The Pluses and Minuses of Social Media and User-generated Content
At the recent eLearning Guild conference in Orlando, I was asked to lead an Espresso Cafe roundtable discussion on a topic of interest.
My topic: The Pluses and Minuses of Social Media and User-generated Content.
I promised folks from my three sessions that I'd post all the results. Here they are:
Plusses:
- Users engaged.
- Relevant to the users.
- Not-distracting, real-world.
- Enables learning when training experts not available.
- Can augment online courses.
- Can capture water-cooler talk (that would have happened anyway).
- Opportunity to debunk inaccuracies.
- Capture institutional knowledge.
- Enables the use of internal experts for informal learning.
- Because informal, can be more comfortable to use for people of different languages and/or cultures. Or different socio-economic groups as well.
- More of an equal exchange. Leveling the playing field. Creating more democratic or egalitarian organizations.
- Novel, interesting.
- Quick feedback on what doesn't work.
- Not corporate-down, so more likely to be attended to without skepticism, jadedness, etc.
- Opportunity to connect with customers.
- Keep up with younger workers coming in.
- Headquarters experts may not be as trusted as those who work on the ground.
- Timely, instant updates.
- Get details from someone who actually does the job.
- Emotional connection.
- Convenience.
- No geographic boundaries.
- RSS feeds enables more targeted info.
- Employees may be able to affect policy.
- Could make us improve our policies for fear of law suits. (Like this: stuff that's posted can be used in court. Organization then has impetus to make changes quickly).
- Questions coming first is a good learning design.
- Can give organization more of a sense of what's going on in the field.
- Cheap.
- Builds community if people are tackling serious issues together.
- Feeling engaged.
- Employees have instant access to experts.
- Another data source.
- Develop connections. Know who knows who AND who knows what.
- Enables virtual relationships.
- More reflective–learners have to reflect to write, to learn deeper.
- Wisdom of the crowd.
- Opens up links to other things. Sets agenda, letting people know that there are other things.
- Generate buzz.
- Smile sheets shared. (Rate my teacher. Rate my professor).
- Best practices are distributed.
- Will make things easier. Info at fingertips.
Minuses:
- Might have to get used to it.
- How do you make it usable?
- Duplicate information.
- How to make pertinent information instantly accessible.
- Opening up floodgates.
- Cultural hurdles and disconnects.
- Competes with other channels of information.
- Perhaps top-level buy-in is required.
- A big distraction. Time user.
- Productivity drain.
- One more thing to do.
- We are still learning how to utilize wisely.
- May need support, maintenance, and the resources thereof.
- Information may not translate to behavior without directed support.
- How to confirm validity of content.
- Info can be used in lawsuits.
- Is the time beneficial?
- Danger of noise. Hard to get to best information.
- Time to create.
- Hard to measure. Maybe we're fooling ourselves.
- Could be incorrect/bad information.
- Could be offensive information.
- Must bring people up-to-speed on technology.
- Can create cliques.
- Time suck–filling up on candy.
- Dangers of giving censors power.
- Do these media self-select different types of people, biasing information gathered?
- Time is our most limited resource. The key organizational-productivity leverage point.
- Often implemented without planning, no marketing, no preparation, etc.
- Sometimes systems have no purpose. So costs/time not parlayed to maximum effect.
- Unnatural groups may not work, may have difficulties.
- One or a few can take over.
- Example: General in military told story of how soldiers posted how to defuse an IED. Info was wrong. 2 died. Enemies can use information too.
- Many see this as the be-all end-all, creating big blind spots, overzealous implementation, poor planning, poor focus.
- Potential permanence of information and/or systems.
- Personal vs. work issues may arise.
Thanks to all the folks who contributed to my discussions. It was kind of hard to hear, but here are the names to thank: Nancy, Leslie, Terra, Pat, Sonya, Betsy, Michael, David, David, Ann, Joyce, Nancy, Chris, Chris, Richard, John, Susan, Paula, John.