Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance

by Jay Cross

Overview

Most learning on the job is informal. This book offers advice on how to support, nurture, and leverage informal learning and helps trainers to go beyond their typical classes and programs in order to widen and deepen heir reach. The author reminds us that we live in a new, radically different, constantly changing, and often distracting workplace. He guides us through the plethora of digital learning tools that workers are now accessing through their computers, PDAs, and cell phones.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780787981693
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	11/10/2006
Series:	Pfeiffer Essential Resources for Training and HR Professionals Series
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jay Cross coined the term eLearning. He has championed informal learning since designing the first business degree program offered by the University of Phoenix. He served as long-term CEO of eLearning Forum. An internationally acclaimed strategist, speaker, and designer of corporate performance systems, Jay is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School.

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Table of Contents

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

PART ONE: CONCEPTS.

Chapter 1: Out of Time.

Chapter 2: A Natural Way of Learning.

Chapter 3: Show Me The Money.

Chapter 4: Emergence.

Chapter 5: Connecting.

Chapter 6: Meta-Learning.

PART TWO: LEARNERS.

Chapter 7: Learners.

PART THREE: CASES.

Chapter 8: Envisioning.

Chapter 9: Conversation.

Chapter 10: Communities.

Chapter 11: Unblended.

Chapter 12: The Web.

Chapter 13: Grokking.

Chapter 14: Unconferences.

PART FOUR: JUST DO IT.

Chapter 15: Just Do It.

Appendix A: Informal Learning in a Nutshell.

Appendix B: Where Did The 80 Percent Come From?

Appendix C: Institute for Research On Learning.

Glossary.

Resources.

References.

Index.

About The Author.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The key to the twenty-first century will be in learning how to leverage informal learning for us all. Jay provides us with an evocative road map to how we can do this."
—John Seely Brown, coauthor, Social Life of Information, and former chief scientist, Xerox Corp.

"Informal learning is the perfect theme for exploring the next wave of our field. Jay Cross continues to push our thinking on the transformational forces of knowledge, learning, and performance. A must read!"
—Elliott Masie, founder, The MASIE Center's Learning CONSORTIUM

"In an outsourced, automated age, informal learning has become the key to high performance and personal fulfillment. And now Jay Cross has written the very best primer on this woefully neglected topic. This is a book for both sides of your brain!"
—Daniel H. Pink, author, A Whole New Mind

"Jay Cross provides an important challenge for us all—to move our focus from the classroom to the workplace, and in doing so, reframe what we do in ways that much more closely reflect how people actually learn and perform on the job. Informal Learning has profound implications for how we—from trainers to chief learning officers and from frontline business managers to executives—must rethink our ideas and practices, not in some distant future, but right now."
—Marc J. Rosenberg, management consultant, and author, Beyond E-Learning

"This book shows how informal learning experiences connect us with information, help us share ideas, and obtain new perspectives, and even help us create new knowledge together."
—Ellen Wagner, director, Worldwide eLearning, Adobe Systems

"The one sentence from this book that hit me like a train: 'Most corporations invest their training budget where it will have the least impact.' Wow. In an era of demanding ROI, shrinking budgets, and the insistence to do more with less, think of the impact that informal learning could have if it could truly focus learning and efforts for maximum impact."
—Mark Oehlert, learning strategy architect, Booz Allen Hamilton

Editorial Reviews

"I was an unlikely candidate to buy into Jay Cross's theory that formal learning is largely ineffective. But my curiosity got the better of me, and I found myself totally engrossed in his out-of-the-ordinary thinking on learning." (T+D Magazine, February 2007)

From the Publisher