The significant changes in the means people collaborate and share information have opened the way to form various study groups at different places and from different disciplines. A distributed learning environment not only involves teachers and students within the university, but extends to students at different universities as well. Nowadays, many technologies are used in e-learning, from blogs to collaborative software, virtual classrooms, forum exchanges, social media and mobile technologies. One of the most important characteristics of web 2.0 technologies is that they emphasize sharing, participation, and collaboration. A well-designed learning environment helps to improve learning by making information and instructional content available and accessible anytime and from anywhere.
Social learning is defined as a new
paradigm of finding, consuming, creating and contributing information via
collaborative commons. In this environment, community creates and maintains
multiple forms of content and members of this community are able to find and
consume content via an informal path. Collaborative learning environments have
been proven to offer significantly higher quality of content as compared to formal
learning environments. Additionally, social learning creates a higher degree of
engagement among participants and members can benefit mutually from the links,
cross-talk, and feedback. A lot of research has been done on the role of Web
2.0 services in supporting social interaction between students, teachers, and
researchers.
In light of the benefits associated
with the rapid advance in information technology and the growing popularity of
social-networking sites, many websites are moving to adopt learning communities
for easily sharing knowledge. Social learning websites are expanding and
becoming more specialized; they support creating private and public work
spaces. Furthermore, those websites promote active conversation between
students, employees, teams, project clients, and partners. 'Livemocha' is an
online language community that is specialized for language learners, connecting
with native speakers for instructive help. 'Bloomfire' is an additional example
which specializes in building an effective knowledge base for businesses
through a collaborative environment; this website easily supports sharing
knowledge and the discussions that surround business topics. 'Google Docs' is a
service by Google that allows people to share documents, spreadsheets, and
presentations with others. 'Zoho' supports creating collaborative portals for
effective knowledge management. Users can create a searchable, centralized
information repository for easy organizational access. Some websites offer
communities to build their own social networking website (i.e. 'socialgo').
They provide a set of features including profiles, messaging, groups, events,
chat, forums, blogging and file upload. To enhance online collaboration between
students, there is need for online community that can connect students from
different universities and research centers.
This article highlights the
importance of developing a Social Learning Portal between universities as an
application of social learning between academic institutions. This specialized
community can be administrated by information technology centers at
universities. This community includes university students and teachers, and
accounts are granted to students with valid university IDs. Information about
students' universities and departments are public in this online community. The
social learning portal can be divided into several communities; one community
for each department, including all participating universities. Each community
can be further divided into sub-communities according to specialization, for
example, the major community is Computer Science, sub-communities include
Computer Networks, Web Development, and Object Oriented Programming. In
addition, joint communities can be formed between different departments, which
can help different university students share experiences and collaborate. For
example, a research project may include students specialized in Computer
Science and Bioinformatics. Students who belong to this community can share the
proper, related learning content and resources easily with other students.
This social learning portal enhances
scientific research; it provides an online working structure for collaborative
projects. Embedded in a user-friendly interface, the portal will offer research
and publication guidelines for students. In addition, Social Learning Portal
supports research group formation (under the supervision of involved
departments) that combines students from different universities and various
academic backgrounds. Instructors can add new groups according to their
research interests, they can assign research participants to the group, and
activities can be viewed by students from all universities; when students join
the group they can see the group's posts on their wall, and they can participate
by writing comments. Furthermore, students can contact instructors from other
universities. Universities can assign weekly hours for instructors to be online
and discuss some problems posted by students (office hours).
To develop a successful social learning
website, factors must be considered during the design and development and some
questions must be raised:
1. What is the role of universities for successful implementation of social
learning?
2. The attitudes of teachers and students towards using social learning
platforms, and the effectiveness of existing platforms.
3. What are the possibilities and barriers of implementing new and effective
features/technologies for social learning in universities?
By introducing a specialized social
learning community, the quality of the education process at the universities
will be enhanced, scientific research will be emphasized, and social networks
will be a more effective and reliable tool.
