Learning in professional online social network groups
Abstract: This paper details a qualitative research study that examined several instructional designers employed at a major university in Pennsylvania, with the purpose of ascertaining what they learn as being members of a professional online social network group. Preliminary implications from this study focus more on practice than on theory; therefore, further study is required to determine the implications for the theory presented here. Informal learning in the workplace is an observed occurrence, but now with Web 2.0 technologies. An analysis of the data has shown that: 1) Social media is being used as much as email to disseminate information in the workplace; 2) Social media is being used to request answers to questions that would have otherwise been asked to an official outlet, such as a Help Desk; and 3) Social media has helped participants learn about new technologies that they otherwise wouldn’t have researched.
Presider: Jill Jameson, University of Greenwich