Incidental and Informal Learning Theory
Discussing with a colleague how we have been iterating on “Tech Talks” within our development teams (future backlink should go here), I learned there’s a theory for it called “Incidental and Informal Learning.” For now, I’ve included a section below to give a brief on a tech talk.
How fascinating! ＼(๏◡๏)／
What is Informal Learning?
There’s an article from Emma O’Neill on LearnUpon.com that answers this question, What is Informal Learning?.
More to come as I unpack this.
‘Tech Talk’ Brief
Our goal was to help with the understanding and adoption of Test-Driven Development (TDD). We started by licensing videos from Uncle Bob (Robert C. Martin) and his fanstatic Clean Coders website and then held an internal “Tech Talk” with an internal group of developers.
I love to iterate and discover, so through a series of “tech talks,” we came to the following format:
- Length: 2 hours (120 minutes)
- Split video into three segments, each segment consisting of:
- Watch the video together (15-20 mins)
- Split into random-ish breakout groups (no more than 5-6 per group) (10-15 mins)
- go around the group and share 1-3 things that came to mind; “skepticism is encouraged”
- have a group representative either remember (or write down) a few points to bring back to the larger group.
- Come back together and have each group share the “gist” of their conversation (great if you can share it in chat as well)
- Wrap-up (5-10mins) - what’s a “how fascinating!” moment or takeaway, and any action over the next two weeks as a result?