Social learning – Can it enable pull strategy for e-learning courses?

In today’s world most people are connected to each other through a web of activities on the Internet. People of similar thoughts and ideas connect through forums; people with similar career choices connect through LinkedIn and friends connect through Facebook.  But if you look at learning in general, it is still disconnected.

While writing this article, I researched for pull strategy on e-learning and stumbled upon the rapid e-learning blog – Tom’s write up on “Are Your E-Learning Courses Pushed or Pulled?.” A great write up on both Push and Pull Strategies for e-learning courses. The article talks about ways to implement Pull strategies for your e-learning courses.

One question that occupied my mind, when I started to write this blog – Do we need to adopt pull strategy for learning?

A decade ago, most of the information was consolidated and packaged into books, journals, course etc. But, today, the students can acquire Information from varied sources. They take a piece, add to it, rethink and end up with some pattern that symbolizes the meaning.  They collaborate and socialize in a virtual environment more actively these days and gather a lot of information from peer around the world.

Will Pull Strategy work for learning?

For Pull strategy to work, the learners have to be inspired and motivated rather than requiring the learner to complete a task. Communication and promotion of the learning experience are among the most effective pull strategies. In order to enable better communication, the platform should implement strategies to connect diverse set of learner with similar interest.

So can social learning enable the pull strategy?

I am not sure of the good answer for this. I feel social e-learning can be a first step to achieve pull strategy. To successfully implement social e-learning, institutions should open up access beyond their institutional boundaries.

For social learning to succeed

• Teachers should be empowered and committed to bridge the diverse set of learners.
• Have customizable components to adapt to unique needs of each classroom’s syllabus.
• Build teams with diverse set of people to engage them effectively.
• Introduce collaborative exercises to help them interact and learn from each other.

Share your wisdom…