Best Practices in Building an Online Social Learning Program

“Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action.”

-Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory, 1977

The Father of Social Learning Theory - Albert Bandura, rightly proposed that learning was not merely a product driven by direct reinforcement, i.e. ‘to obtain rewards and avoid punishments’ (Skinner, 1938). His theory added a social element, postulating that people largely learn new information and behaviors by watching other people, thus highlighting the acts of observation and modeling in the learning process. Probably the biggest takeaway from Bandura’s theory and the aspect which has the most impact today is that ‘learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context.’(Bandura 1977) Simply put, as people share ideas, perform actions or exhibit thinking patterns, we are learning, even when this sharing is informal in a variety of contexts, such as sharing digitally on social networks.

The advent of the internet and proliferation of social media throughout our lives has no doubt impacted social learning, perhaps raised its profile to an all time high, and also created powerful avenues through which to apply it. With all these tools at hand to leverage social learning, the quandary becomes how to organize your social learning program so that it yields the desired positive results? If learning today is happening by observing, interacting and modeling the behavior of peers, friends and colleagues on social media then how do teachers and employers emulate these spaces in their schools and organizations and structure them to cultivate desired skills and dispositions?

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