Social learning's power: engineering intentional shared experiences

The first CYPHER Live session of the year kicked off with a deep dive into a topic that is often misunderstood: social learning. While many organizations view social features as optional add-ons to a course, the industry is moving toward a more sophisticated model.

In this session, Alexia Sanchez from the CYPHER Learning sales engineering team demonstrated how to move beyond basic tools and start engineering shared learning experiences that drive real results.

Beyond the buzzwords: what is experience engineering?

Social learning has undergone a significant transformation over the last few years. To understand where we are going in 2026, we first have to look at how far we have come:

• 2023-2024 (Interaction without experience): At this stage, social learning was present but fragmented. Forums and chats existed alongside content, but participation was often inconsistent or felt like an optional extra.
• 2025 (Collaboration with intent): Last year, the focus shifted toward intentionality. L&D teams began using rubrics and specific criteria to score social participation, turning discussions into a structured part of the learning journey.
• 2026 (Experience engineering): Today, social learning is moving outside the boundaries of a single course. It has become a connected ecosystem where community interaction and on-the-job problem solving blend seamlessly.

Community first, course second

One of the most significant shifts Alexia highlighted is the move toward a community-first approach. In this model, a community outlives any individual course. This provides better maintenance and continuity for learners, as resources and institutional knowledge live in a centralized source of truth.

By organizing resources into searchable folders, wikis, and FAQ-style discussions, organizations can reduce the need for constant course updates. When a policy changes or a new best practice emerges, it is updated in the community, ensuring the knowledge remains current without a total course redesign.

Key principles for social learning success

During the live demo, Alexia outlined several principles that define modern social learning:

• Cohort-based journeys: Moving through an experience together humanizes learning. Whether it is a new hire orientation or a leadership program, cohorts turn reflection into storytelling and discussion into genuine connection.
• Learning in the flow of work: Employees do not want to leave their workflow to learn. By using activity feeds and centralized dashboards, learning stays visible and accessible without being disruptive.
• Recognition over completion: While completion still matters, it doesn't tell the whole story. Experience engineering prioritizes rewarding contribution and application through gamification. Using leaderboards and automated badges for sharing resources or replying to peers keeps the learning ecosystem alive.
• Skill mastery: Social learning is most powerful when tied to specific outcomes. By mapping group projects and discussions to mastery scales, facilitators can see exactly how learners are applying new skills in a real-world environment.

Using the tools you already have

The most encouraging takeaway from this session is that experience engineering does not require a suite of new tools. The functionality—forums, wikis, groups, and gamification—is already built into the CYPHER platform.

The goal is to stop thinking about these as separate features and start designing them as an integrated journey. When social spaces are engineered with purpose, they become scalable, reduce administrative burden, and create a sense of community that content alone cannot achieve.

Continuing the conversation on experience engineering

Mastering social learning is just one part of building a modern training ecosystem that prioritizes connection and scalability. As the L&D landscape continues to evolve, we invite you to use the CYPHER Live page as your ongoing resource for discovery. There, you can access our full library of past session replays to deep dive into other platform capabilities or register for our next live event to stay at the forefront of learning innovation.