How to Initiate the Culture of Social Learning?

With the outburst of online learning, social learning is becoming more and more prominent day by day. The process of social learning is known as collective learning, as it is where people gather together and discuss or learn on a common objective in order to find something.

Social learning is a combination of behavioral observation and acknowledgement. Students often learn by watching someone performing the task. The study of neuroscience found, this is a cognitive way of passing information one to another and gaining knowledge.

With the headway of technology, we are witnessing extraordinary ways of learning, online social learning is one of them. Portals like Mymathlab answers provide social media learning experience at its best.

In this blog, we will discuss some of the useful tips to bring out the culture of social learning among students.

Before that, we must understand what social learning is..

We never noticed, but social learning existed from the ancient ages. Information has been handed down from one generation to another. In the middle, formal teaching took place. But recent studies have found that formal learning is not a good way to retain information for a longer time. Learning is constructed with these four theories: behaviorism, cognitivism, experiential and andragogy. 

If we look at these concepts and theories of collective learning, such as Kolb’s study of experiential learning is divided into a process of experiences, which proves that learning takes place through reflection on doing. Research on Kasl’s, Matsick’s and Dechant’s system of team learning among adults provides great understandings.

Social learning is a blend of learning through behavioral observation such as watching someone performs a task, repeating it and the rational process of memorizing the task. We learn mutually from each other and document our knowledge for coming generations. We learn what is needed and what is not so we can develop ways to learn through new theories and practices. Through studies of neuroscience, we have discovered the ways information is passed on to others and what role our brain plays in it.

As we mentioned earlier, social learning is a form of collaborative learning or team learning. What we call in the modern day is “group study”. Technology has uplifted the experience of team learning. Services like “Take my online class” offer group studying experience or two-way conversation studying solutions for students. This is a great way to get motivation. It is like killing two birds with one stone, where one side competition keeps you motivated, on the other hand it gives assistance from fellow learners.    

According to neuroscience research, this is one of the best practices of self learning. As we know that casual conversations can lead to incidentally information being shared, even though learning wasn’t the primary aim of the conversation. 

Let’s check out some of the ways to put social learning into practice..

1. Technology made it so much simpler to share information through communicating virtually; however, there is a lot of ways information takes place with individual people or departments. With the help of technology people now can store the information they discussed in the group. Across the world social media groups such as whatsapp or other becoming popular among students. They use these platforms to disseminate and get knowledge from each other. Mymathlab answers offer chat room discussions for students to prompt communication amidst students. 
2. Structured working groups can be created on chat applications to share updates on specific topics or projects. These groups are great example of social learning, whereas these informal panels can be used by teams and individuals to share insights and updates about their projects. Social media groups support to share ideas between teams, ask questions on topics relevant only to them. Services like “take my online classes” provide easy learning solutions, as it offer Q&A sessions with more experienced staff.
3. Webinars are a useful tool to connect and brainstorm with people from different offices or countries, screen share facilities are helpful to exchange visuals or webcams to form better relationships with peers or colleagues that would not actually meet in person. LMS softwares are installed in various online learning portals can be used to store guidance, policies, videos and eLearning courses that learners have easy access to. For example check the website of Mymathlab answers, they have a fully organized simplified system to work with.
4.  Instant response on what works and what doesn’t can be measured using LMS survey softwares, which helps the students as well as teachers to analyze and improve the training provided continuously. In return, employees can give a quicker approach to clients’ needs by being able to find the relevant information when and where they require. It reduces the need for restructuring training as there are different options in place that works for everyone. “take my online class” is a great example of these features.
5. This helps individuals to build personal learning networks and find the best learning techniques for themselves, others and possibly the company, building collective knowledge. All this is division of 70% of the experience and 20% of exposure to new tasks and environments, according to Jennings’ 70-20-10 model. So, self-organised and organised learning needs to go hand in hand. Also, knowledge and skills obtained through self-managed learning often can be changed into personal life and therefore serves as a big motivator for adult learning.
6. These activities mentioned are associated with micro learning, so that these pocket-sized learning tasks employees can incorporate into their working day, without worrying about missing any important work emails or deadlines when attending an hour or day long classroom sessions. This helps to ease the learning curve of working students as training will be incorporated into what they are already doing.