Multi-dimensional technology-enabled social learning approach

Abstract

The Web has become the biggest knowledge database that users access on a daily basis to retrieve useful information for their personal or professional decisions and actions. With the support of the technology and the IT revolution, the users once merely consumers, are actively producing and sharing content on the Web, using social networks to keep in touch, express, distribute and publish their experiences, views and ideas. Although, since their birth, most of the social media tools were not intended for educational purposes, educational organizations have started to recognize their added value in learning while socializing within their learning communities. However, their “educational” usage is still limited to facilitation of online learning communities and to collaborative authoring of learning material complementary to existing formal (e-) learning services. If the educational system doesn’t respond to this systemic and structural changes and/or challenges and retains its status quo than it is jeopardizing its own existence or the existence of the education, as we know it. This paper aims to precede one step further by proposing a multi-dimensional approach for technology-enabled social learning that further exploits implicit knowledge hidden in socially contributed textual content.