Peer-to-peer learning

Sudipta Dev analyses how peer-to-peer learning initiatives can cultivate a culture of knowledge-sharing in an organization.

Cultivating a culture of knowledge-sharing is a vision that every organization strives to achieve. Peer-to-peer learning is known to be the critical process to enable this. This needs to be a planned process with effective tools and technologies. It is a known fact that an informal culture works the best when an organization has already established a proven system of knowledge-sharing through a formalized process. This builds a culture of trust and transparency and is able to create a knowledge pool that is essential for the development of the individual as well as the organization.

Peer-to-peer learning is essential for any organization which seriously wants to develop a learning culture, and is keen to groom and retain good talent. Robin Lloyd, Vice-president and General Manager, Lionbridge India, explained why: “With organizations becoming flatter and more complex, supervisors cannot be the sole source of learning and mentoring for their employees. The best companies have “learning cultures” in which knowledge is freely shared and everyone is expected to play the role of both teacher and learner.”

Its importance in contributing to team-building cannot be overlooked. Interpersonal relations go through a dramatic positive change when a colleague becomes a teacher. “Peer- to-peer learning helps in breaking down ‘silos’ by increasing communication, fosters culture where employees help others, and is extremely helpful in the integration of new employees,” said Ravi Teja, Associate Vice-president & Practice Head-Enterprise Transformation, Nihilent Technologies.

Karthik KS, CEO of 24x7 Learning pointed out that many institutions of learning now promote instructional methods involving ‘active’ learning that present opportunities for students to formulate their own questions, discuss issues, explain their viewpoints, and engage in cooperative learning by working in teams on problems and projects. ‘Peer learning’ is a form of cooperative learning that enhances the value of student-student interaction and results in more productive and relevant learning outcomes.

A learning climate

Promoting a culture where people are ready to believe that their colleague can be their teacher needs concerted efforts. The push has to infact come from the top management. Naren S Ayyar, Managing Director, Globarena listed the steps:

• It is important to create small teams who have complimentary skills and experiences
• Next is to create awareness of the benefits of this type of learning
• The fun element in rapid role reversals needs to be highlighted
• Pilot workshops can be conducted where small teams discover the pleasure of peer-to-peer learning
• Non-work related topics like teaching your colleague a new language or a hobby you are good at will help break the ice

Some organizations have special points in the performance appraisal programme marked for knowledge-sharing initiatives by individual employees.

“At Nihilent, we have a culture which encourages each individual to discuss/brainstorm/take inputs from others while working on any assignment, it may be something as simple as a presentation on a specific industry or something as serious as a strategy map or a scorecard for a client,” said Teja. While this is happening, it facilitates peer-to-peer learning automatically.

Formal or informal

Cultivating a learning culture needs to be a mix of formal as well as informal processes. While the programme needs to be instituted formally initially, later it should become a way of life in the organization. Nihilent had daily morning huddles at 10.17 am, where each one gave updates on what they had been working on. “But now, more than a mandate, it has become a very informal practice where we either take new topic for discussion or share some learning we have had from our past experiences,” informed Teja.

Outside structured courses

Most organizations have begun to understand the need to capture what employees do outside structured courses. Employees can upload any useful information or experience, it becomes a part of the knowledge repository and can benefit other professionals.

Karthik KS said, “The virtual campus can capture a whole host of learning activities of learners/employees e.g. what is the typical interest topic, what kind of learning is being sought after? How many requests are there for human interaction? A virtual campus, in addition to being the platform for online learning, is also a platform for all kinds of learning collaborations, competency mapping, skill gap analysis, knowledge sharing, etc.”

Usefulness of messaging tools

Tools like chat/instant messaging/document sharing are considered effective in peer-to-peer interaction across geographies. Employee blogs and wikis are also getting popular in answering queries and help in indirect branding. Blogs and wikis disclose employees’ views on various subjects and help in researching on different topics.

There are however a few cautious views. “IM and chat can be extremely useful tools, but the potential for abuse is high. Collaboration portals, message boards and common document repositories are the staples of genuine peer learning,” stated Lloyd, adding that IM and chat can augment these tools selectively, but are not sufficient as primary mechanisms.

Mentorship programme

Any organization with a highly evolved learning culture would inevitably have a strong mentorship programme. Mentoring is considered the most effective practice in developing and grooming talent in a corporate environment.

Lloyd acknowledged that most companies with strong peer-to-peer learning cultures also have thriving mentoring programmes. “Ideally, the two reinforce each other. Mentors demonstrate a willingness to share knowledge and an interest in the success of peers. This influences those being mentored to do the same, both in the classroom and in the daily workplace,” added Lloyd

The problem is that most organizations turn traditional when it comes to adoption of new learning methodologies. Ayyar believes that they need to do the following if they want to witness a change in their learning climate:

• Agree to move from teaching to learning
• Move from classroom training to e-learning as an important step
• Identify small self-learning teams and provide a mentor to each such team
• Provide the tools and technologies required by the team
• Provide significant weightage to self and peer learning in the appraisal system

This habit of peer-to-peer learning needs to be developed right at the education level—in schools and colleges—if it has to be a part of the culture. Many B-schools in the country have recognized this critical fact and are encouraging it in their campuses.