ConnectivismRethinking learning in a digital age

October 19, 2005University of Manitoba

Every public action which is not customary,

either is wrong, or, if it is right, is a

dangerous precedent. It follows that nothing

should ever be done for the first time.F. M. Cornford Microcosmographia Academica,

Conceptualizing learning…

• Knowledge is “out there”

• Knowledge is interpreted

• Knowledge is constructed

• Our verbs: constructs, framework, underpinnings, schema

• What’s wrong with these views of learning? – concept and reality: not aligned

How is learning different?

• Context is different: Interplay of learner needs, societal needs, and available tools– Information growth

• Process is different: Learning as network creation

• Cognition and knowing is different: distributed cognition (Hutchins) and collaborative meaning-making

• Learning no longer “in advance” of need

Baggage of existing understanding

• Trying to get new technology to do the work of the old

• Trying to meet new knowledge needs with old models

• Failing to see new opportunities and directions

Thinking and cognition

• Thoughts exist in space and time

• I am not the network…I am on my own network

• Pattern recognition (not info processing)

Learning, knowledge, meaning

• Perspective is not a framework (hence our ability to hold contradictory thoughts)

• Perspective is seeing a network from a particular node

• Network reflects back on itself to create a filtering node

• Chaos, systems thinking, self-organization

Internet trends

• Technology: RSS/Atom, Open APIs,

• Functionality: openness, read/write, personalization, relational

• Procedural: tagging, social networks, microcontent

• Key concept: connectivity (which requires openness)

What does this mean?

Interplay: people, society, technology:– Mobility, interoperability, convergence,

divergence, integration, richness of content, collaboration, open source, decentralized

http://www.det.act.gov.au/publicat/pdf/emergingtechnologies.pdf

End-user in control

• Networked individualism (Wellman)

• Participative

• Co-content and meaning creators

• Aggregated perspective (Downes/Surowiecki)

• Data recombination

• Personalize

Types of tools

• Blogs• Wikis• Social networks• Aggregators• Folksonomies• VoIP

• Groupware • Eportfolio (ELGG)• Virtual Classrooms• Combing worlds –

online and F2F

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

It’s not all good…

• Shielded

• Amateur

• Vacuum, echo chamber

• Quality

• Vetting (though it happens by a community-filtering process)

• http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_amorality_o.php

Does this align how we currently use learning/technology?

• No

• Content and courses still viewed as starting point of learning

• We are focusing on content tools: LMS (as they exist today), CMS, LCMS

• We should be focusing on connection-forming tools

• All content started as a connection…

Scott Wilson

Connectivism

• Learning is a network forming process• Capacity to know more is more critical

than what is known• Learning rests in aggregating diverse,

often opposing, views• Content is often the by-product of the

learning process, not the starting point• Connections, not content, are the

beginning point of the learning process

Connectivism

• Learning can reside in non-human appliances• Knowledge can rest within our network, not only

internally in ourselves• Ability to see connections (pattern recognition)

between ideas andconcepts critical to learning

• Currency (up to date knowledge) is the intent of properly createdlearning networks

• Decision making is in itself a learning process

George Siemens

gsiemens@elearnspace.org

www.elearnspace.org

www.connectivism.ca