A fast-evolving business environment and rapidly-changing customer requirements have made on-the-job learning and skill upgradation a necessity for SMEs and MSMEs like never before.
When you are stuck in a situation, like a customer site and need an immediate advice – who would you fall back upon for immediate support? Option A – enroll for a three-month course, Option B – search for an expert or Option C – call a close friend/ peer nearby?
More often than not you will go for Option C, that is, trusting combined wisdom of your friends more than an expert. This is best exemplified by why you read reviews on Amazon, Trip Advisor and constantly look at high-rated apps on the play store?
Experts tend to overawe, have a smaller set of examples or case studies to offer, are largely tunnel visioned, tend to be more generic and often quote from unrelated examples. Peers on the other hand, are more approachable. They offer multiple views and actual real life users’ contextual case studies and are more direct and precise. Quora and Wikipedia are excellent examples of how peers come together and contribute openly.
So, if you are an MSME where each paisa counts, you should seriously look at exploring and establishing peer-based collaborative learning models as a predominant practice to plug the performance gaps and be judicious about the experts that you hire. Moving on to another important discussion point, at the heart of a good collaborative learning approach lies the network, so what about the network?
Building quality network – Two-way , well nurtured & smaller!
Without getting into an analysis of various network-collaborative learning models, simply put – the quality of your collaborative learning practice is directly proportional to the quality of your network. LinkedIn is a fine example of professional networking wherein based on your background and interest your network evolves.
The challenge with a Linkedin type of network, however, is whether the network you have built really contributes at the time of need or it largely remains a passive yet glorious one? One gets too consumed by counting the number of people or big shots that one can rope in his network, not realizing that big shots will never come out good when needed and it is your small and specific set of relevant people who can really contribute at the time of need.
Therefore, you need to identify and build networks carefully, deeply engage and nurture it well so that they come out good as and when you need them. Also, always remember, it is a two-way street, one needs to seek help as well as provide help and contribute. The three types of network that seem to work are: vertical/domain focused industry network, intra-company network or informally setup groups like Whatsapp. So what are some of the examples one can learn from?
Network-collaborative learning spaces – Instant, simultaneous & live action!
One good example for SME/MSME in the IT/ITeS sectors is the company Github . The Github platform lets software developers across the globe to collaborate and solve problems through code sharing, simultaneous code working, that is, two or more developers working on the same code simultaneously and resolving queries through other informal channels.
There are various case studies listed at the site . One such case study is about an organization that built Hubspot – “The conversation around HubSpot code is open and casual-often sprinkled with emoji-and rooted in the company’s feedback culture. Whether they are newly hired or have been around for years, HubSpot developers use GitHub to proactively seek out and receive feedback in informal channels”.
Google shared docs and sheets are another good example of a technology that is quite relevant for almost all SME/MSME sector organization. Google docs or sheets lets simultaneous working on the same document or spreadsheet. So you can distribute work amongst team members sitting at different locations, let them collaborate in a live manner and get a spreadsheet or a document done well in time. If you are a SME, all you need to do is to activate Gmail accounts for all your employees, either free Gmail accounts or get a corporate Gmail account. Google drive, docs, sheets software come free with a Gmail account.
For SME/MSME with good export orientation, Busuu is another interesting language learning platform. This site is about language learning where millions of learners worldwide learn from each other, the writing exercises get corrected by real people in a collaborative manner, the community help each other and make lasting friendships. SMEs that are export focused and have the need to learn/train team members on various languages can use Busuu or similar such sites.
Fast evolving and with widespread acceptance is instant messaging tool Whatsapp/Hike (text based), which is relevant for the entire SME/MSME ecosystem. The ‘broadcast’ feature of Whatsapp is what makes it so exciting.
It allows one to send a message to all the group members at once, at a click of a button. For example, you can inform your entire team about a programming bug that is holding a software release or inform sales team across multiple geographies, about a crucial pricing update instantly and simultaneously.
While text-based messenger facilitates most convenient and instant messaging, video-based, free webinar platforms such as Google hangout or Skype and voice-based free telecall platforms such as Sabsebolo are quite relevant and necessary for deeper engagement and discussion.
Don’t let the challenges ruin your party!
It is difficult to find negatives about the collaborative learning platforms and approaches, but you need to be watchful and circumspect about the challenges of the collaborative medium. According to a collaborative learning study by Lee & Bonk, some of the challenges are cultural diversity, geographical distance and time zone differences, generation gaps and age differences in the acceptance of collaboration tools, lack of learners’ awareness about effective collaboration processes and strategies, lack of learners’ technological skills and knowledge about collaboration tools, etc.
You would do good to plan the rollout and introduction of collaborative learning being sensitive to these challenges. Also, there are frameworks such as conversational analysis and statistical discourse analysis that will help you examine collaborative learning processes, but the idea should be to start simple and look at these approaches only after you have achieved some kind of a critical mass on the usage front.
Source: The Economic Times
