What collaborative and individual structures has the Lord given us? Going back to our discussion about types of interactions, it's clear that we've been provided avenues for learning with and by other learners as well as learner-teacher interactions.

The family is God's primary learning unit. In an ideal setting, all other formats for learning support family learning rather than supplant it or replace it. The family is a mini model of God's family, which includes Heavenly parents and all of God's children. Earthly parents can act as more knowledgeable others mentoring their children in the process of becoming like God. An immediate family unit is a subset of the large community of practitioners in which each of God's children are apprenticed and striving to become like him. I have never been a parent, but my understanding is that parents often learn as much from their own children as children are learning from their parents. This is an almost constant, permanently built in form of learner-learner interaction. Families are also responsible as a team unit to accomplish the task of returning home to God. Children are accountable to help each other and their parents learn and live the principles of the Gospel.

Every auxiliary of the church also facilitates collaborative learning opportunities. Serving in any calling requires working with others, for others, and sometimes on others. People don't receive training before these opportunities--they receive it during these opportunities, implying that the learning will happen in the experimental lab of life. I believe this is what we accepted when we chose to participate in the plan of salvation--that we would act, and that we would also at times be acted on by others. The church is commanded to meet together often and to strive for Zion, which is a community state as well as an individual one.

This doesn't, however, remove the responsibility to "work out your own salvation." We are commanded to have PERSONAL prayer and PERSONAL scripture study, which are activities inviting instruction from God Himself. All ordinances of salvation are also individual events. We take the sacrament one person at a time, receive baptism and confirmation one by one, etc. Even though we often attend the temple in groups, the learning in the temple is on an individual basis.