The answer was simple and powerful: learning is a social process. We know this to be true. It has been proven, time and time again, in all kinds of educational and pedagogical research. Humans are social creatures, and we learn best when we learn with others – both directly and indirectly.

We built Pedit on this knowledge, and it is the foundation of our philosophy. Learning is not a solitary activity; it happens in collaboration with a community. We use the concept of community in the anthropological sense – a group you belong to and share some ideas, cultures, goals or purposes with. In learning, we believe communities fill three specific roles:

• A community is a source of learning.
• A community is an arena for learning.
• A community is a recipient of learning.

More than one community

Whenever there’s a learning process, multiple communities are involved – for ease, let’s call them learning communities and general communities. A learning community is a group of people who are learning together. General communities are made up of all the social settings learners belong to – the settings their existing knowledge comes from and the settings into which they will bring their new knowledge.

In a traditional school setting, the learning community is the class with all its students. The general community consists of each student’s social circles: their friends and family, the children they meet in the school yard and the people in their after-school activities.

In a commercial setting, the learning community is the group of colleagues taking a course together, or colleagues who individually learn new skills or have new ideas that they share with each other. The general community is the overall company or organization that they belong to and which benefits from their new knowledge.

Social learning is possible online

One challenge with online education is that the learning experience may happen asynchronously; participants and teachers may not be “live” in the learning environment at the same time. This has many benefits – like accessibility and flexibility for the learners – but it has also discouraged many online learning providers from including a social aspect at all.

In Pedit, we have focused on bridging this problem by creating an online social environment where each student has a presence. Their presence can be seen and felt through discussions and forum posts, feedback and comments, personal messages, or participation through pictures and videos – all adapted to fit the relevant learning environment and learning goals.

Don’t get us wrong – webinars and synchronous participation absolutely strengthen learning, and learning together in a classroom is a different experience than learning online. But learning at the same time or in the same location is often neither practical nor feasible. In those situations, you need a tool that takes asynchronous learning seriously and still lets your learners learn together.

We believe synchronicity can be great for learning, but it’s not the mainstay; learning in a social environment is.