Holistic social learning environment - a meta-analysis

Abstract

Conducting collaborative learning in online environment has been challenging and a lot of research has been conducted to investigate the elements that can help in conducting a meaningful learning in online environment. Among the elements that often discussed and believe to be the elements that can help in producing a meaningful learning environment is social, cognitive, and teaching elements. Social element is considered an important element that must be created in online learning environment to be able catalyst students' cognitive process and cognitive elements should be considered if the learning goals is to increase students' thinking level. Each of this elements have been studied extensively by a lot of researchers especially the social and cognitive elements. However, without proper planning and structure of how the social and cognitive elements to be incorporated into online learning, both elements can be easily stray from its purpose. However, most of the research are only focusing on studying one elements at a time and little research has been conducted to study all three elements together to find out their roles together in producing a meaningful learning environment. Therefore, this article will discuss the importance of incorporating all the three elements in online learning and how it can change the way of information delivery to students through the selection of online learning tools.