Written by Man is a brilliant and social animal by nature; therefore, social interactions are crucial for our development at every stage of our life. Learning is all about the interconnections we have in all aspects of our life too. We communicate, talk to people, listen to what they are saying, and then take actions accordingly. Social learning is a theory of learning procedure that occurs in a group rather than individual learning. Sometimes it leads to a change in attitudes, behavior, and the outcome of that behavior. It portrays that new social behavior is learned by observing and imitating the behavior of others. Today, to amplify the success of an organization, truly effective and engaging learning experiences.
Theory of social learning
The theory of social learning was proposed and developed by Canadian-American psychologist Albert Bandura. It postulates that learning is a coherent and cognitive process involving conscious intellectual activity such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering. People learn from one another in a social context purely through imitation, observation, direct instruction, and modeling.
Suppose we consider social aspects such as watching, listening and doing, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning ways to adopt new behaviors and concepts. Not only that, we retain that knowledge and apply them to explore new learnings and challenges every day. This is known as social learning. This does not put forward traditional learning models, engaging common sense, practical experiences. It takes place either in the absence of direct motor reproduction or reinforcement. When compared to traditional formal learning methods, social learning aims to interact with peers to gather skills. The studies suggest that a person’s 70% learning occurs through on-the-job experiences, 20% via their peers, and 10% in traditional classroom-based learning.
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Importance:
In a traditional learning atmosphere, maximum people can remember a few percentages (10% of the information taught. The main goal of social learning is to drive one’s knowledge retention. Unlike traditional models with low recollection rates, social learning supports learning in working environments. It allows the learners to pull knowledge and skills from experts within the company instead of forceful learning like a formal system. In other words, humans learn by example and via direct experiences. Therefore, about 70% of companies increase their focus on social learning to gather knowledge across organizations.
Ways to incorporate Social Learning Activities Online:
Nowadays, to maintain our personal and professional lives, various tools viz. Learning Management Tools, including social networks and various software, can communicate and interact with people. Backing up with e-learning, social learning is the new standard, which will lead to positive growth in business and organizational performance. It becomes an informal community where learners collaborate, share their ideas and thoughts to design a project, create something, and solve problems.
By hosting a live seminar
Here the learners were given a chance to speak about the topics and take turns; the main goal is mutual benefit and collaboration. In addition, learners have the power to ask questions and interact with their peers.
By engaging with small groups
The group needs to be small enough (15 to 20 trainees per session) to learn more constructively to facilitate effective interaction. If the class is too big, one employee might get overlooked and cannot converse. Here, each online learner will receive personal attention and get to know each other as peers.
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By running group collaboration projects
Another way of incorporating social learning activities is to encourage collaboration projects or documents. Trainees must be invited to perform a particular task and finish it together. They should jointly make decisions, remain up-to-date, and make real-time changes in the project viz. structure, format, style, and content.
By initiating a YouTube Q&A session
The basic idea of social learning gets employees to talk to each other in visual learning. It becomes easier for shy or intimidated candidates to speak out in class when learning is in the form of a video. Pay a relevant clip, ask questions and initiate discussions.
By scheduling one-on-one sessions
Individual sessions between online instructors and attendees should be scheduled to ask sensitive questions and review their overall progress. When learning in a group, trainees may not know about their self-capability to perform individually. Therefore, a mentoring program where employees can pair up with more experienced peers may be conducted.
By scheduling one-on-one sessions
Individual sessions between online instructors and attendees should be scheduled to ask sensitive questions and review their overall progress. When learning in a group, trainees may not know about their self capability to perform individually. Therefore, a mentoring program where employees can pair up with more experienced peers may be conducted.
Conclusion:
By adopting social learning, organizations can attain employee satisfaction, improve engagement, and attach to the company itself. In addition, social learning promotes constructivism where learners can become teachers, improve communication in the workplace, collaborate organically, especially in an e-learning environment, and accelerate new hires to their peers in an organization. Thus, it is concluded that social learning acts as a bridge between behavioral and cognitive theory because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.
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