Formal vs. Informal Learning: the bus & the bike

The bus and the bike

Recently I have been confronting senior managers with two rather bizarre graphics – a bus & a bike.

Now, despite the initial perplexed looks, it is safe to say that my bus & bike analogy went a long way in helping get their heads around the complexity of what constitutes formal and informal learning.

You can picture formal learning like a bus – the driver sets the direction of travel and the passengers are simply along for the ride. This means that learners have very little control of the pace, style and content of the learning. This type of learning you can find on training courses, e-learning, conferences & webinars.

In comparison, informal learning is more like a bike as the passenger rides alone choosing the destination, speed and route as he or she sees fit. It truly puts development into the learner’s hands.

This is why informal learning can often be much more effective than formal learning, as it is far more adaptable to the needs of the individual.

Also rather similar to a bus and a bike, informal learning is far less costly! In fact, most informal learning doesn’t cost anything at all and it is all around us; But the truth of the matter is that we simply don’t make the most of it!

So what it is?

Informal learning can be broken down into 3 categories: resources, on-the-job activities and collaboration. There are so many informal learning opportunities that within my workshops with senior managers I ran an exercise, involving far too many post-it notes, to try to pool every ones’ ideas together. After several workshops with over 50 managers here are just some of the ideas that we came up with:

Take some time to think about how to make the most of informal learning opportunities available to you, your team and your organisation.

If you want to discuss how to effectively integrate informal learning in the workplace then do not hesitate to get in touch.