills are best learned by observation and feedback.
There will always be a need for face-to-face learning events. We’re not saying that social
technology will ever take away that need. We’re saying the best thing to do is leverage social
technologies to extend and build on our need to learn from each other.

Assess Organizational Readiness
You are on the front lines of implementing social technology because you know you need
to drive learning deeper into the culture of your organization. You know that supporting a
smarter workforce means developing appropriate alignment to business imperatives,
embedding yourself into the businesses you support, crafting meaningful relationships with
those businesses, and delivering results that are measurable.
Learning that leverages social utilities relies heavily on technology. As you embark on your
design and technology plan, consider if you will leverage existing resources, or shop for a
new infrastructure. Think about your organization and ask yourself these two questions:
• Are external social media sites restricted or blocked at your workplace?
• Is the use of social media in the workplace inhibited or frowned upon?
Many organizations are struggling with how to adopt social media in the workplace. On top
of that, many companies are trying to figure out if and how to integrate social media utilities
for their workers to use in their day-to-day jobs.
Part of your strategy to leverage social tools and technologies is to foster a deeper culture of
learning throughout the organization, but to also understand the risks involved.
As you begin to build a business case for social technologies, you will need to assess the
suitability of them for your organization, but also take a hard look at the risks involved.



Case Study: Suffering the Consequences of Social Media
Business can suffer the consequences of an employee’s irresponsible reaction to a customer
complaint. In February 2010 a couple went to a local movie theater in Minnesota. Their
experience was not up to what they perceived as satisfactory, so they sent a letter to the
theater:
My husband and I just went to your theater to see Shutter Island.
First off, the year is 2010 and your establishment does not accept cash cards or credit
cards. We did not have enough cash on us and neither did your ATM. If you run out of
cash by Saturday evening you should have a higher allotment of cash. Since most people
expect to use their cash card, the ATM, I'm sure, is utilized frequently. Frankly, get with the
time. I know you are charged for transactions on a card machine but frankly your
customers would be better served. How many customers do you lose because they don't
have cash or check (since 90% of establishments don't accept checks anymore).
Thankfully, we had friends who had one check on them. We would have had to go to the
bank to get cash to see a movie. Should we charge you for time and gas?
Secondly, after the first 10 minutes a staff member came in and announced that there
were 8 people who should not be in that movie. She proceeded to check tickets of paying
customers trying to enjoy a movie. She also brought in the ticket clerk to see if she would
recognize the 4 remaining people who did not leave after the announcement. This ruined
the first 30 minutes of the movie. Frankly, we lost the first part of the plot and new
characters. I did not pay $18.00 to have a distracted experience. Are 8 people worth a
theater full of refunds? Why not wait until the movie is over and check people leaving?
Why not pause the movie? I expect a refund, but only by check card. Oh wait, sorry, we
are all out of check cards. Get the point yet? I would rather drive to White Bear Lake,
where they obviously know how to run a theater than have this experience again.
Sarah
Taylors Falls

Surprisingly, the response as not quite what they expected. The Vice President of the theater
sent this in return:
Sarah,
Drive to White Bear Lake and also go fuck yourself. If you don’t have money for
entertainment, get a better job, and don't pay for everything on your credit or check
card. You can also shove your time and gas up your fucking ass. Also, find better things to
do with your time. This email is an absolute joke. We don't care to have you as a
customer. Let me know if you need directions to white bear lake.
Steven



Steven J. Payne - Vice President
Evergreen Entertainment
929 Old Highway 8 NW
Suite 200
New Brighton, MN 55112
Phone - (651) 636-1417
Fax - (651) 636-1418
Within hours of receiving that e-mail, the couple created a Facebook group called “BOYCOTT
St. Croix Falls Cinema 8 (Evergreen Entertainment LLC)” where they posted their initial letter,
and the response from the VP. Within hours, their individual boycott became viral, and
quickly got to over 5,000 members who “joined” the boycott with them.

Facebook “boycott” group



More than just joining a Facebook group, however, many new members were “called to
action” Several wrote the VP letters stating they would no longer do business there, a few
.
performed background searches of the company and linked to the Minnesota Secretary of
State’s office to file formal complaints, and others posted similar stories of disappointing
experiences with the business.
The Facebook boycott eventually made the local news on radio and TV, and was tweeted
across the Internet (where I became aware of it). The viralness of this type of messaging can
have a profound impact on business.
Shortly after sending the first response e-mail, the Vice President followed up with this reply:
Dear Mrs. [Sarah's last name], I tried to contact you via a phone call to issue this apology
personally and was unable to reach you. I sincerely apologize for my inappropriate
response to your email yesterday. As vice president, I should never have reacted that way,
no matter how I felt about your email. At Evergreen Entertainment, customer service is
an important part of our business, and that clearly was not reflected by my use of
profane language.
Our St. Croix Falls theatre has gone through a management change and that transition
has not proven to be easy, although it is for the best. There have been several issues
lately, including some brought upon our operation without our knowledge, that we have
been working hard to address and it appears that we are not quite there yet. We will
continue to work towards these improvements in the hope that it will allow our
customers better service and an overall improvement in the entertainment experience.
With that being said, if you would be willing to give our theatre another chance, I
welcome you to contact me personally.
Please accept my sincerest apologies for my actions, and I hope that this misstep does
not affect your experience with Evergreen Entertainment in the future.
Sincerely,
Steven
Steven J. Payne - Vice President
Evergreen Entertainment
929 Old Highway 8 NW
Suite 200
New Brighton, MN 55112



Activity: Is Your Organization Ready? (20 min)
Assess your current organization’s suitability to accept this type of delivery method for
learning, and examine the risks involved.
1. Open the “LDR_Assess_the_Suitability_of_Learning_as_a_Delivery_Method.xls”
document.
2. Consider your current organization as you review the Selection Criteria on the form.
3. Score your organization’s readiness for each item using the rating scale.
4. Next, open the “LDR_How_Risky_are_Your_Peer_to_Peer_Learning_Technologies.xls” file
and fill out the risk assessment.
5. Discuss your results with your table-mates and the group.

Develop a Social Media Policy
Leveraging and accepting collaborative learning tools can lead to accidental slips by
employees. Make sure your organization is ready to handle the new environment by
ensuring a simple policy is in place. Your existing HR policies may already be appropriate
with only slight modifications, or you may need to start from scratch. People usually don't
need rules on what not to do -- they need rules explaining what they can do. Policies usually
tell a person what not to do. Most people already know what not to do.
• Identify your key stakeholders. Consider working with training, human resources,
marketing/communications, and legal.
• Identify which of the three areas you need to cover within your policy: outside
commenters, general employee policies, and staff representing the company in social
media.
• Focus on key phrases. For example, Kodak has a required disclaimer for all photography
related employee blogs: “The opinions and positions expressed are my own and don’t
necessarily reflect those of Eastman Kodak Company.” Additionally, Yahoo! looks to the
future in their social media policy, covering “any and all current and future means of
online expression.”
• Ensure proprietary and legal matters are clearly covered. SHIFT Communications uses
this phrase: “Please never comment on anything related to legal matters, litigation, or
any parties the Company may be in litigation with.”



• Consider voice. Explain social media and approach it in a friendly, non-threatening
manner. The point is to make sure the tools are used properly and not to discourage the
use all together.
You can find sample social media policies online from companies such as Yahoo!, Kodak, and
Microsoft, and Easter Seals. Additionally, you can get started on social media policy creation
by using the free tool available at policytool.net.

Activity: Create Your CLE Business Case (40 min)
Today, you’re going to create your own collaborative learning framework that includes your
business case, your design and technology strategy and your implementation strategy. First,
we’re going to work on your business case.
1. Brainstorm with your table-mates what type of company you want to create (or use an
existing colleague’s company) and what line of business you will be supporting. Feel free
to use your existing company as a model for what you want to do with collaborative
learning. Consider targeting a line of business: sales, technical, leadership development,
etc.
2. Discuss what business problems you need to solve or what business imperatives you
need to support in the overall CLE strategy
3. Include the following in your business case:
a. Explain how an increased ability to collaborate will increase learning effectiveness
b. Determine your company’s readiness by presenting your readiness score (use the
checklist criteria from the previous activity)
c. Identify your internal stakeholders
d. Show how you will resource your collaborative learning initiative(s)
e. Identify your target audiences
f. Create a goal statement
4. Present your business case to the group



Develop Your Collaborative Learning Design Strategy
Although most organizations are using collaborative learning technologies in one form or
another, only 10% of companies have integrated them into their L&D strategy. Organizations
all too often start by selecting collaborative learning technologies and then look for the
problems they can solve.
The fastest-growing segment of the collaborative learning market is the emerging social
platforms category, which achieved $370 million in 2009 and will reach nearly $2 billion by
2014 (IDC).
According to IDC's Social Business Survey, enterprise social software adoption still has room
to grow, with 41% of respondents indicating that they have already implemented an
enterprise social software solution such as IBM (Lotus Connections), Jive Software,
Salesforce.com and others.
Nearly half of organizations have found collaborative learning technologies to be harder to
implement than they actually anticipated. Incorrect implementation increases the costs of
these technologies and reduces their effectiveness. Organizations should ensure they have
specific social media policies in place and are ready to launch collaborative learning
technologies before rolling them out.

Designing Collaborative Learning Environments
A CLE combines social utilities with instructional content to encourage learners to engage in
formal and informal learning. Successful design of a CLE enables the learner to:
• Easily find, access, and consume the appropriate learning content
• Be engaged, motivated, and enthusiastic throughout the learning experience
• Transfer understanding into action after the learning is completed
• Understand the organization’s social media policy and where existing policy may fit
• Drive engagement to solve issues that are similar to those faced by other organizations
when using social media



The CLE Instructional Design Model
Collaboration enables participants to build knowledge together, apply critical thinking, and
leverage collective intelligence to foster understanding of key concepts. With participant-to-
participant interaction as a central part of the CLE, participants will consume instructor-
generated content, contribute content, and interact with other participants and their
published content in a mediated learning context.

CLE instructional model, based on Bandura’s social learning model

This variation of the model leverages best practices that underpin collective performance,
and includes four desired participant behaviors:
• Attention

- Create an attraction to the environment
• Motivation

- Arouse the participant to action
• Participation

- Build mechanisms to encourage the participant to engage in acts of sharing within
the construct of the environment
• Retention

- Design the learning experience so the participant is able to recall key aspects of the
material



The Four Behaviors

Attention
A person’s work stream includes a complex array of tools, actions, and processes that often
overlap in a typical day. To gain their attention to your CLE, it’s important to provide a
visually appealing and relevant environment. Since people process visuals more effectively
than text, we recommend using “high-relevance” visuals to help attract attention. You want
imagery that conveys the information as concisely as possible – imagery that provides a
visualization of the relationships, data, facts or procedures you are describing.
There are two types of imagery that resonate with learners:
• Educational imagery

- High-performers will gravitate toward what serves their personal career growth. They
are intrinsically motivated outside of formal training, because they're driven to find
topics of interest in their specific skill domain. Companies benefit greatly from this
intrinsic desire to learn more. Imagery that serves this desire may or may not be
specific to your company’s brand. The learner interested in this is also interested in
their own marketability. Are the skills they’ll learn in this CLE relevant to their overall
personal career growth?
• Work-related imagery

- Imagery specific to performing a job, and relates only to that. It’s relevant and
contextual to the learner in that it is focused on increasing their job-specific
performance.

Motivation
“Motivation is the energy that accelerates behavior” (Richter, 2009). How many of you design
reward strategies hoping the “carrot and stick” approach will motivate your learner to
engage? What are the consequences of extrinsic motivators? There is a learner continuum
when it comes to motivation: either apathetic, capable but forced to learn, or to being
passionate about the learning.
Behaviors of the motivated learner include:
• A sense that the learning experience is relevant to the learner’s immediate needs
• The ability to comprehend the learning experience
• A sense of autonomy in the learning experience
In your design, consider how you will motivate participants to engage in the learning and
dialogue. How can you design contextual relevance into the environment?



Participation
Humans are inherently social animals. We all like to have an audience, to share, and to
collaborate with each other. Simply because we are in an online environment, not much
changes about that desire to “be heard” However, there are four common levels of
.
participation in a CLE:
• Level 1: participant works as a consuming learner
• Level 2: participant contributes to the social dialogue in a learning context
• Level 3: participant contributes content
• Level 4: participant leads dialogue, contributes content, and/or mentors/coaches other
learners
You can help move participants from level 1 to level 4 by creating a CLE that:
• Establishes a safe, trusting environment characterized by respect and support. You
should also never allow anonymity in the CLE. Each participant should be recognized
and recognizable.
• Foster relationship building by encouraging people to complete personal profiles or
share their interests and expertise. You’re helping them build a network of valuable
connections to help increase their personal performance and organizational efficiency.
Being able to identify and leverage expertise from within can be a critical component in
effective collaboration across business functions.
• Design tasks and activities that spawn interesting, rich, complex conversations based on
real-world situations and experiences
• Facilitate project-based work and personal journaling to enable true asynchronous
collaboration

Retention
Sound pedagogy is sound pedagogy regardless of the instructional modality. You aid
retention by ensuring there is relevance, practice and proper scaffolding in the instruction. In
a CLE, your primary goal will be to design a good balance of formal instruction and provide
mechanisms to encourage informal dialogue and sharing. Participants will benefit from
structured tasks and activities that are assessed. In a CLE you can provide relevant feedback
that benefits not only the individual participant, but also the community at large.
We know that lecturing and presenting information is useless if the participants do not
retain it. How do you decide how much information to include in your CLE and how
effectively that material will be retained?
Regardless of the modality, most learners will not retain information unless they practice the
skills and apply the knowledge soon after acquisition. And even then, that works only if they
truly understand what is being taught in the first place. We cannot automatically assume



either of these conditions. However, there are some techniques you can apply in a CLE to
help increase retention:
• Create story-telling activities. A storytelling activity can help participants experience and
contextualize information quicker. Even more powerful is to encourage the community
to “write” the story themselves. The moderator can begin, and then have each
participant add to it. Stories can help you assess the right amount of material for
participants to absorb successfully.
• Assess through story-telling. By using storytelling as assessment exercises, you can get a
sense of how much the participants have retained. You can adjust the amount of
information you’re sharing on-the-fly if you see that participants are having difficulty
grasping the concepts. The key to retention is not overloading the learners in the first
place – a CLE enables you to be more dynamic in how you prescribe the learning.

Tips for Designing a Collaborative Learning Environment
One factor to consider when designing a CLE is the simple fact that you’re building a “living,
breathing ecosystem” It’s not possible to create it and then walk away from it, since you’re
.
incubating a community. You will need to consider a resource allocation to assign to it --
akin to a community moderator.

Tip Description
Watch for size More than being the “controller” of the CLE, you will find that side-nodes
may spawn from the primary node. In other words, the community may
take a different direction than you anticipate. It’s more difficult for your
participants to get involved in a community when:
• Its population is too large – engaging in conversation with 600 people is
difficult
• It's not moderated by an active agent
• There is a sense of staleness or inaction
Provide focused sharing Specialized nodes designed for users who prefer a more focused way to
opportunities share content. Social learning networks are perfect for incubating
“knowledge clusters” among learners with similar goals and objectives. With
targeted, cohort-based learning communities, learners can more easily
establish relationships, trust, and motivation to share and collaborate.

Consider utilizing various These social utilities can be conducive to higher learner satisfaction:
social elements • Points
• Rewards
• Satisfaction of sharing one’s point of view
• Satisfaction of having one’s posts commented on
• Gameful elements



Tip Description
Reach learners where they are Determine if a “new” platform is necessary. Forming new communities is at
best difficult, and will most likely fail without a desire for people to
participate.

Help learners know each other Create activities that rely on group-work, but understand that often
groupthink occurs.

Balance connection and Since participants can always be elsewhere, how do you design in the
disconnection ability to ensure learning occurs, or evaluate outcomes?

Realize that dropping pre- Guide your audience toward “design thinking” to help them improve their
determined solutions to the own performance. Social networks encourage people to make smaller, more
audience is often ineffective intimate connections – which creates more engagement. The spontaneous
output of collaboration that occurs with these intimate connections will
change the group's learning dynamic.

Become technology agnostic Technology does not matter when it comes to forming relationships
(pivotal to successful learning engagement). Technology is merely the
enabler. People will find ways to communicate, share, and build
relationships regardless of the available technology. Focus on leveraging
the technology infrastructure you can. You may be forced to work with
existing systems that may not offer the spectrum of features you want
initially. Learn to use those to the best of your ability.

Case Study: Sales Learning Community on Jive
Recently I worked for a technology company that provides storage services. I was
responsible for supporting a new sales initiative that was designed to create a new market
opportunity for the company. My job was to design and facilitate a training program to up-
level sales skills of new employees. Traditional training design and development could take
up to three months – time we didn’t have. We had an immediate need to support the sales
field with “real-time” training. A typical deal in this market would be anywhere from $10-30
million and would extend over an entire product lifecycle which could be 12-18 months.
My first job was to assess the company’s learning technology. The company’s LMS at the
time was Saba. What Saba (and many other LMS’s) lack is a mechanism for deep relationship
building and real-time collaboration. Relationships in this specific business initiative are very
valuable since this sales organization is region-specific, yet the companies they were
targeting are multi-national global entities. Working collaboratively is key to success.
In that vein, I decided to use Jive to create a collaborative learning environment. Jive was a
platform that was already implemented at the company – although not in a learning
context. The main objective was to share the vision of the program, offer sales strategies,
present key talking points, and offer information and education related to the technical
solutions offered in the space. Around that formal construct, I designed activities to
encourage collaboration and sharing to foster peer-to-peer learning. Some activities
included mandatory discussion around specific topics, a system to award points for sharing



and engaging in discussion, activities that required contribution, as well as personal
journaling. I also assigned cohort-based activities that required finding and collaborating
with others on sales strategies and then presenting those to the wider community.

Collaborative Learning Community in Jive

I observed and interviewed participants during and after the pilot, and found three key
behavior categories prevalent: The participants in the learning community were
competitive, collaborative, and participatory.



Key Behaviors

Competitive
There was a bit of a “herd” mentality, in that people seemed to form consensus quickly
(similar to groupthink) around specific topics. A status quo took shape in a short amount of
time. The “wisdom of the crowd” seemed to “vote-down” what they considered to be content
of poor quality, but it was interesting to note that the crowd quickly gathered around ideas
or strategies that were offered by those with perceived credibility. That credibility came
through various means:
• Title or position in the company
• Number of posts
• Succinctness and quality of the message. People told me that they didn’t have a lot of
time to spend away from their job, so they appreciated posts that were to the point and
of relevance and substance.
For example, when the EVP of the sales organization posted comments on why he didn’t
implement a formal sales methodology for the company, the majority of the community
accepted his argument with little debate. However, in earlier posts when others discussed
this topic without the executive involved, stronger opinions formed, some in contradiction
to the executive.

Collaborative
Participants were able to see the results of their collaboration quickly, and were able to
reflect and explore options immediately. This seemed to help their account planning
strategies, since working with large, global companies require more than a “regional” plan.
They shared account planning documents, strategies, and coordinated their sales pitches.
We even offered a platform to share pitch techniques via video, although not many took
advantage of that. This type of sell is high-touch, and very personalized, so a standard “sales
101” elevator pitch wouldn’t close the deal.
This community became somewhat of a “real-time” learning environment with a “low
threshold” learning model. This helped participants ramp up on the company’s products and
services almost immediately through the assistance of others, and without having to go
through comprehensive product training, which would take too long.
Many told me that the wider reach of the learning community afforded them more
collaborative opportunities. They were able to share more information, strategies, and even
come together to coordinate sales meetings with colleagues they normally wouldn’t work
with, or think to bring into deals. This type of collaboration resulted in a huge deal, when
one participant shared a lead with another that turned out to be very timely. When asked,
many respondents stated that the connections brought about by the community opened
new doors. Engaging in online collaboration to put together strategies and deals was new



to several of them. Because of this several of them began broadcasting more of their specific
expertise to their network, and created closer bonds with people across regions. Before this,
their perspective of what was going on in other regions was more limited.

Participatory
Many participants did not initially participate seemingly because of the “high stakes”
involved. In other words, several held back for two main reasons:
1. The community was open to anyone in the sales organization company-wide, including
managers and executives. Some people feared being “open and honest” when they
knew their boss could see their discussions. Retribution was a concern if they wanted to
“think out of the box” and speak freely if you will. Many were new to the company, and
wanted to impress. However, the personality for this level of salesperson comes with a
pretty big ego and lots of experience.
2. Although it was subtle, there was also sensitivity to expertise, or at least the perception
of expertise. Expertise transferred from the physical world to the online world as well: As
I stated, if an exec posted, few would challenge the information in that post.

Summary
Although I think the collaborative learning environment was a benefit overall, the company
itself hasn’t completely embraced it. What the powers that be have to be OK with is knowing
and understanding that when we bring these platforms to life, we are ceding a certain level
of control.
Some other observations:
• Participants fell into group-think pretty quickly. Consensus was accepted quickly as well.
• Participants also relied on status quo if that seemed to solve problems or provide
answers. Instead of digging deep, as they might have to on their own, they relied on the
group’s answers or direction without much question or analysis.
• They seem much more willing to collaborate online and were quicker to “cluster” than
I’ve seen in classroom situations. Is this because of the facelessness? Remoteness? Some
said it made them feel better when they got a lot of dialogue around their contribution.
• Getting them motivated to engage only happened when a direct authority mandated
it. Some of the participants jumped directly into the community and contributed. Some
waited, noticed others getting ahead, and then joined in. Some really never participated
too much at all.



Case Study: Yahoo! Engage on Chatter
Recently, Yahoo! rolled out a new Leadership Academy. The designers spent a lot of time
thinking about the Academy model and the learning objectives, and they felt that for the
Academy to be successful, the learning needed to be extended beyond the formal face-to-
face event so that continual learning and collaboration could occur.
Did that mean creating asynchronous eLearning and/or synchronous webinars over time?
The designers felt it would be hard to predict what people would need to learn, which made
it difficult to pre-design the solution. The way the participants would apply the new
knowledge and skills is hard to pre-determine because being a good manager is different
for each person.
The designers identified these principles as necessary for the program’s success:
• Provide a personalized learning experience geared toward the participant’s situation
• Give the learner more control over the learning experience – they did not want to create
what could be perceived as an artificial experience with a cadence not meaningful to
the participant’s situation
• Provide a connection for cohorts going through the learning event together
• Provide formal and informal structure – and not have it be completely open-ended. A
collaborative learning experience of this nature can be too structured or too open-
ended. It’s a delicate balance. The designers didn't want to be too prescriptive, but they
did want to have enough structure so that when facilitators intervened, they could
appropriately support the cohort’s learning needs.

Salesforce.com Chatter Platform
Chatter is a Salesforce.com platform designed for workplace collaboration. It’s similar to a
private social network for the enterprise.
When we piloted Chatter people said, “We've already got wikis, shared drives, portals, e-mail,
telephone, meetings. And now you're giving me another ‘place to go’” A key factor in
.
successful adoption is to have a displacement strategy. You will risk high-levels of adoption if
you try to “add yet another tool” that does not fit into the work stream.



Yahoo! Engage app in Chatter: note the Learning Communities and Learning Groups options in the left side bar

Learning Action Plans
If you think of yourself as a learner at the end of a classroom training experience, you may
think, “OK I need to continue my own learning” beyond this experience. However, you're not
a learning expert. If you had a learning expert sit with you, that expert would sequence the
learning so that it would be more effective for you. So, in essence, that expert serves as your
tour guide through the learning experience and helps you plan the experience. For
example, when you arrive in the new city, you use their tour guide to show you the sights,
but you are also free to wander around and do what you want on your “off-time” The tour
.
guide gets everyone to the city on time – and then gives you a flexible schedule built
around the more formal schedule.
In that spirit, the Yahoo! Engage designers created what they call “learning action plans” The
.
goal was to create a journey of suggested tasks/activities for each individual learner to
engage in. The tasks/activities are time-framed during the initial few days of the follow-on
experience. The idea is to encourage the participant to self-direct their learning as they
become more integrated into the learning community.



Expanded view of learning tasks in the Yahoo! Engage CLE

Community moderators were assigned to coordinate the experience: monitor the
community activity, connect participants to others with similar situations, and connect
participants to relevant information. The community moderators observed the participants’
journey through their contributions, and what they followed, to get a pulse on the overall
community and a sense of progress against the learning objectives. The community
moderator also monitored the activity stream to see what participants were doing in real-
time, and could help keep things moving if necessary. This helps the moderator decide
when and if to bring the cohort together for more formal instruction. The moderator is
heavily involved, and understands what the participants should be doing. They help create
context, and respond to the feedback loops that naturally occur.
The learning ecosystem is built over time. Participants make stronger connections to
content and to people during the experience. As participants create and contribute content,
they evolve from being consumers, to being contributors which helps subsequent cohorts
with more information and content to consume.



The designer’s overall goal was to integrate collaborative learning into the participant’s work
stream. The designers wanted to foster the mentality that this is not “training” – it's working.
It’s natural that people share and ask colleagues for help. So in some respects, this is a
cultural transformation – fully integrating collaborative learning into the work stream using
purpose-driven technology.

Summary
This program was a pilot. Lessons learned include:
• Don’t approach the implementation of collaborative learning as a “sideshow” Don’t
.
present it as a tool, platform or process that learning and development wants people to
use – because if people perceive it as a “part of training” not integrated into their work
stream, they will see it as “another training thing, and be too busy” to participate.
• Don’t design the tasks/activities to “look like homework” You need an integrated total
.
solution, none of which is optional. That means, from a delivery point of view, how you
govern, manage, and support people is fundamentally different. From the employee
perspective they need to buy-in to the notion that learning is continuous. How they
approach work, collaboration, and learning is a function of their job. Not a temporary
thing. That's the hard part for a lot of organizations to deal with. If this CLE would have
been optional it would not have worked.
• Training is often perceived as “about me” from the learner’s perspective. An individual
goes into class to learn for themselves, and apply the learning as an individual – instead
of going in as a part of a cohort to share and collaborate with others. This may mean
you have a “transformation” to deal with. When designing a collaborative learning
environment, consider these questions:

- How do you transform your culture into a learning culture?
- How are your teams structured?
- How do you introduce deeper collaboration and sharing?
- How do you not make training a separate event from the normal work stream?
• Ensure the technology is properly implemented. Yahoo! didn't have Chatter licenses for
everyone in the organization. They first focused only on the managers which prevented
the team from being able to engage in deep collaboration.
• Don't lead with the micro-platform first. Implement the platform with new hires so that
the platform becomes the work tool for them all the way through their employee
experience.
• Introduce new technology to intact teams, it works better. They don’t collide with
people that don’t have access to the technology. This helps increase adoption.



• During the pilot, several people saw the learning community as “artificial” – and the
tasks/activities as homework. The first question they asked was, “How does this help me
do my job?” There was no top-down, integrated approach to the roll-out.
• Don’t build it if it’s optional. People are too busy for optional. It has to be presented as
critical to their job. In class, people can't leave every 10 minutes as an option. If you
make it optional, they'll opt-out!
• How you roll-out the technology is key. If you take a participant to a 3-day class and
show them the agenda, do they say, “Oh let's not do topic 1 and 3”? No they don't. Don’t
impose too much formal work on people in collaborative learning environments. When
people are online, they perceive the learning experience differently than when they're in
the classroom – the online event is in the way of their work – when they're in class, they
have “reserved” the 3 days for training.
• Make sure the technology is always present. Make it easy – no firewall or VPN required. It
has to be in their face.

Activity: Formulate Your CLE Design Strategy (30 min)
Now that you have your business case, you need to identify your design strategy. We’ve
explored a basic design model for CLEs, and talked a bit about best practices for design.
Now take a moment and work on an overall design strategy. Don’t worry about the actual
design, you’re just preparing a blueprint for your first CLE.
1. Brainstorm with your table-mates your overall CLE design strategy. Your CLE design
strategy should include the following:
a. information about your business imperative
b. Your target audience
c. Learning goals and objectives
d. The type of formal and informal tasks/activities you’d like to design
2. Prepare and present your design strategy to the group.



Implement Collaborative Learning Technology
Enterprise collaborative learning platforms offer an array of features and capabilities. They
have a variety of use cases (internal collaboration versus external community management),
features, infrastructure, and integration capabilities to consider. The exact nature of a your
platform choice will vary depending on the scale of you programs and how well
collaborative learning can be incorporated into the cultural DNA of your company.

Evaluating Collaborative Technology Platforms
The fastest-growing segment of the collaborative learning market is the emerging social
platforms category, which achieved $370 million in 2009 and will reach nearly $2 billion by
2014 (IDC).
According to IDC's Social Business Survey, enterprise social software adoption still has room
to grow, with 41% of respondents indicating that they have already implemented an
enterprise social software solution such as IBM (Lotus Connections), Jive Software,
Salesforce.com and others.

Activity: Determine Your Technology Features (40 min)
The following are common features found in collaborative learning platforms. Determine
which features you require based on the needs identified in your business case and your
design strategy. Remember to consider the “collaborative DNA” of your organization.
1. Identify the features and/or functions you see as key for your learning technology
platform(s). Place a checkmark next to the appropriate column based on your needs.
2. Discuss with the group.



Feature Required Not Required

Activity streams

Analytics

Blogs

Community (group centered; externally focused)

Conferencing (Web, video, and audio)

Dashboards

Discussion forums/threads

File sharing

Groups (public or private; internally focused)

Idea management (polling, rating, and voting)

Microsharing/status updates

Mobile deployment

Presence

Profiles

Recommendation engine (content/people)

Reporting

RSS

Search

Tagging/bookmarking

Video

Wikis



3. Next consider the deployment and maintenance of collaborative learning technology.
These options need to be considered as you develop your strategy. Place a check in the
appropriate column based on your requirements.

Feature Required Not Required

Data encryption

Hosted on-premise or SaaS?

Policy management

Security

Storage

Single sign-on

Connection to enterprise applications (email, calendar, etc)

Connection to third-party software (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)

Debunking Collaborative Learning Myths and ROI
One of the top challenges associated with implementing enterprise social software is
measuring the impact on business goals, and there is no greater importance given to
validate a business decision than return on investment (ROI). To determine the appropriate
ROI for your collaborative learning strategy, you should consider how your audiences are
using social software and understand the cost/benefit impact related to people, process,
and technology.
Keep in mind that costs for people and technology may increase as a program's success is
achieved. Yet gains from increased performance, deeper collaboration, and higher levels of
efficiency will also increase to help balance costs. Many of the costs and gains will be indi-
rect and therefore difficult to quantify. By applying an economic value to your collaborative
learning programs, you may gain the ability to prove the direct and indirect revenue poten-
tial of implementing the technology. Let’s discuss a couple of collaborative software myths:



Myth #1: A Metric Is ROI
Collaborative learning ROI is sometimes referred to as “return on influence” or “return on im-
pact.” While metrics such as sentiment, influence, impact, and traditional Web metrics like
“reach” are important to calculating ROI, they are not true ROI. A metric is part of what is
used to calculate ROI but in itself is not enough. Oftentimes the confusion around whether
there is ROI is because companies can measure a change in a metric but do not know how
to make that change meaningful with respect to their business. To calculate ROI, in its
simplest terms, means that companies must have more money coming in than money being
spent on something. How can you calculate the ROI on your collaborative learning
technology?

Myth #2: Collaborative Learning ROI Cannot Be Determined
While collaborative business initiatives can have some challenges related to economic
analysis, as many initiatives do, they can be overcome. Determining ROI requires knowledge
of business transformation and economic fundamentals. What are the costs related to a
technology implementation for collaborative learning? You will have technology costs
(licensing, infrastructure, etc), as well as people costs (strategic implementation, project
managers, program owners, technical administration, content providers and/or consultants).
What other costs will you have? Your people costs will vary over time: you may have more
intense resource needs during implementation (including executive stakeholders). Once you
launch, you will have increased resource needs while the platform and communities gain
traction.

Activity: Define Your Implementation Plan (30 min)
Nearly half of organizations have found collaborative learning technologies to be harder to
implement than they actually anticipated. Incorrect implementation increases the costs of
these technologies and reduces their effectiveness. Organizations should ensure they have
specific social media policies in place and are ready to launch collaborative learning
technologies before rolling them out.
1. Answer the following questions in your implementation plan:
a. How will you market the CLE to the organization?
b. What metrics will you set for success?
c. How will you assess the effectiveness?
3. Consider existing HR policies and whether a new or updated policy covering social
tools is necessary. If necessary, draft a simple policy using policytool.net.
4. As a group, present the top 5 reasons you think your learners will adopt and use CLEs



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