Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

All successful classrooms use cooperative learning. When students have the opportunity to work together, their confidence increases and they become motivated to learn so long as it is within their zone of proximal development. Many teachers do not provide much time for group work because group work takes more time than lectures so those teachers who push to "get through" the material are more concerned with covering the information than in students understanding the material. Other teachers are unsure of their ability to facilitate group work, so may try it once and give it up as a failure idea instead of collaborating with those who successfully run their classrooms primarily through the use of group work. Part of the problem with group work is that we need to effectively manage our classrooms and explicitly teach our students how to behave and what to do when working in a group. Once they understand how to behave and what the expectations are, then the teacher can facilitate discussions rather than constantly deal with behavior problems that arise when students are unclear about what they should be doing.

Social learning theory is essentially constructionism learning theory in group work as opposed to individual work. We know that students learn better when they construct something, so working in a group (social learning) to create something (constructionism)is merging social learning with constructionism. Jigsaw learning is a way to dissect a topic into its components and then have students teach each other the material they have become experts on. This student engagement method allows students to connect to the information and recall it beyond the test date.

Social learning can be facilitated through social networking sites as well as online collaboration tools such as wikis and blogs. Technology allows students to collaborate not just with the peers physically in their classroom but with peers in other class periods that the same teacher teaches. That exponentially increases the amount of learning that can occur. After all, the more people there are to bounce ideas off the more discussion can take place! When it comes to teachers conducting SSTs (Student Study Teams) the saying is that is isn't 3 teachers equal 1+1+1, but 3 to the third power since ideas bounced off each other increase exponentially as something someone says triggers another thought that would most likely have not occurred without the input of the other teachers.