Scaffolded Social Learning

Today I want to share a model for Social Learning. It’s at quite a pragmatic level: ‘what do we do about it?‘, rather than an esoteric discussion of ‘what does social mean?‘. I’m presenting a view of Scaffolded Social Learning: a way of balancing the structure and defined outcomes of formal learning with the collaborative, co-creative and ‘sense making‘ functions of Social. Scaffolded Social Learning is built around two types of components: formal elements (‘boxes‘) and ‘bubbles‘ of social. Boxes are formal, bubbles are social. At the boundary between each, there is a gateway. The bubbles are co-creative, community spaces, places where we can feed out questions, case studies, activities and exercises that are carried out over time and within communities. The boxes are formally defined learning: maybe eLearning, classroom or defined resources. The overall arrangement is defined by an overarching narrative: it is, after all, still semi formal learning, with a defined outcome in terms of skills and capability, not an entirely free form and unstructured space.