Supporting Informal Workplace Learning Through Analytics

Abstract

Due to the rapid changing requirements within the information society and increasing technological progress, individuals and organizations need to adapt continuously. Lifelong learning and especially informal learning are considered to be crucial to keep pace. Technologies are used in almost all areas of life resulting in an increasing amount of available data; thus, in more and more contexts, this information is used for real-time analyses or even forecasts. The major aim of this article is to describe how these analytics approaches can be applied to the context of informal workplace learning. Therefore, the concept of informal learning with its conceptual difficulties is introduced, and the four forms of informal learning are distinguished. With the emerging need for higher skilled and qualified people within the evolving era of the knowledge society, forms of informal and non-formal learning were taken into account in sociopolitical discussions. For that reason, a brief outline of individual and sociopolitical perspectives on informal learning is given. The context of this contribution is informal learning in the workplace which is mostly related to collaborative forms of learning. Accordingly, current research on informal workplace learning with technologies is usually associated with Web 2.0 applications such as social networking services. To demonstrate how educational technologies and especially analytics could support informal workplace learning, a future scenario of informal workplace learning is illustrated concluding with the idea of workplace learning analytics.