Sometimes new teaching and learning tools need new theory. In one view the knowledge is an item to be passed on to others, their head is to be filled by tutor's input. In another view knowledge is created by the individual by discussing and sharing in social learning. “The most profound impact of the Internet… is its ability to support and expand the various aspects of social learning”. “Attention has moved from access to information towards access to other people”. “Web2.0 blurs the boundaries between the producers and consumers of content”. (Seely Brown, 2008)
John Seeley Brown ,amongst many ,commented on the use of students connecting in his paper Minds on Fire (http://www.johnseelybrown.com/mindsonfire.pdf), saying in the future of colleges and Higher education is not to continue filling up courses with set papers and readings.That is why i have encouraged the students to blog ,so that the individuals will be able to belong to an eco system that enable equal opportunities because they can find whatever makes sense to them.A variety of perspectives can be shown on individual blogs that are joined together inside a see "wall" and the tools on the web will allow learners freedom to source or find , use and reinterpret knowledge in ways that make sense to them. "Compelling evidence for the importance of social interaction to learning comes from the landmark study by Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, of students’ college/ university experience. Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education— more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own.6"
I like this piece of how group work theory research has been built up so i have copied it all so i don't loose it . I know its not proper referencing but plagiarism ..Richard J. Light, Making the Most of College: Students Speak Their Minds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). For a summary of Light’s research, see Richard Light, “The College Experience: A Blue- print for Success,” <http://athome.harvard.edu/ programs/light/index.html>. An earlier, though more focused, contribution to our appreciation of the power of group study was provided by Uri Tre- isman more than twenty years ago. As a graduate student at UC-Berkeley in the late 1970s, Treisman worked on the poor performance of African- Americans and Latinos in undergraduate calculus classes. He discovered the problem was not these students’ lack of motivation or inadequate prepa- ration but rather their approach to studying. In contrast to Asian students, who, Treisman found, naturally formed “academic communities” in which they studied and learned together, African- Americans tended to separate their academic and social lives and studied completely on their own. Treisman developed a program that engaged these students in workshop-style study groups in which they collaborated on solving particularly challeng- ing calculus problems. The program was so suc- cessful that it was adopted by many other colleges. See Uri Treisman, “Studying Students Studying Calculus: A Look at the Lives of Minority Math- ematics Students in College,” College Mathematics Journal, vol. 23, no. 5 (November 1992), pp. 362–72, <http://math.sfsu.edu/hsu/workshops/treisman .html>.
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