Everyday Learning

Residential and commercial real estate provider Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC has a unique challenge in that half of the offices it supports are independently owned and operated. Sales associates are independent contractors, so they are twice removed from any requirement to leverage learning opportunities sanctioned by headquarters. In a company with more than 90,000 sales associates and brokers working in approximately 3,300 offices in 50 countries and territories, facilitating learning can be a challenge.

The upside to this independence is that managers and sales associates often seek out networking opportunities to generate business, especially within their own franchise network. Further, shared practices amongst peers — experienced managers, new managers, experienced sales associates — as well as mentoring opportunities from experts in niche markets often take place without corporate facilitation.

In 2010, Coldwell Banker University (CBU) launched Web 2.0 social learning portals to enhance and complement informal learning to increase performance and productivity. To leverage collaborative learning, in March CBU launched a portal for managers called Managing Broker Academy (MBA). In July, the company launched a second portal for sales associates.

The MBA social learning portal facilitates peer-to-peer, mentor-to-peer, user learning and development, knowledge sharing and collaboration, and it relies mainly on user-generated content and participation rather than structured content from instructional designers.

Portal First, LMS Second
For many years, CBU has had a presence on the company’s intranet and employees have leveraged content, user guides and a link to the learning management system (LMS) for structured learning opportunities, learning history records, certifications and competency mapping tools. However, Coldwell Banker noticed most associates and managers did not go into the LMS on a regular basis, and they never collaborated with other users in the LMS, likely because it does not incorporate social learning tools.

Further, the organization was trying to create an engaging social experience, and a database-driven template LMS wasn’t suited for that, so the CBU portals sit outside the LMS. By putting the portal links before any LMS links in its intranet, and by embedding links to LMS courses, Coldwell Banker encourages users to visit the portals first, and link to the LMS when needed. The portal is publicized as an everyday work tool, not as a discrete learning intervention.