1. Self-Guided Social Media Training Manual A Training Guide on Social Media for Adult Educators
Nicole May Tang,
Brittany Morneweg,
Catherine V. Harris
AET/562
November 10, 2015
Instructor: Dr. Gretchen Meyers

2. Introduction This presentation will go over Social learning
Barriers to effective social learning
Ensuring effective workforce training
Problem solving through social learning
Strengthening relationships
Social media tool: Yelp
This manual serves to present information for educators of adults. It will advise of some of the pitfalls associated with teaching adults in a social learning environment. It provides resolutions to help adults learn in uniquely, innovative social settings. It will also expand the role of social learning as it correlates to barriers to effective social learning, ensuring effective workforce training, problem solving through social learning, and strengthening relationships. Lastly, this manual goes over the social media tool Yelp.
("Online Learning Insights", n.d).

3. Social Learning Four Principles of social learning: Oriented
reflective
Interactive
Multi-actor ship
Importance of Social Learning
Social learning holds high importance when it comes to adult education. According to Strengths and Limitations of Social Learning as a Key Concept for Adult Education social learning has four principles that are action and experience oriented, reflective, interactive, and multi-actor ship (Wildemeersch, 1997). The first principle of social learning is action and experience directedness. Going over how the social environment changes the student experience and can assist adult learners with being more engaged because it forces them to take action and be a part of the experience and learn both formally and informally. The second principle, critically reflectiveness, connects to problem-solving in the social learning process. This principle requires adult learners to be interactive and communicate ways to resolve issues or tackle an assignment. The third principle is the interactive and dialogical principle that is the part of social learning where the team presupposes the collaboration of different participants. This principle helps the adult learner to communicate their understanding that helps them retain a holistic view of information. The last principle is multi-actor orientation, which is the part that causes the adult learner to feel social responsibility to the team and give them a sense of meaning to why they should learn and complete their work.
("Online Learning Insights", n.d).

4. Barriers to Effective Social Learning
Things that can hinder social learning though social media:
Student skill set/ technical skills
Student interest in social media
Students not knowing skills of other students
("Cornerstone", 2015).
Barriers to Effective Social Learning
As a facilitators of adults, it is important to be aware of the potential drawbacks to social learning. When a curriculum is developed with requirements that include social media application and e-learning platforms, it is important to know the limitations and skills of your students. Lack of awareness of their skills and their interests can hinder the educational development of the students and their success. To overcome this boundary, a facilitator can perform pre-assessments to survey their audience. Gathering this information will help facilitators get to know more about their participants so they may scaffold important information regarding the technology that is used in the course or training. Instructors should consider altering the mediums and channels used to disseminate information based on the data collected from the pre-assessments (Bilandzic & Foth, 2013).
Another barrier to social learning stems from the students not knowing the skills their fellow colleagues bring to the table. This obstacle also correlates to student apprehension on approaching strangers (Bilandzic & Foth, 2013). These potential hurdles are overcome by allowing the participants opportunities to socialize and get to know each other. Encouraging students to join a Facebook group or follow certain icebreaker tweets on Twitter can help the student get to know their classmates on a social level, allowing them to feel more comfortable to approach each other in a social learning environment. These opportunities can help proactively prevent ethical dilemmas, such as bullying, which will be discussed later in the manual.

5. Ensuring Effective Workforce training
Social media allows for adult educators to:
collect data on information needed by employees/ trainees
collect data on success of training
Improve training based off of data
Develop specific polices for social media in the work environment
Ensuring Effective Workforce Training
With social learning comes technology and social media. Despite some of the barriers, social learning has the potential to play a crucial role in effective workforce training. Workforce development helps individuals within an organization and the organization grow in conjunction with the global and economic demands; while also ensuring that effective and efficient training programs are in place. Social learning promotes global interaction and raising awareness about topics important to the individuals involved. By utilizing technology applications and social media platforms, organization leaders and trainers can use data collected from social learning interactions to locate gaps within the company, develop plans to move the company and individuals forwards, and then create the training needed (Developing, 2013). Before implementing social learning opportunities, an organization should develop policies that are carefully crafted by a small task force. Once they can evaluate the effectiveness and iron out all the details, the policy will be presented to the organization as a whole (Lutze, n.d.). The dissemination of the information about the social media policy will include training for the technologies involved to promote an effective social learning environment.
("Getting Smart", 2013).

6. Problem Solving Through Social Learning
Increase comprehension/ effective training
Ability to Collaborate on projects in online format
Employee bonding
Changes employee perception of problem
Online learning environment
Training assessment
Videos
Mock scenarios
Social Learnings Role in Addressing Business Problems
Social learning has an impacting role on how people connect, communicate and learn. As social learning relates to businesses and an employees’ ability to associate and learn in a virtual setting, social learning is the assembly that allows teams to collaborate on projects even though some employees may work from home while others are working at the office. On the issue of working together in teams, social learning is the bonding agent that connects knowledge with practical business sharing solutions. What is more, social learning has the potential to become the chief enabler allowing organizations to share knowledge in broader contexts (Sparta, 2012). This reaping of best practices serves to identify challenges that may otherwise, remain hidden and unable to be spotlighted to allow further resolutions (Sparta, 2012). Because learning at work is more about learning from as it is learning to, social media has the potential to broaden collaboratively and on a continual basis (Shepherd, 2011).
How Social Learning Affects an Employee’s Perception of a Problem
Collaborating to discuss, visit, and learn is an old as the stars. Using face-to-face meetings to cultivate learning in an online environment adds contemporary proportions to the skill of socializing and collaborating (Bingham, 2010).
Examples of how social learning affects employees’ perception of a problem is through the benefit of online training assessments, videos, or mock scenarios. Social guided media training is an influential way in which to offer different forms of resolve with the benefit of social media interaction that provide illustrations that specify various solutions. Organizations that understand the magnitude and benefits of remaining in accord with social learning along with its benefit provide more value and respect to its employees. Further, these organizations that continue expanding the social networking competency of its employees reap the value related to employee collaboration. These are the businesses that will experience increased efficiency and internal employee satisfaction overall (Bingham, 2010).
("Slide Share", n.d).

7. Strengthening relationships
Accountability and Policy Considerations
Establishing Employees Perception of Hierarchy
Fostering Richer Relationships with Staff that have Diverse Skill Sets
Accountability and Policy Considerations
The policy for social media and social learning will be created by a small task force with employees who advocate for social media, members of the technology department, and individuals from the legal department. Together they will research the benefits, identify risks, and develop solutions for risk avoidance (Hicks, 2011). They will also be in charge of collaborating with leadership to develop the guidelines and trainings for the implementation. The policies will include detailed information on what is acceptable, expected, and legal in relation to usage of social learning through social media. Once employees have the guidelines, attended the required trainings, and passed the assessments they will be required to sign a memorandum of understanding. This holds the organization to be accountable, stating that they provided the employees all the information and the employees are now responsible and aware of the disciplinary steps if they should violate the policy. All employees, including the task force and leadership will be required to sign the memorandum of understanding.
Establishing Employees Perception of Hierarchy
By the task force and leadership also having to attend trainings and sign the memorandum of understanding, all employees are equally held accountable and responsible for their actions and information they choose to share on social media spaces. The opportunity for all employees, top down and bottom up, to engage and get to know each other through social learning will also help promote positive perceptions and relationships within the work place. Top down communication is not always perceived well and information can also be relayed or received incorrectly; however, with social media individual employees can research information and reach out to the appropriate parties with ease (Sparta, 2012). They can also share their own expertise in an environment that promotes respect and allows information to be widely distributed for optimal exposure and feedback (Sparta, 2012).
Fostering Richer Relationships among Staff with Diverse Skill Sets
To summarize, social learning within an organization reinforces the organizations goals and objectives, increases positive feedback from assessments, allows for collaboration with all levels of employees from each department, holds employees responsible, and breaks barriers between leadership and their employees. With these positive attributes, it is clear to see how social learning fosters richer relationships. Social media usage considering social learning allows employees to work together in many various ways: forums allow employees to be able to discuss and share ideas with leadership and colleagues, blogs can display more personalized information about an individual so employees can informally get to know each other better, and podcasts can provide opportunities for any employee to reach out and promote a sense of community not established before (Sparta, 2012). All employees are diverse, with different demographical backgrounds, educational opportunities, and employment history; social learning empowers employees to reach out to learn from others, share with them, and build meaningful, beneficial relationships.

8. Social Media Tool
Yelp

9. Yelp!
What is Yelp?
Yelp Is a Social Media site that was founded in 2004
That is can be used online or on a mobile app
Public Directory
Review site
Brings word of mouth online
Way for business to advertise
Yelp is a social media site that was founded in This is a online and mobile social media source that is a public directory and review site. This application brings words of mouth online and affects how consumers make buying decisions. Yelp is also a great platform for business to advertise and market themselves to a target market.
("Yelp", 2015).

10. Yelp! Review & information
Yelp reviews:
Restaurants
Bars
Shopping
Home Services
Beauty & Spa
Health & Medical
Auto services
Yelp information:
Specials & deals
Happy Hours
Events
Local Flavors & businesses
Arts & Entertainment
Other Yelpers profiles
Yelp allows users to review a number of different categories such as restaurants, bars, shopping, home services, beauty and spa, health and medical, and auto services. On top of creating reviews Yelp users can get information on specials and deals in their area, happy hours, events, local flavors, business, arts and entertainment, and other yelp users profiles.

11. Yelp!: Users Yelpers can create a free profile that allows them to:
Write reviews
Find events
Talk to other yelpers
Post photos
("Yelp", 2015).
Yelp users can create free profiles that allow them to write reviews, find events, talke to other Yelpers, but they can also post photos.

12. Sample Reviews: Yelp User Profile: Business user profile:

13. Benefits and limitations
Free profile for users
Free profile for businesses
Word of mouth online
Way to help yelpers make buying decisions
Way for business to market to target audience
Biased reviews
Company cannot control or regulate reviews
Bad press for companies
Companies can give themselves reviews to boost ratings
Yelp has many benefits including that there is a free profile for both reviews and business, it brings word of mouth online and helps consumers make buying decisions based off of real life reviews. A benefit of Yelp to a business is that it is another platform for a business to market themselves to a target audience and generate more business. Yelp does have limitations in that it is open to businesses that can give themselves good reviews to boost their ratings; furthermore, reviewers can have biased results that may negatively affect business.

14. conclusion
In conclusion the manual goes over the importance of social learning and its benefits such as strengthening relationships and problem solving. It also details the potential barriers of social media and how an adult educator can combat those to ensure effective workforce training.
In conclusion the manual goes over the importance of social learning and its benefits such as strengthening relationships and problem solving. It also details the potential barriers of social media and how an adult educator can combat those to ensure effective workforce training.

15. References
Bilandzic, M., & Foth, M. (2013). Libraries as coworking spaces. Library Hi Tech, 31(2), doi:
Bingham, T. (2010). The new social learning: A guide to transforming organizations. San Diego, CA: Cognella, Inc.
Cornerstone. (2015). Retrieved from problem#.VkEtZlKhqbE
Developing a Skilled, Well-Prepared Workforce What is workforce development in region 8? East Alabama Workforce Investment Network. Retrieved from

16. References
Getting Smart. (2013). Retrieved from school-improvement/
Lutze, H. (n.d.). Building a corporate social media function. FiftyLessons. Retrieved from fac48bd046c81c8bedb9a0.html
Online Learning Insights. (n.d). Retrieved from
Shepherd, C. (2011). Does social media have a place in workplace learning? Strategic Direction, 27(2), 3-4. doi:
Slide Share. (n.d). Retrieved from online-learners-with-usalearns

17. References
Sparta, P. (2012). Getting the most out of social learning: Utilizing social media in the workplace. Development and Learning in Organizations, 26(2), doi:
Wildemeersch, D. (1997). Education-line. Retrieved from
Yelp. (2015). Retrieved from