By Shobhit Banga
Humans are social creatures. Socially interacting is crucial to our development. Looking back at our childhood, what do we remember the most? It’s not the knowledge and skills we attained, but the memories of our time spent in school and college. The long-lasting friendships, experiences and bonds built with our teachers remain the closest to our hearts. Why? Because meeting new people and forming relationships is a fundamental human desire. Education, too, is a fundamentally social experience.
According to a research by Bersin & Associates, learners retain just 5% of what they hear and 10% of what they read. But when course material is covered through interactions and discussions, learners are able to retain 50% of the content. With the rise of digital learning, especially during Covid-19, video and audio in e-learning have become the most powerful ways of creating a better learning experience. Social learning is an integral part of this process.
But what is social learning? The principle is based on psychologist Albert Bandura’s theory that the primary drivers of human learning are observation, imitation and modelling. According to the Association for Talent Development—the world’s largest talent development association—social learning approaches have a 75:1 ROI ratio over web-based training.
How social learning works
How do we learn anything? One of the first principles of Bandura’s theory is observational thinking. When a person shares information, others are able to relate to it with their personal experiences and begin to connect with it. When we attach context and emotional connection to the information, it becomes more memorable. This is where social learning comes into play.
Be it real-time teacher presentation, commenting and collaboration, there are plenty of benefits of bringing together communities with similar interests in an otherwise isolated virtual classroom. Digital learning opens up new possibilities and smarter methods of learning. In the process, many human interaction patterns also are emulated. From file and media sharing, social bookmarking and tagging keywords, to creating whiteboards, all of these bring a human element in an online medium.
Video has become a major player in enabling ‘microlearning’, often via short clips that can be shared in learning communities, and then discussed. Consuming these videos on mobile devices on demand is another notable trend.
London-based edtech start-up KoolStories, for example, is developing the first-of-its-kind social learning platform by merging e-learning and social experiences through video/audio learning snippets, micro-courses and one-to-one sessions. The KoolStories app has created a hub of 30 global skill communities to drive interaction between potential learners and talent across borders.
We, at Josh Talks, started communities and closed group chats for people preparing for UPSC, or those seeking jobs to connect with each other through chat, call each other and intensify connections. The success of social learning being combined for upskilling is evident from the fact that the average time spent per user on the app totals 55 minutes per day. Users spend 140,000 minutes daily practising speaking in English through the peer-to-peer calling feature and the course completion rate is as high as 25%.
Social learning strategies
When users collaborate during sessions, it can produce interesting outcomes. Interaction through tutoring, presentations, Q&A sessions, and group and panel discussions make learning fun and productive. Studies show that when students ask a question on the platform and rely on peers to do so, the results are remarkable. For instance, one is more likely to enjoy learning something from a peer or friend. By spending time explaining concepts to others, users acquire valuable skills and become more self-confident. They are able to freely exchange information and learn along with likeminded people with shared goals.
Adding elements of gamification to e-learning is another way to motivate learners. There’s nothing like healthy competition, especially when there is a human tendency to get better at something.
Look at how HBX, a Harvard Business School education initiative, has embraced social learning as one of the principles for its interactive online learning platforms. With real-world problem solving and active learning forming their base, their course completion rate increased to 85%. Metrics such as retention rates, student satisfaction and engagement also saw major improvement.
The way forward
Many forward-thinking educational organisations are leveraging social learning to enable learners to share, collaborate and exchange new ideas in an informal setting.
But its full potential is yet to be recognised. Some online platforms do not account for course completion rates or DAU/MAU ratio (Daily Active Users to Monthly Active Users ratio) to measure success in delivering educational outcomes. Taking a social learning approach is an important tool to prevent student attrition. But more research is needed for understanding its value so that organisations can make their platforms more interactive and engaging. Doing so will go a long way in reshaping the workforce of the future.
The author is co-founder, Josh Talks