HOW TO GAIN KNOWLEDGE IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

Today students have borderless access to information on different Internet platforms. Students frequently are not reflecting this information and accept it as common and true without any validation or proof. They are using this information in their daily life naturally and regularly confound of it with knowledge. More or less students have lost the ability to estimate the value of information, because a toolset is missing to handle the given information explosion they are confronted with. A learning platform has to ensure that students are able to reflect the information between other people and themselves. That is why a collaborative toolset is necessary where students can reflect, discuss and cooperate on given information to make their own experience. A learning environment that reflects the former mentioned aspects ensures the ability of the students to internalize information and to gain knowledge. Therefore, the virtual platform has to be a combination of an e-learning platform with its own social network in the different knowledge areas, activated by a collaborative toolset that facilitates learning by doing and learning within a community. This paper therefore suggests a learning platform that directs students to reflect newly gained information and coerce them to exchange views about the topic with other colleges or community members. The approach suggested in this paper has a twofold aim. First, benefits of current social networks shall be combined with classic e-learning components to provide a solid base for a project oriented learning environment. Second, this gained environment is then joined with process modeling tools from the business domain. It is envisioned that this newly suggested combination of methods from the learning and the business domain will guide the students by providing defined structures how to process new information. In further consequence, this will lead to new learning patterns internalized by the students.