Collective Learning: An Integrated Use of Social Media in Learning Environment

Abstract

Recent years have seen a much greater emphasis on learning to learn, be it in a classroom environment or an organization. This focus imparts lifelong learning capabilities inducing a formative learning experience. Several studies have reflected that individual learning, which has been a core component around which the education system has been institutionalized, does not fully enable learners to learn the process of learning. It has been observed that people learn faster and in much greater depth in groups, making them familiar with the process of learning. Collective learning is a term that is often used to refer to this concept of learning in groups (dyads, teams, organizations, communities, and societies). However, collective learning encounters several challenges in terms of planning, structuring, managing, and evaluating. With the advent of social media technologies including: blogs, wikis, twitter, social networking sites, social news, social book-marking, media sharing, virtual worlds, and more, encouraging distributed, collaborative, dynamic, ubiquitous, and personalized experience; new paradigms for communication, learning, and education have emerged. In this chapter, the focus is on social media technology as an enabler for collective learning in a teaching/learning environment. It illustrates a model that leverages the integrated use of social media technologies to support collective learning in a university teaching/learning environment. Moreover, the model is generalizable to other environments. The model demonstrates how various challenges encountered in collective learning (planning, structuring, managing, and evaluating) can be addressed with the help of social media technologies. A case study is presented to showcase the model's applicability, feasibility, utility, and success. This work is supported in part by grants from the US Office of Naval Research.