White Paper: The 5 Pillars of Social Learning Design
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Written by David Collien, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of OpenLearning.
In this white paper, David illustrates the 5 pillars of social learning design that will help you to exceed expectations and encourage rich, social interactions in your online learning.
What's in the white paper?
This white paper introduces five core concepts that you can use to build active, constructive, and social learning experiences. It provides explanations and examples of co-creation, crowdsourcing, collaboration, social presencing, and self-expression, helping you to take full advantage of the merits and possibilities of an online environment.
Its author is OpenLearning's Founder and Chief Technology Officer, David Collien, who oversees the software and systems design, architecture and strategy across the OpenLearning platform. As an educationalist, he also guides the implementation of the educational tools, features, and social mechanics of the OpenLearning platform.

1. Co-creation
Empower learners to influence the design of their own learning.

2. Crowdsourcing
Collecting information with, and from, your greatest resource: your learners.

3. Managing collaboration
Focus on organisation, delegation and how people work best together.

4. Social presencing
Growing an organic learning community with supportive relationships.

5. Self-expression
Celebrating the different experiences that each learner brings to your course.
About the Author

DAVID COLLIEN
Chief Technology Officer
David was previously an education PhD researcher at the University of New South Wales, and is a talented software engineer with first class honours in a Bachelor of Science (Computing) degree. David’s current research focuses on the analysis of the pedagogical and motivational aspects of community in online learning environments. David spent 6 years at UNSW as a tutor, high school outreach coordinator, guest lecturer, and course design assistant. David is also experienced in artificial intelligence having done research with NICTA, and been a member of UNSW’s RoboCup team rUNSWift. He has also previously worked in the e-learning field as a researcher, pedagogical liaison, and developer with the UNSW Adaptive eLearning Research Group and Smart Sparrow, and gives talks on software engineering in startups at Muru-D. David also expresses his creativity as an artist, with an installation in the 2015 Sydney Vivid Light Walk.
Full Chapter List
Chapter 3: Managing collaboration
Chapter 4: Social presencing
Chapter 5: Self-expression
Resources for Learning Designers