The Big Question: how to assess informal learning

The Big Question on the ASTD Learning Circuits Blog is long enough to fill a post all by itself:

How do you assess whether your informal learning, social learning, continuous learning, performance support initiatives have the desired impact or achieve the desired results?

I think we can group this stuff together as all those forms of learning which are not formal, i.e. courses. If you check out the blog you’ll find some fascinating answers to the question. As for me, I just don’t get it.

Why, because we don’t have to assess informal learning, at least not in the way we might (but very rarely properly) do for the formal stuff. There seems to be an assumption here that L&D have some sort of ownership over informal learning, but this never has been and never will be possible (or desirable).

Most workplace learning has always been informal and we haven’t felt under pressure in the past to measure it in any sophisticated fashion. The fact that some of it now might be online and use new-fangled tools doesn’t change anything.

Employers are not interested in learning, they’re interested in performance. So the measure of all workplace learning remains a very simple one – can people do their jobs the way we’d like them to? Can they perform? The answer to this question isn’t in any way hidden or hard to come by – just ask line managers and they’ll tell you. True they’ll mix up learning with all sorts of other performance-influencing factors (motivation, clear objectives, availability of necessary resources, etc.) but then your job has and always will be to unpick all this. Performance is messy.

L&D does have a role in encouraging and supporting informal learning – making sure the infrastructure and the culture is as supportive as it can be. But informal learning is not an intervention – you’re not supposed to be intervening. So don’t beat yourself up if you can’t assess informal learning in the same way you would a course. They are not the same thing.