E-Learning 1.0 was all about delivering  content, primarily in the form of online courses, produced by experts - teachers or subject matter experts.  E-Learning 2.0  or Social Learning is all about individuals (co-)creating content in a variety of formats and sharing information and knowledge using tools like blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and social networks both within an educational or training context to support a new  collaborative approach to learning as well as to support their own personal and group learning and working activities.

• Highly effective communicators are making greater use of social media than their less- effective peers
• Reasons for not increasing the use of social media stem from a lack of resources and knowledge
• Social media tools are mostly used for collaboration and team building, adapting to change, and promoting health and wellness.

• Document their social media policy
• Develop tools to measure the success of social media at their company
• Build executive support

Reading, commenting on, or even writing your own HR blogs can represent one of the most direct and accessible routes into the world social media for HR professionals and employment practitioners. And it can bring great benefits in terms of networking and shared expertise and insight. We're currently running a brief online survey of HR blogs and blogging habits (external website), and would greatly appreciate your views. Completing the survey should take up no more than 30 seconds of your time. The results will be published here on Employment Intelligence in the coming weeks.

Last week, I highlighted a recent blog post from recruitment and HR consultant Matt Alder, in which reveals a "dirty secret" regarding how employers utilise social recruiting. Today, in a blog post summing up his experiences of last week's excellent TRU London "unconference", Alder notes what might be considered another "dirty secret" just waiting to be revealed: many employers are unwilling to 'go public' on their use of social media and social recruiting (external website).

The recession has created opportunities for HR and recruitment professionals to raise the standards of their recruitment activities and embrace social recruiting, yet the majority have failed to act on these opportunities. But Generation Y and post-election cuts in public spending will force significant change in recruitment activity. These were just some of the predictions to emerge from a lively debate at the TRU London 2010 "unconference" (external website) last week, which asked a simple question: "Where is recruitment going?"

In the week running up to the second TRU London (The Recruiting Unconference London) (external website) event - which took place in Soho yesterday and today - organiser Bill Boorman (external website) posted the following update on Twitter: "I don't think social media has changed the world, but I think it has changed our world!"

For me this summarises the spirit of the TRU London event (which I attended this morning) in fewer than 140 characters. TRU London is a hugely creative and forward-thinking event run by and for recruiters and HR professionals who recognise that social media have significant implications for their work.

• It is informal - casual dress, friendly atmosphere
• It is noisy - maybe because we have a room that has two discussions in it (one at each end) running at the same time
• It is unstructured. The only structure is that provided by track leaders who are responsible for one hour slots based on a discussion point. There are no presentations
• Anyone can chip in and challenge at any point
• There is a good level of conversation - people share what they are doing. This takes place in the room and on the social networks such as Twitter
• It is broadcast - a lot of people are sharing the conversation across the social networks
• There is a good energy here - attendees are sitting down, standing up. No one is falling asleep at the back of the room
• People do not stop talking - there seems to be a constant level of conversation
• There is a lot of participation - the informal nature of the event seems to enable people to speak up
• It is very good to network as the feel is friendly and informal

Last week, we looked at whether it's time to take social media seriously in the workplace. For employers who decide that the time has now come to see if social media can work for them, there are two key questions they must ask themselves, according to recruitment consultant Andy Headworth on his Sirona Says blog.

Back in November 2009, we noted that many employers are cutting out traditional methods for advertising vacancies in favour of zero-cost social recruiting options. Now, in a fascinating blog post, recruitment and HR consultant Matt Alder reveals a "dirty secret" regarding "a massively disruptive trend" in how employers utilise social recruiting: free, automated Twitter job feeds (external website) appear to represent a direct route to applications from high quality candidates.

More than three-quarters of UK employers (76%) do not currently have a formal policy in place regarding employee use of external social networks (external website), according to a survey of 2,100+ organisations from Manpower. For employers contemplating how social media might work for them - and how best to regulate this - communications consultant Abi Signorelli has put together 11 invaluable tips to consider when formulating a social media communications strategy.

• The format is less about lectures and more about facilitated discussion
• That means participants are expected to interact with discussions
• The event is split into different streams or 'tracks' providing attendees with a broad range of topics to dip in to
• Track leaders, as they are called at TRU London, are experts in their area so can facilitate a high level conversation around their topic
• Social media and social networks provide the communication channels for the event
• Unconferences attract a far greater audience online than at the event thanks to the live coverage on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.
• The event will be unpredictable - taking thinking in different directions
• It is rare to attend events where HR, recruitment and social media intersect at the same place and at the same time

Social media will cause profound and positive change in the way work is organised (external website), according to US business author Tammy Erickson, writing in the Harvard Business Review.

Every penny counts for HR practitioners in the current economic context faltering profitability for many organisations and weak overall economic growth. And so, as I tell Jeya Thiruchelvam in this week's XpertHR Podcast, benchmarking employment practices can represent a highly effective way to keep on top of costs and do their jobs more efficiently and more cost-effectively.

Social networking is driving a fundamental change in recruitment practices in 2010, with implications for all parties involved in recruitment, according to an excellent introduction to social recruiting (external website) from the Guardian. For many organisations, traditional recruitment practices are being swept away, with employers, candidates and recruitment agencies becoming involved in an evolving online "conversation".

The implications for the workplace of social networking technologies and how people interact with them look set to rise in importance as touchstone issues for HR over the coming decade. And reading, commenting on, or even writing your own HR blogs can represent one of the most direct and accessible routes into social networking for HR professionals and employment practitioners. We're currently running a brief online survey of HR blogs and blogging habits (external website), and we'd greatly appreciate your views. It's entirely free to take part, and should take up no more than 30 seconds of your time. The results will be published here on Employment Intelligence in the coming weeks.

I'm delighted to announce that XpertHR's new benchmarking service (subscription required) has been launched today (Thursday 14 January 2010). This is a major enhancement to XpertHR, providing our subscribers with the opportunity to access a huge resource of customisable HR benchmarking data. The interactive features of XpertHR benchmarking enable you to tailor your own bespoke HR benchmarking data. We think it'll quickly prove to be an invaluable tool for our users.

The rise of online recruitment methods over the past decade has resulted in a completely transformed recruitment landscape with social recruiting at its centre as we enter 2010, according to a fascinating blog post from recruitment consultant Andy Headworth. He argues that social recruiting now represents the cutting-edge of recruitment (external website), and that recruiters must adopt social recruiting methods in order to meet evolving candidate expectations. Consequently, platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and blogs should be seen as "primary recruiting channels", and "will become the recruiting battlegrounds of 2010".