We don't doubt that "social learning" tools are either going to prove useful and popular or the equivalent functionality will eventually just be built into a student or a faculty member's tool kit for teaching and learning.

This article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Marc Parry and Jeffrey R. Young discusses the concept, one early failure, and then takes a look at four of what the authors consider to be the most interesting new tools available for use: FinalsClub, OpenStudy, GradeGuru, and Mixable.

The comments below the article are interesting, if predictable:

I agree with drfunz. Students are being co-opted by companies/sites like Facebook that claim to link them globally in an instant--like a party all the time. The reality is that many of these sites depend on dollars from advertisers who depend on number of hits. Eventually, it all falls down. Look at Wikipedia who has its founder pictured above the entry, flogging for money to support a "social research" site. That comes now after years of teachers saying that Wikipedia is nothing more than a superficial knowledge site for those who don't know ANYTHING about the topic and banning it as a real source of research.

Teachers who immediately run to social network sites because that is where the students go are often only doing two things: wanting to show the students they are hip and cool, and therefore worthy of respect, OR letting the tail wag the dog--letting student habits dictate pedagogy. "Just in time" is a phrase that applies to shipments of goods, not learning. Students who learn "just in time" by looking it up, carrying PowerPoint sheets into tests, and only doing online research will forget that information very quickly--often before the test or paper due the next day. It's basic psychology: short term memory can only hold 7 items +/- 2 for 30 seconds. The only way to get it into longterm memory is to practice, restate, review--none of the processes that are part of the "click click" computer generation.

According to this author - Benedict Carey, The New York Times - a number of things we tend to believe about learning are ... wrong; here's what's correct:

• Studying the same material in different spaces yields better learning than always studying it in the same place.
• Studying a variety of things in each study session yields better results than focusing on a single type of learning.
• Repetitive study sessions space out over time are more fruitful than mass cramming.
• Testing is far more valuable as a learning tool than as a mere assessment measure for grading purposes.

The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard.

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Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding. “When students see a list of problems, all of the same kind, they know the strategy to use before they even read the problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like riding a bike with training wheels.” With mixed practice, he added, “each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had to do on the test.”