Jane Bozarth on "ID 2.0"

In the March issue of T+D, Jane Bozarth gives a great summary of how the role of instructional designers is evolving due to social media. Her thesis is that ID is no longer (primarily) about designing "content" to facilitate learning. "ID 1.0" is old school.

"ID 2.0" (younger cousin of Web 2.0, but no relation to Devo 2.0) is increasingly focused on creating infrastructures that empower people to seek their own answers. It maximizes the role of informal settings and outside-the-classroom interactions. It taps into the "unconscious and unintentional" learning methods that we use in daily life, and brings those to the corporate learning experience.

A traditionalist might well wonder what that looks like in practice, and Bozarth gives some great examples of using social media tools to enable specific instructional goals:

• an online leadership book club to sustain learning beyond the confines of the organization’s structured leadership academy
• a networking group for graduates of a particular course, which can be a great way to support transfer of new learning from the classroom event
• a dynamic, evolving frequently-asked-questions webpage for new hires, created by new hires, or a webpage with tips from top sales staff
• a wiki for group projects
• a site for “critical incident” discussions related to training topics such as customer service or ethics
  ...
• a Twitter hashtag assigned to your training sessions so participants can tweet key points and takeaways to those who were unable to attend.

My favorite thing about that list -- aside from the fact that each item is concrete and easy to imagine in practice -- is her emphasis on specific learning goals: "Simply bolting social-media-based activities onto programs because it’s the trendy thing to do won’t serve anyone well." So true. 

She also gives some good examples of how technology allows IDs to deliver value in new ways:

• Provide real-time access to expertise. Ask the CEO to participate in a social-media-based conversation. Encourage learners to follow experts in the field on Twitter or Google+.
• Invite an expert or author for an online (Skype or virtual classroom-based) chat; prior to the event invite participants to post their questions using a tool such as Wallwisher.
• Provide a wiki for learners to record course notes, providing a searchable, permanent record of their course across time and iterations. All participants then will be able to leave with a virtual course book.
• Provide a virtual field trip to another office or other location via YouTube.
• Draw expertise and work together on a work product via a wiki or document-sharing site.
• Provide real-time updates that go directly into networking or micro-
  blog streams.

After reading the online excerpt here, I'm now really looking forward to getting the full article in my mailbox. 

If you're an instructional designer, does the work that you do fall more into ID 1.0 or 2.0? What about others in your organization?