Improving organizational learning through networked learning

Abstract

Sharing knowledge is one of the most challenging tasks modern companies have to deal with. A vast amount of knowledge exists within organizations; however it is often difficult to find and to judge its value. As a consequence, learning and knowledge building seem to be a lonely activity, separated from everyday work. In contrast, the way younger employees are communicating and learning is strongly peer oriented and collective. The generation that cannot imagine a world without the Internet learns through externalization instead of internalization, using colleagues and experts surrounding them. Sharing knowledge is a heavily familiar thing to them. The following article shows an approach of Networked Learning to link the professional learning experience to the workplace and to knowledge co-creation in a company. Through a tool that was developed for facilitating knowledge sharing and peer-learning the Networked Learning Model shows how this approach can work in practice.