While we may have not put a name to it growing up, we began social learning at the earliest of ages by mimicking adults, playing on a team, and learning from our parents and family.

Social Learning is simply learning with and from others.

If you’re having trouble figuring out effective ways to incorporate social learning into your eLearning curriculum, think about the techniques, interactions, and behaviors that would be observed in a live classroom and emulate those.

Here are four ways that you can initiate or ramp up social learning immediately!

Try incorporating games among peers to promote social learning. Humans, by nature, love to compete! This reinforces rewards for positive behavior and can really hook your learners into engaging with both the content and other “players”.

Build these elements directly into your course content, and create leaderboards with daily/weekly rewards for the winners.

One of the most effective ways to promote social interaction and engage your learners is to enable group discussions. This can be accomplished via live virtual classrooms, forums, discussion boards, and room-specific chat capabilities.

By giving your audience the means to interact, contribute and converse with others, they are able to not only learn from their counterparts but do so in a social environment. This reinforces observational learning by allowing interaction from various group members and gaining insight from a variety of perspectives.

Make your content real, personable, and approachable by incorporating a live weekly Question & Answer Session.

The interaction of learners with both an expert and their peers promotes the social group atmosphere by allowing participants to express themselves, ask questions, get feedback, and strengthen their knowledge of the content – all while fostering a collective community of learning.

Harness the platforms that are already ingrained in our culture! To enhance social learning, develop a strong presence on social media with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Encourage their use to reach out and ask questions. Leverage built-in functions such as posts, comments, video, and messaging to create an engaging and familiar network.