I bet you’d benefit from social learning

Now that the school year is in full swing for our kids, it’s is a great time to reflect on our own learning. One way to direct our reflection is by thinking about how our children learn best.  

Young people may love learning about math more than literature—or science more than speech. But whatever their favorite subject, it’s a sure bet that they like having friends in their classes. When that happens, they can bounce ideas off their peers, check to see which homework assignments were assigned the day they had to miss class, and get feedback on the first draft of their English essay.

Since you’re in credit unions, my guess is that you love learning about your specialty in the industry—whether that’s marketing, operations, payments or straight-up leadership. Are you like your kids in that your learning is enhanced when you do it in the company of trusted peers? 

Our experience would suggest that you are. And that’s why CUES incorporates a great deal of “social learning” into its offerings.

While there’s a whole theory of social learning in the field of education, what I’m talking about when I refer to social learning is connecting people as they learn. CUES does this in a variety of ways.

The obvious example is the unparalleled networking at CUES’ live, in-person events. But we are also having a great deal of success incorporating social learning into our virtual offerings.

As an example, take a look at what’s currently going on within the communities on CUESNet. In addition to a threaded discussion about making board meetings better within our board liaison community, there’s also a Learning Pathway of the Quarter in progress about emotional intelligence. CUES members following that pathway are consuming relevant educational content from CUES Learning Portal and then talking about it with their virtual classmates on CUESNet. 

Of course, CUES Learning Portal is a social learning opportunity in its own right. On the site, CUES members can not only follow learning pathways to great articles and videos about the topics they’re most interested in, but also share comments with their peers about what they’re reading and watching. Even better, they can recommend—or assign—content to other people at their credit unions and see when their colleagues complete these tasks. 

Our Elite Access virtual classroom courses also incorporate social learning. Each course consists of a series of 60-minute, live-taught online sessions, pre-work and between-segment exercises, plus collaboration with like-minded learners in real time and direct access to experienced facilitators. Webinars that deliver information one-way—out to viewers—have their place in learning. But Elite Access courses build in the social learning component that’s so engaging and valuable.

Notably, CUES Net and CUES Learning Portal are included in every CUES membership, while Elite Access courses are included in CUES Unlimited and Unlimited+ memberships. All of which is to say that as you plan your professional development for 2020, you’ll want to make sure it includes the social learning that comes from joining!

I’d be very interested in your stories of how social learning has helped advance your credit union career. Please send them my way.