Social E-Learning

Social Learning is a theory based on the premise that within a social context people learn from one another through observation, imitation and modeling. Its main proponent is Albert Bandura. Many organizations use social learning to enhance or supplement conventional training methodologies.



Kids and young adults often learn quickly through observation and to reinforce this methodology in the Internet age many new social learning Web 2.0 start-ups have sprung in the past two years. But the key to the success of these e-learning (social) sites is content. These online communities of learning are having a dramatic impact on the way people learn and apply that knowledge in the real world. Some examples of these start-ups are:

Cramster - Its website describes it as “an online study community of students, educators and subject enthusiasts. Cramster adopts a freemium model, allowing most members to use services for free”. Furthermore, the tagline on the website reads “Ace your classes with the help of Cramster.com’s online study community...”

CampusBug – it is the world’s first social learning network of students and educators. It is often described as Myspace meets Yahoo Answers. Users can socialize but also create academic tools to help them(socialmediaanswers.com).

Tutorvista – provides online tutoring using an interactive whiteboard. It also provides educational and training content to organizations .Students can also practice and study for entrance exams to get into universities.I once happened to take an introductory class with them which is offered free as a trial and found the online software they used as exceptionally advanced.However,the limitation of broadband speeds in Australia made latency and frequent cutoffs a headache.

Some other examples of this trend are displayed in the image below –



Most of these online sites use virtual classrooms to deliver formatted content.With improving broadband speeds and efficient web application services virtual classroom learning or training is no longer seen as an inferior alternative to real world teaching.However,it remains to be seen whether all these start-ups are the real deal or just another bubble that will end up bursting and lead to consolidation in the E-learning sector.I prefer consolidation as it will provide a more ripe and superior E-learning model with tried and tested methodologies that work.


References:
1. Kevin Palmer: Review of Campus Bug. Retrieved 11/12/2009 from http://socialmediaanswers.com/review-of-campus-bug/
2. Social Learning Image retrieved 10/12/2009 from http://www.internationalfuturesforum.com/
3. E-Social Image retrieved 10/12/2009 from http://lh5.ggpht.com/