Social Media as Collaborative Media in Workplace Learning

As a result of rapid changes in technology, much is discussed about the use of social media in branding, marketing, and in general corporate communications. The intensity with which social media tools—blogs, wikis, Twitter, instant messaging (IM) and Facebook, among others—have proliferated is staggering. Increasingly important is the role of social media tools as a way to enhance and advance workplace learning and knowledge management. To more accurately describe the purposes for which social media tools are utilized within organizations, we propose the term collaborative media. The clarity brought by this term serves to help HRD professionals within organizations adopt collaborative media tools as a workplace learning and knowledge management strategy and to attain organizational support for such tools at the highest level and capacity. Also discussed is the need for future research by HRD scholars that facilitates the role of collaborative media tools in workplace learning and knowledge management.