"Learning is inherently conversational"A painted sign outside the 'Darts Central' club in San Francisco invites people to join: "Learn to play. Join today". If you are someone who has never played darts before why would you consider joining a club to learn the sport instead of doing it at home?
This simple example can give us an indication of the future of learning and how powerful collaborative learning spaces will be for knowledge workers. First of all, curious and restless people (who usually earn a living as knowledge workers) always have topics of interest that they want to expand their knowledge of. In addition, it is a proven fact that meeting other people with the same interests and having conversations about it accelerates learning. If we agree that the importance of learning is only going to increase in the next years, here we can make the case we will see an increase in the amount of 'learning clubs': physical spaces that are dedicated to collaborative learning (as opposed to formal learning).
Clubs that focus on physical activities are plentiful and people that like to engage in such practices have plenty of choices: health-focused people have spas, gyms, soccer fields, public parks, beaches, etc. ; Cooking-focused people have markets, kitchens, public bbq grills, picnic, etc.
But what about people that want to focus on knowledge activities? What are some of the places that bring people together around a specific topic and facilitates the happening of conversations? Some examples: Dungeons & Dragons fans meet in basements of board game shops, or around people's dinning tables. People attend conferences to hotels in Las Vegas or at local hangouts but these places are not permanent and they are only useful for one-off events. Cafes are generic enough that they can accommodate any conversation-driven activity that would lead to learning something new.
So if there is no generic and flexible place for such activities, what could be done about this? How would you enable a place where people with similar knowledge-based interests could gather? Where associations live today? Do they have a private space that they use solely for collective learning? Is there an opportunity to create spaces where people and associations can come together and make an ephemeral use of it? What should be the role of the people running this space? Like the darts club, there should be some basic learning and a good amount of social gluing so people can meet. Can people work from there? Is this a members-only club? What is the ultimate goal of that kind of space? Is it to connect people to knowledge by means of other people (peers, facilitators, etc.) and intense use of information technologies?
How much people pay for a gym today? Would people be willing to pay a monthly fee to maintain brain fitness? Is there such thing as a 'knowledge gym'? a place where you can go and keep fresh the body of knowledge you have and acquire new skills and capabilities? What are the components you would need? Is it just access to content? Meeting the right people and discussing the topics themselves? Knowledge matchmaking maybe? Could you get a personal knowledge trainer (or learning coach?) that points at the essential activities you need to meet your learning goals?
A physical gym can be very individualistic (you control what you are doing at all times and there is no need for negotiation with anyone else) and team sports are also very physically regulated about what can be done and what not. So what about a team learning sport? What kind of values and etiquettes should regulate the exchange of ideas? What kind of model interactions you can propose to people so they can interact in a way that is desirable and beneficial to all involved parties?
People who want to date have created their own ways of interacting: from speed dating (meeting someone for 5 minutes and follow up in case they like the other person) to start-with-coffee-and-if-I-like-him-we-will-go-for-dinner technique so you are not stuck for a full dinner with someone you know for sure you won't like to date in the future. Can we apply the same engagement models to learning? Can I chat for 5 minutes with someone about something I want feedback on? Can you teach me about this topic for 30 minutes? Can you teach me and my friends for 1 hour about this topic you know a lot about?
If these exchange happens, how do people get rewarded? Should it be a point system? should knowledge be quantified so it is part of a bartering system? the more you give, the more points you have, which later you can use to get access to new knowledge? It could function as a real-world manifestation of a knowledge system like Quora: the more credits you get, the more questions you can ask to people.
An effective learning method balances between social and personal, or more specifically between socializing knowledge (collaborative) and reflecting on knowledge (personal). You need quiet time to reflect about things and internalize. You also need social time to contrast your opinions and your thinking with others' to cancel biases. How can we encourage people to balance this two learning modes?
This obviously presents more questions than answers right now but if the knowledge-based economy is going to increase its share of the total economy in the near future, someone will have to figure out how to serve the needs of all these knowledge workers that are constantly looking for learning experiences as a way to achieve personal growth.
Will we soon see 'learning clubs' in the major knowledge cities of the world?
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