Social networks and scaffolding strategies for complex learning

New Technologies for Students: The Use of Social Networks for Creating Scaffolding Strategies for Students

The intent of this abstract is to propose research in the area of using social networks to support highly personalizing learning programs relying on the personalizing training concept of scaffolding (Najjar, 2008). Studies indicate that when in-class and online training are combined, students reach mastery of complex, more theoretical subjects more efficiently and retain more of the most complex concepts taught (Kasraie, Kasraie, 2010).

Scaffolding Using Social Networks

The many advantages of social networks and the implications they have on enabling highly personalized learning strategies has shown initial promise and needs more research to fully explore its potential (Bernoff, Li, 2008). The use of scaffolding techniques for enabling greater levels of communication and collaboration in small workgroups is evident in how effective this dynamic occurs within trusted groups on the dominant social networks today (Jadallah, Anderson, Nguyen-Jahiel, Miller, Kim, Kuo, Dong, Wu, 2011). Augmenting or accentuating the value of social networks as a platform for online learning and continual reinforcement of challenging concepts and frameworks shows much potential and could lead to entirely new directions in complex e-learning scenarios, for example in medicine and the sciences (Tsai, 2010).