Is Social learning powerful?

With innovative tools and unprecedented technologies being developed on the go, it becomes vital to learn and be updated, not only for freshers but also experts in any field. Learning is assumed to be a cognitive process taking place in a social context, according to Social Learning Theory. This theory also postulates that the learning process occurs through observation and direct instruction even if motor reproduction or direct reinforcement is absent.

Significance of Social Learning

There has been a vast development on all industrial fronts in the world during the last few decades. Business and technology have been evolving on a massive manner, paving way for creation of newer and unheard of devices and processes that help make human beings’ lives better and comfortable. With inventions and improvements come the necessity for learning and acquiring new skills and processes. Social Learning, when applied and conducted in small and easy-to-maintain groups, ensures nurturing productivity and creating innovative opportunities.

Just as a child learns everything by watching others perform different actions, grown up people in the Business and Industry set up can also learn various processes and procedures clearly by watching peers and experts’ performance. Learning by watching others has always been a continuous process, be it in financial sector or technical field.

Benefits of Social Learning

It is well-known fact that technology influences education. Social Learning networks offer one of the best platforms for the next generation learning methods.

• Social Learning Promotes Confidence through Coordination: Learning is always attractive when you learn from peers and partners rather than from elders or professionals. Collaborating on a problem produces different ways to attain practical solutions. Free exchange of ideas and views causes quickly arriving at better results.
• Unorthodox Question-Answer Sessions and Free Conversations:  Social Learning increases transparent communication among all organizational members—facilitating easy and open exchange of comments and views, thus improving knowledge of the employees.
• More Effective than other Methods of Learning: learning from others, in the presence of others, and in groups, provides opportunities for better learning that would otherwise have been impossible. For one-to-one learning process to occur there is no need for any teacher or expert. Just by having someone with more skill or knowledge will do.

Why it is Considered as Better

Happening outside of a formal class room or a planned structure, Social Learning focuses on sharing information, collaboration, and co-operation, thus improving possibility of wide and in depth knowledge being spread across the organization in a practical and fast way.