Too often, when we get rooted in our projects, we become very self-centered in our work. We forget there are people just like us struggling in the exact same way. We begin to convince ourselves that our way is the only way and, creatively, we can shut down very quickly under the weight of our workload. The panic, stress, and insecurity all lead us to not put our best work out there and, what’s more, to not share our work in pursuit of improvement and feedback.

Today’s employees need to use different types of tools and they must learn how to assimilate and perform their job with limited training time and support. By using a social-networking site for a virtual-learning environment (VLE) learners can interact with experienced employees, learn how to properly use the company’s internal social network, and properly navigate through systems and repositories.

A conversation begins, most often, with a question. IT blogger Selena Deckelmann suggests that when those in control “ask women directly to speak up, we open the door for participation,” and diversity and inclusion can begin. “If we insist on equal participation, the structure of our organizations will change. The first time I spoke up in a user group was terrifying, but I did so because a peer politely, but repeatedly, asked me to speak.”

Training for sales professionals at global pharmaceutical firm is robust, thorough, and frequent. However, the training curriculum of its marketing staff, who were being asked to be its commercial leaders, creating and delivering on business objectives and strategies as well as leading salespeople, was almost non-existent. Fixing this multi-layered challenge wouldn’t be as simple as implementing new training for marketers. Because so little training had existed previously, the company needed to change its culture to take its marketers’ attitudes from “why training?” to “I want more training!”

There’s an increasing awareness of the value of social learning in the workplace. Knowing that it exists is one thing; creating the scaffolding and support that allows people to capture, categorize, retrieve, and share what they learn is something else entirely.

Narrating our work—also known in some circles as “working out loud”—is getting a lot of attention lately as it offers great potential for connecting talent pools and capturing tacit knowledge, reducing rework and duplication of effort and maybe even meetings. While there is a lot of discussion around the value showing your work provides in the context of learning, there’s less clarity around how showing your work provides value to a business or organization.

Social learning has been the “next big thing” for years now, yet discussions often still focus on introducing the tools and simple uses for them. It’s time for learning professionals to go beyond the basics and focus on advanced techniques for using social tools and networks for learning.

eLearning has had a good run. It will always have a home in our organizations, but change is in the air. New learners, new social technologies, declining resources, the rise of informal learning, and innovations in learning design are all converging to change how we must think about using technology for learning.