#Goals

Happy Saturday from Hawaiʻi nei! This week has been one of those where I crawl through coursework rather than check assigned tasks off one after the other. My new thing is completing some of our assigned articles on the bike or in between sets at the gym. Not ideal, but I move through it, and I like to think the extra airflow to my brain is helpful 😅.

Not to say that readings havenʻt been interesting! When Dennen et al. (2020) applied the NKA framework to content on social networking sites (SNS) to determine its capacity to identify instances of learning, they mentioned that it broadly corresponds to the 4C framework by Milligan et al. (2014). So this nerd decided to check out the article, “Workplace learning in informal networks” by Milligan et al. (2014).

In studying the informal learning that takes place in workplace environments, Milligan et al. (2014) have articulated 4 behaviors individuals use when engaging with their personal learning network (PLN): consume, create, connect and contribute. They explain that these are the behaviors individuals use when self-regulating as they relate with people and resources in their PLN, self-regulation having been identified as a key function individuals must be able to do if they are to learn in a constantly changing, informal setting. Milligan et al. (2014) go on to identify specific learning tools (e.g. Twitter, Diigo etc) suited for each behavior.

I thought it was particularly interesting when Milligan et al. (2014) highlight that one learning behavior least supported by existing online tools is goal setting. They argue that with goal setting being a ʻsocial objectʻ around which people can connect, share resources and engage in other learning activities around, finding a way for organizations to make goal setting more social could open-up more learning opportunities for employees (Milligan et al., 2014).

At a broad level, I thought this related to what Dennen et al. (2020) shared in explanation of some of the challenges they faced with being unable to differentiate learning instances without knowing user-intention. If a personʻs goal for engaging in a certain behavior on an SNS was public or shared, they could better assess if a particular learning activity occurred.

References

Dennen, V. P., Word, K., Adolfson, D., Arechavaleta, V., He, D., Hsu, C.-W., Hur, J., Jung, D., Kent, H., Russell, A., & Toth, K. (2020). Using the networked knowledge activities framework to examine learning on social networking sites (Links to an external site.). In P. Kommers & G. C. Peng (Eds.), Proceedings of the international conference on Web-based Communities and Social Media 2020 (pp. 165-172). IADIS Press. 

Milligan, C., Littlejohn, A., & Margaryan, A. (2014). Workplace Learning In Informal Networks. Journal Of Interactive Media In Education, 2014(1), 6–. https://doi.org/10.5334/2014-06