10 strategies for engaging students with intelligent social learning

Social learning platforms are becoming ever more popular in today's tech-savvy educational institutions around the world. Colleges can leverage the wealth of academic resources to benefit the community of users including students, teachers and staff from anywhere. Social learning is highly relevant for today's classroom management system and offers a number of advantages to the entire community across the campus, and beyond.

There are some elements that should be integrated in every successful social learning strategy, which may not require more time and resources. Social learning can take place within the course resources, where you can provide students an opportunity to have educational discussions with their peers to boost the level of interaction.

You can effectively utilize the social learning platform to communicate and collaborate with instructors and other students through discussion forums, chat, blogs, calendars, photo galleries, polls and more to enhance the learning experience.

1. Blogs

Blogs are increasingly used in educational institutions to share information about the institute and to provide subject-specific information. Users can post comments and share opinions with other students.

2. Discussion Forum 

Encourage student participation and collaboration through discussion forum to spark on-going conversations on various topics at any point of time. Teachers can post questions on a discussion board, while allowing students to provide responses, so other students can also see. Create multiple discussion forums focused on a variety of topics with multiple threads, so each thread can be organized into multiple posts.

3. Group Calendar

Teachers, students and administrators have a hectic time. The calendar and Class scheduling software help the community to stay updated on the latest academic activities and upcoming events on campus across the website and mobile devices. Administrators can check the availability of rooms, labs and other facilities to easily schedule meetings, courses, and exams.

4. Maps

Google Maps integration provides valuable tools for students and teachers to explore, collaborate and share location information including departments, libraries, labs, auditoriums and other spots in the campus, without leaving the classroom.   

5. Chat

Teachers can interact with students with real-time messaging from mobile classrooms and improve communication.  If you’re chatting with students, simply attach files and share your resources without hassles.

6. Photo & Video Gallery

Easily upload images and videos of latest events in your school or college and share high-quality multimedia with student groups to engage and spark conversations. Search through the photo collections and tag other students to enable students to portray themselves and render social relationships more realistic. Use interactive videos strategically to enrich academic experience.

7. File sharing

If you built an incredible group of students, you can actually upload multiple files and share your invaluable resources and information with instructors you want to pass it along to.

8. Reporting & Analytics

Whether an educational institution is built across multiple departments or campuses, capture, analyze, engage and collaborate with the education community across different channels within a single platform.    

9. Polls

Create different kinds of polls, surveys, quizzes and ratings to the student groups from iPhone and Android devices to generate feedback in real time. Analyze the student feedback to evaluate and improve course content, assessments, and instruction.

10. Facebook & Twitter Integration

It would be great to say social media opens up opportunities to learn, engage and innovate. There are a number of networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. with built-in options to connect and share content with users.

Creatrix Campus offers a 21st-century social learning platform that will make a difference in schools and higher education institutions. Being a cloud-based solution, it offers a user-friendly, customizable and scalable platform that is affordable and quick to implement in institutions