Toward Social Learning Environments

We are teaching a new generation of students who have been cradled in technologies, communication, and an abundance of information. As a result, the design of learning technologies needs to focus on supporting social learning in context. Instead of designing technologies that teach the learner, the new social learning technologies will perform three main roles: 1) support the learner in finding the right content (right for the context, particular learner, specific purpose of the learner, and pedagogically), 2) support learners to connect with the right people (right for the context, learner, purpose, educational goal, etc.), and 3) motivate/incentivize people to learn. In the pursuit of such environments, new areas of science become relevant as a source of methods and techniques, such as social psychology, economic/game theory, and multiagent systems. This paper illustrates how social learning technologies can be designed using some existing and emerging technologies: ontologies versus social tagging, exploratory search, collaborative versus self-managed social recommendations, trust and reputation mechanisms, mechanism design, and social visualization.