This document provides an overview of a training manual for University of Phoenix employees on using social media tools to enhance professional development through social learning. It discusses four ideologies of social learning and barriers to participation. Several social media tools that could be used are described, including their benefits, limitations, and applications to sharing ideas and collaborating. The purpose of social learning in organizations is to create reliance and efficiency by sharing knowledge and skills between employees through open communication. The manual aims to clearly define the usefulness of social media in education and corporate training to improve employee morale and productivity.

1. By: Melissa Ho, Lameka Moore, Malina, Evangeline Chaco

2. University of Phoenix (UOP) is in need of a social learning
platform to enhance professional development.
An organization encourages their employees to engage,
collaborate, and connect ideas with one another to strengthen
their skills.
Employees’ responsibility to ensure compliance and assist
students achieve the best educational experience.

3.  At UOP, social media has been an important tool in a social
learning platform, allowing for employees to connect in a way
they haven’t been able to before.
This training manual designed for University of Phoenix
employees, will offer instructional guidance regarding the
availability of social media tools, their benefits, and correlation
with the understanding of social learning for professional
development.

4. DISCUSS FOUR IDEOLOGIES OF
SOCIAL LEARNING
 Social Learning
 Social Learning and Problem Solving
 Social Learning and Businesses
 Social Media Tools

5. Barriers and how to overcome them
Participation
Generation Gap
Monitor Social Media Usage
Ethical Dilemmas and How to resolve them
Employee Accountability
Maintaining Organization’s reputation
Confidentiality

6. How to promote the importance of Social Media
 Model behavior
 Encourage Personal Learning Network (PLN) for
professional development

7. “Collaborative problem solving is as old as fireside chats in
the cave. Our families frequently sit around the breakfast or
dinner table solving problems together. Wide-net
collaborative problem solving in real time is simply an
extension of such collaboration. (Nussbaum-Beach & Ritter
Hall, 2012, p.10).
Leadership often will share information as needed with
employees. During times of delivering a difficult message,
leadership often will gather employee feedback

8. In some cases, the corporate hierarchy can affect the level
of engagement of some individuals in a group setting. If
the problem affects the enterprise upper management will
address the concerns.
Facilitators and managers must be prepared for these
obstacles, and develop creative employee engagement
strategies to regulate that behavior accordingly.

9. Business issues can be addressed
 creating an environment of open communication and feedback
 Reviewing of goals and objectives allows employees to take ownership
Relationships strengthened.
 The purpose of social learning within an organization is to create reliance and efficiency through the
shared knowledge and skills sets of the employees
 The open communication further allows employees that possibly would not have an opportunity to
collaborate or share ideas and knowledge to do so.
 Resource Allocation
 Understanding the knowledge and talents of the employees and utilizing them as a resource is a
very important aspect of human resource in social learning.
 Investing in learning platforms or technological programs that create connectivity is another aspect
of resource allocation.

10. CRAFTSY
 Benefits
 Provides competent marketing policy
 Users discounts for courses.
 Good marketing plan
 Excellent service for learning, sharing, and spreading
crafts and hand-made products.
 Limitiations:
 Price
 Repetitive free classes
 Pricey advanced level classes
 Advanced users are in uncomfortable position and
should pay more for improving their skills.
 Applications:
 Devoted to hand-made production
 The website has the habitable catalog of courses,
opportunities to post achievements/projects,
download pdf books, leave comments, and
communicate with others.
 Offers all up-to-date tools for sharing ideas and
projects progress. It has a video player for online
streaming, applications for android and ios allow to
view the site offline and keep notes on interesting
subjects and courses.

11. Pinterest
 Benefits
 Free, flexible and customizable personal gallery
 Unique for each user creating a board
 Pins are images, video, visual content
 Communication between users
 Allows internet searches
 Limitiations:
 Lack of communication capability between users
 Lack of thematic groups, blog discussions, and more
advanced instruments for sharing ideas and inspiration
 Applications:
 A dashboard for collecting ideas
 Great option for co-working and sharing
 Represents a visual gallery website
 Registration is very easy and free
 Users connect their Facebook accounts with a Pinterest's
and collect ideas
 A great platform for collecting and sharing information

12. Diigo
 Benefits
 A great personal research web tool
 Gives users a browser extension, allowing notetaking,
highlights, and bookmarks
 Contain an e-library, Collaborative research tool
 Perfect resource for collaborative collecting of data.
 Community and social site sharing information is very easy
and a intuitive process
 Limitiations:
 Price
 Full potential of Diigo reveals in the premium plan. In
this plan, users get all functions of Diigo, the absence
of limitations, and priority support.
 Applications:
 Multi-targeted
 Applications for the Android and IOS operating system
 Access users' libraries from any device with these systems,
download libraries’ content and view it offline. In addition to
it, the developers announced
 New features for their platform, including additional
applications and functions
 Not only simple cloud-storage service but a platform for
sterling collaborative research

13.  This self-guided manual will clearly define the usefulness
and importance of social media in education and corporate
training environments.
These tools will also provide several developmental,
communication, and collaborative strategies that will
improve the overall morale and productivity of the
company.
Implementing these tools will develop diverse learning
communities, ideas and perspectives for every employee
within the organization.

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