Why Should We Participate in Social Learning?

We live in a world of busybodies and attention-seekers. In fact – we can go so far as to presume that each one of us presents these characteristics at some time or other. We like to watch and by watching we learn. Social learning is a term that is not new to psychology, and it is gaining drive in the world of learning in other areas besides psychology.  

In the 1960s, a psychologist called Albert Bandura established a theory called Social Learning Theory. He theorized that people learned from observing others.  Today, the term ‘social learning’ is used to describe learning that happens via social media. The social learning we know today quite subtly reverberates with Bandura’s Social Learning theory where learning happens by watching and learning from others on social media sites.

The popularity of social media sites validates the fact that we are busybodies and attention seekers and that we are interested in sharing sometimes too much knowledge from letting people know what we are eating on a particular day, to sharing the latest news or a million selfies.  We also collect information by reading Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, or Flickr.  Knowledge sharing has been happening at the grass root levels forever.  It was once thought that learning took place within the four walls of a training or classroom but real learning is what happens in the break room, or around the water cooler, anywhere like-minded people get together to share information.  Today social media sites are where real learning takes place.  

Social learning is happening all around us. Our personnel are learning even without our knowledge; let them go and learn without our intervention and they will learn successfully. Leave social learning alone and let it happen, and it will continue to surprise us.