Informal Learning in the Workplace (ILW) is ensured by the everyday work activities in which workers are engaged. It accounts for over 75 per cent of learning in the workplace. Enterprise Social Media (ESM) are increasingly used as informal learning environments. According to the results of an implementation we have conducted in real context, we show that ESM are appropriate to promote ILW. Indeed, social features are adapted to stimulate use behaviors and support learning, particularly meta-cognitive aspects. Three adaptations must nevertheless be carried out: (1) Base the design on a precise and relatively exhaustive informational corpus and contextualize the access in the form of community of practice structured according to collaborative spaces; (2) Add indicators of judgment on the operational quality of information and the informational capital built, and (3) Define forms of moderation and control consistent with the hierarchical structures of the company. Our analysis also showed that an incremental and iterative approach of user-centered design had to be implemented to define how to adapt the design and to accompany change.

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The author's typology of non-formal learning distinguishes between implicit learning, reactive on-the-spot learning and deliberative learning. The significance of the last is commonly overemphasized. The problematic nature of tacit knowledge is discussed with respect to both detecting it and representing it. Three types of tacit knowledge are discussed: tacit understanding of people and situations, routinized actions and the tacit rules that underpin intuitive decision-making. They come together when professional performance involves sequences of routinized action punctuated by rapid intuitive decisions based on tacit understanding of the situation. Four types of process are involved--reading the situation, making decisions, overt activity and metacognition--and three modes of cognition--intuitive, analytic and deliberative. The balance between these modes depends on time, experience and complexity. Where rapid action dominates, periods of deliberation are needed to maintain critical control. Finally the role of both formal and informal social knowledge is discussed; and it is argued that situated learning often leads not to local conformity but to greater individual variation as people's careers take them through a series of different contexts. This abstract necessarily simplifies a more complex analysis in the paper itself.

This paper draws primarily on an ESRC-TLRP longitudinal study of early career professional learning, which focused on the first three years of employment of newly qualified nurses, graduate engineers seeking chartered status and trainee chartered accountants. The first section introduces the theoretical and methodological base provided by previous projects, then proceeds to explore an epistemology of practice, using three dimensions: (1) four key elements of practice-situational assessment, decision-making, actions and meta-cognitive monitoring; (2) the mode of cognition and its dependence on time and prior learning; and (3) the context, its influence on mode of cognition and its affordances for learning.The central section presents the project's findings on modes of learning through a new framework, which divides learning processes according to whether the object is perceived to be learning or working, then adds a list of shorter learning activities used within both types of process, including various types of mediating artifact. The final section summarises the project's findings on factors affecting learning, then draws practical conclusions from the project's work.

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