Social learning has always been a staple of education since Piaget, Thorndike, Vygotsky, and countless others before them began exploring how people learn.
At its most basic level, this idea can be reduced to the need to socialize thinking, and experiment through interaction, play, and authentic, self-driven performance.
In 12 Tips For Supporting Social Collaboration Jane Hart from Center for Learning & Performance Technologies also effectively lays out ideas for how a social learning organization might be used for learning. Platforms like Edmodo, learnist, and even facebook and YouTube are extremely talented tools for collaboration, allowing students to gather, brainstorm, create, publish, and refine all in a common digital space.
12 Tips For Launching A Social Learning Group For Students
1. Be clear about purpose
2. Be clear who “owns” the community
3. Decide who will be the community manager
4. Launch when you are ready
5. Invite early test users
6. Consider a viral launch
7. Or make a song and dance about it!
8. Help learners understand how it can be a part of their daily routine
9. Help learners narrate their work
10. Keep the group or community vibrant
11. Understand that not everyone will contribute (or contribute the way you’d like–so design fail-safes for these scenarios)
12. Don’t underestimate the time it takes to nurture a group or community
Image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad