Bieke Schreurs

Visualizing Informal Professional Development Networks Building a Case for Learning Analytics in the Workplace

Informal learning has become an important driver for professional development and workplace learning. Yet, however powerful informal learning may be, there is a problem when it comes to making it a real asset within organizations: Informal learning activities are spontaneous and mostly invisible to others. The aim of this study is to develop a method that helps raise awareness about these activities using a learning analytics approach. This method concentrates on detecting and visualizing informal professional social networks and finding ways in which their presence and accessibility can be improved. This study shows that the presented methodology is a promising research-driven intervention. With this methodology we can detect multiple (isolated) networks in organizations, connect ideas, and facilitate value creation. Using this approach, organizations can link with existing informal networks of practice and unlock their potential for organizational learning by giving them a voice and making their results more explicit within the organization.

Visualizing social learning ties by type and topic: rationale and concept demonstrator

Social Learning Analytics (SLA) are designed to support students learning through social networks, and reflective practitioners engage in informal learning through a community of practice. This short paper reports work in progress to develop SLA motivated specifically by Networked Learning Theory, drawing on the related concepts and tools of Social Network Analytics and Social Capital Theory, which provide complementary perspectives onto the structure and content of such networks. We propose that SLA based on these perspectives needs to devise models and visualizations capable of showing not only the usual SNA metrics, but the types of social tie forged between actors, and topic-specific subnetworks. We describe a technical implementation demonstrating this approach, which extends the Network Awareness Tool by automatically populating it with data from a social learning platform SocialLearn. The result is the ability to visualize relationships between people who interact around the same topics.

Analysing Learning Ties to Stimulate Continuous Professional Development in the Workplace

In this chapter we look at Networked Learning in the context of the continuous professional development (CDP) of teachers. CDP in the workplace is difficult to analyse and evaluate because it is often invisible to others and even the learners themselves may not be aware of the learning that occurs. The knowledge acquired can be tacit and the learning activities are usually informal. Therefore a great need is recognised in research, policy and practice for tools that can analyse, value and support CDP activities in the workplace. In our research on professional development networks amongst teachers, we developed a methodology to be used as a reflection tool, to give professionals opportunities to gain insights into their own CDP activities and that of others in their organisation. This chapter illustrates how the methodology—founded on theories of Networked Learning, Social Network Theory, Social Capital and Communities of Practice—gives insights into the structure of CDP networks, the learning content and the learning context of the workplace. In addition, the methodology assists teachers with concrete artefacts to support in how to better organise the learning environment in the workplace to support their CDP. The methodology holds the potential to be adopted and plugged into the virtual world to detect, connect and investigate networked learning activities. These findings have recommendations for current research in Networked Learning about solutions and methodologies to gather and analyse relational data on learning to create a holistic view of peoples off-line and online CDP in education, work and society.