Tools for social learning

The seminar at The Open University yesterday on social learning proved fascinating, with people from a range of disciplines pooling their ideas and experience face to face. Lots of definitions of social learning, lots of sets of literature, lots of different practices.

While we were gathered together, our social learning as a group extended into various virtual settings. A Cloudscape brought together the associated Twitter stream, live blogs, discussion, resources and links. Participants were also using Cohere to link up emerging ideas and questions.

Seminar cloudscape with Cohere sidebar

Returning to the theme of an earlier post, these tools extended the possibilities for social learning at the seminar. Adding comments, ideas and resources in these structured settings supported people in:
• clarifying intention – the online tools extended our opportunities to build links with people in the room, and also with people who were not able to be at the seminar.
• grounding learning – the opportunity to reflect in a public space online helped us to formulate questions and problems together.
• engaging in focused conversations – we were able to work together to link to relevant resources from different fields, to take time to consider them and to discuss our understanding of them.

These online tools allowed us to extend the social learning through time and space. The online discussion began days before the seminar, and is still going on. We have a chance to read some of the linked resources in the light of what we heard in the seminar, and to return with comments and questions. We're no longer in the same room, but we're still actively engaged in those conversations and in that resource sharing. The tools prompted us to formulate questions, provide resources and discuss those resources. They also provided a range of options. No one was live blogging, discussing, adding resources, adding idea, twittering and paying attention to the speaker all at the same time - but there was (and still is) the opportunity to move between these tools, selecting the one most fit for purpose.

I'm not convinced that we made up a community of practice - although we may develop into one. I'm not convinced that we were engaged in solving 'wicked problems'. For me that means that those aren't necessarily key aspects of social learning because I believe that we were engaged in social learning and that, with the help of the online tools, many of us are still engaged in that learning.