I’m John Kleeman, Chairman of Questionmark, and in this guest blog entry, I’d like to share a liberating idea that is sweeping the world of corporate learning.
Once upon a time, if you needed to learn a task, you embarked on a formal training course, learned the new skill or knowledge and came back to your job to apply it. Formal training still has an important place, but with the Internet age, knowledge workers are expected to learn new things more often and more easily and there are new ways of learning. Increasingly, businesses understand that learning and development really works most effectively in a 70+20+10 model:
In the 70+20+10 model (see here for a deeper explanation Eric Shepherd), we recognize that in real life:
- 70% of learning comes from “Experience” and doing – real life and on-the-job experiences
- 20% of learning comes from “Others” – feedback, observing, listening, and working with others
- 10% of learning looks back from “Study” – formal learning and training
If you look back at what you’ve learned in the last year, you might find this model applies to what you’ve learned. If not, I’d encourage you to think about your own learning in this way, as it’s very empowering – you learn every day and are in control. Don’t get too stuck on the precise numbers – it might be 60% rather than 70%, or 20% rather than 10%, but it’s the idea that counts.
You might well be thinking, “What’s this got to do with SharePoint?”
Well, in organizations with SharePoint deployed (which is most corporations nowadays), SharePoint is a key place in which much of the 90% of learning that is not formal learning happens.
Learning experience and doing may happen in SharePoint or outside it depending on what your job role is, but SharePoint’s enterprise search – the window into the rest of the organization’s resources – is a huge boon for this learning.
Where SharePoint really makes a difference is in learning through others. SharePoint’s social capabilities – blogs, wikis, discussion threads, and the new social features to rate pages, tag information, and find expert colleagues – enable huge amounts of informal learning to occur in any organization with a well-filled SharePoint system. With SharePoint 2007, much of this was possible, if clunky, but with SharePoint 2010, it’s much more engaging – and learning from others can really take place effectively.
My title is a bit tongue in cheek. SharePoint is just one of the ways informal learning happens, albeit one of the most important in the enterprise. But I hope you enjoyed this introduction to SharePoint and 70+20+10.
If you want to learn more about SharePoint’s role in learning, education, training, and compliance, please check out my SharePoint and Assessment blog. If you’re interested in using assessments (tests, quizzes, surveys, and exams) in your SharePoint system, read Questionmark’s whitepaper, Learning and Assessment on SharePoint (free with registration).
