Analysis of the benefits of collective learning through question answering

Abstract

Online collaborative learning between peers seems a viable complementary method to traditional learning, even as the input no longer comes from only one man - the tutor - but from a number of people with different levels of competence. Furthermore, nowadays an increasing number of people turn to social networks when they need to find answers, for reasons like trust, response time and effort. Thus social networks behave at times similarly to online collaborative learning networks. This paper presents a model of Questions & Answers (Q&A) learning where students are the ones that ask and also answer questions, as a method to increase and reinforce knowledge.