Social Media's Impact on Training Digital Age Learners

I’m a teacher by nature, nurture and choice. And I'm concerned about the state of training among hourly team members in foodservice (in particular) and everywhere (in general).

When you 1) assess the creative new teaching methods being used in progressive K-12 schools, 2) witness the dynamic training being deployed in other industries and 3) research the collaborative learning potential of both social media and Web 2.0, you get a sickening sense that we’re falling fast behind in the race to engage the best and brightest young people.

So allow me to suggest the possibility of creating a learning environment in which trainees teach, trainers learn, everyone collaborates and continuous curriculum improvement is done LIVE as the course is being taught--not afterwards via ineffective “evaluation” forms. Welcome to the Brave New Classroom.

For nearly 500 years--since the first days of the Gutenberg press--information and media has been exclusively linear and hierarchal. Content was designed by the creator and consumed by the student. The consumer (trainee) had either scant or considerable additional insight on the subject but had limited or no options for contributing to or improving upon the creator’s (trainer’s) content, short of writing a letter.

The first iteration of the Web 1.0 (1995-2005) was also a one-way medium; massive amounts of content were created for consumption, not collaboration. But today’s Internet (so-called version 2.0) has reversed five centuries of information delivery and become a robust dialogue instead of a monologue. The web is now a conversation, where creators and consumers interact, collaborate and continuously update or improve content in real-time (e.g. Wikipedia). The iPod generation's internet experience drives its world-view. So it’s logical to presume that workforce training is an ideal target for creator/consumer collaboration. (As author Clay Shirky has pointed out, prior to the Internet, the last invention that had any real impact on the way people sat down and talked together was the table. An apt metaphor for our industry since the table resides at its heart.)

And maybe that’s what the Brave New Classroom is: a place where training is a conversation, not a lecture; a dialogue, not a monologue, a place where you learn what you need and then share what you know. When you consider the widespread appeal of Social Media among our hourly team members (84% of young adults between 19 and 21 are active users of Social Media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter et. al.), you begin to understand the cultural and paradigm shift that’s occurring.

The newest generation of learners/trainees are not content to merely consume; they also want to produce, contribute and share. So why not leverage and replicate that behavior in the training classroom in order to better engage our trainees in the learning? If the web is now a conversation, why can’t training be too? This new perspective is disquieting to many trainers because it threatens their sense of entitled hierarchy, command, and control. Yet the common arguments against involving the trainee in content creation and critique are the paltry “We know better than you” or “We earned the role of teacher so listen up.” This paternalistic approach and mindset is dangerous in a business where nearly 70% of its employees are under the age of 25.

While the notion of allowing the student to contribute to, be critical of, or improve upon training content as its being delivered (or within an hour after) may sound foreign or threatening now, this is not something the industry will grow out of, but rather something it must—and will--grow into.The conversational Web and Social Media does not just make training better, they create a better way to train.

Here’s the thing, when you train to a process all thinking stops. Our young crew members don’t want steps to memorize, they want problems to solve. We need to help teach them how to think and not just tell them what to do. We need to involve the trainee and their experience in the training process as it unspools, not just afterwards in a lame “evaluation form.”

How do we do that? In another article!

Interested in learning more about training adult learners in the Digital Age? Visit the Sullivision.com store and check out our best-selling DVD 60 Second Lessons in Leadership.