Currently I am doing a research about distant education, collaborative learning, social network and other forms of distributed learning for my thesis. After some time, I found out that some dedicated e-learning tools are impractical!

Some tools are still focusing on the system, how to get things done systematically. Well some of them have implemented a good course management system so that the course is well-organized and well-structured. But then again, it’s still impractical to the user, I mean, end user. Students.

After I have learned some learning methods and theories, I came up with a conclusion that learning is one of communication form. I don’t think that people can learn something alone efficiently. People can still learn themselves, but in the end they should still discuss about what they’ve learned with their friends or others. The purpose is clear, they want to verify and validate what they’ve learned, and on the other hand they can find something interesting they want to explore more, deepen the learning process and resulting a better understanding.

Communication is one kind of human interaction, and human has this unique behavior that will affect communication he/she makes. And I haven’t seen any (self-acclaimed) dedicated e-learning tools that support the behavior and also the kind of interaction in it.

I did a research to find out what is the best e-learning tools, and the result is interesting. Based on some researches, twitter and other social network sites are on top of the list, while self-acclaimed tools sits on the lower place. This implies that social interaction among people, or students, is important in order to have a good learning process. It actually reflects the real world, that we usually find our discussion partner that suit us. Well, we can’t discuss all things to all people. We make some kind of categorization, which topic to be discussed to which person. And this also happens on the online world.

So I come up with a solution, put some more social interaction in e-learning tools. Or, utilize existing social networks to be your learning tool.