The Instructor Community is a professional learning network for our customers to exchange ideas and strategies to help deliver effective training no matter where they are in the world.

That’s the official statement.

The best part is, it’s true.

We’ve got people who pop in and out at all hours of the day, all days of the week. And it works because when it comes down to it, it’s still about the conversation.

And these conversations span specialties, disciplines, industries, and organizations.

This isn’t that easy to get over email. It’s very easy to get with Yammer.

 

There’s another reason why the fact that this works at all is so important to us. We have several specialties to choose among for training, and sometimes there’s a feel of “us vs them” out in the real world.

Yet here in the Community, we’ve found that people rarely self-identify as to what kind of Instructor they are.

Instead, they talk about:

• Where they work. They’re bus drivers, security officers, educators, long-term care nurses.
• What they need. Help. Advice. A different way to look at things. A great solution to a challenging problem.
• What they want to share. “Here’s a form I made that helped me in my org.” “I’ve just uploaded this video clip that really helped my staff during a recent refresher.”

Here are the categories these discussions align with. I’m using Eyeball Science to make this chart, but:

 

Look at that. Questions & Answers. That’s what I see the most out there, what our customers are using this space for; they’re asking those tough training questions and share insightful answers in turn.

And this is brilliant, because it means they’re finding value in signing up, logging on, and returning to this space for more.

They’ve found that they can extend their training when office hours are closed.

And they’ve found that people who do what they do every day, even if it’s in a different country and for a different industry, can help them do their own jobs even better.

There’s a Yammer saying that “You never know who knows something,” and that’s been proven true again and again.

Every day I see people learning from each other because they’re quite literally asking everybody else in the Community for help the moment they post a question.

Because here’s what I never see: “This question is for Nonviolent Crisis Intervention^® Instructors ONLY,” or “I work in behavioral health and only want behavioral health people to respond to this.”

So I feel confident in saying that our Instructor Community is also about inclusion.

What’s your online community about? Does it reflect what goes on offline?