e-Studying

One thing that goes handing in hand with learning is studying. After graduating high school, I attended college for two years. I remember that every so often I would get together with some classmate in a study group. Sometimes they were productive, sometimes they were not. Some did not last very long while others were all-nighters. What ever the case, there was some good that came out of these study groups.

While forming e-study groups might be new to some, it basically follows the pattern of traditional study groups; getting people together at a particular time, in a particular place, to study a particular subject. With e-studying, the particular place is taken care of, online, so all that is left to decide is the time and the subject.

Two ideas could be an impromptu type that would meet one time or an ongoing group meeting at the same time a during the week. One could, if ambitious enough, attend a number of study groups in a week.

The key is getting people together. Time is always an issue. Often students live in different time zones so this will be a limiting factor.

Obviously the study session would be conducted synchronously; this might be a new experience for some online learner;.there are some e-learners that conduct learning in a totally asynchronous fashion. Today there are many tolls that can be used to conduct the session. If forming a study group, it would be well to list any software or hardware requirements needed, such as a videocam.

Here are some interesting tools:

Second Life
http://secondlife.com/

Skype
http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/

Google Docs
http://docs.google.com/?pli=1#folders

This will help students collaborate and share notes and other things.
There are a lot of other tools out there some free some not free. Just like regular study groups, e-learning groups can be a great social network environment. They can be both fun and productive with the right combinations of people and tools.