Creating and discovering learning content in a social learning system

A computer program product for learning content discovery in a social learning system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, wherein the computer readable storage medium is not a transitory signal per se, the program instructions executable by a processor to cause the processor to perform a method comprising:

• providing, by a social learning system:
• social learning mechanisms and social media mechanisms accessible to a learning content administrator system, a plurality of learner client systems, and at least one learning content creator client system;
• one or more formal courses in a given curriculum provided by an institution or enterprise and managed by the learning content administrator system;
• and an analytic query mechanism configurable by the learning content administrator system;
• receiving, from the at least one learning content creator client system via the social learning mechanisms, one or more informal courses not in the given curriculum and created by a learning content creator, each informal course comprising learning content and metadata describing the learning content and the learning content creator;
• providing, by the social learning system, access to the one or more informal courses to the plurality of learner client systems;
• receiving, from the plurality of learner client systems via the social media mechanisms, social data for the one or more informal courses;
• receiving, from the learning content administrator system via the analytic query mechanism, a query comprising query parameters for types of informal courses relevant to the given curriculum;
• analyzing, by the social learning system, the metadata and the social data for the one or more informal courses to determine which of the one or more informal courses match the query parameters;
• returning, by the social learning system, a list of the one or more informal courses matching the query parameters as a query result;
• and
• automatically incorporating, by the social learning system, the learning content of the at least one informal course in the list into the given curriculum.