connectivism 101

Learning Technologies Centrewww.umanitoba.ca/learning_technologies

Connectivism 101: For the Curious

November 12, 2007 University of Alaska Fairbanks

George Siemens


What was happening: late 90’s/early 00’s

• Network effect was experientially manifested

• Control was shifting• User generated content• Lower barriers: We could create,

collaborate, share with relative ease


What was happening in late 90’s/early 00’s

• Information explosion accelerating• Edublog community rapidly

developing• Learning from each other:

distributed, co-formation of understanding

• Rise of everyone


Learning didn’t feel like the theories said


We need a view of learning that recognizes:

• Changing information base (capacity to know)

• Role of technology• Place/time shifted collaboration• Shared sense making• Life long learning• Connected specialization• Diversity• Principality of connections


Contributing factors

• Dissatisfied learners• Engagement• Changing world: how we relate to

information• Upheaval in information fields (blame

the network)– News, music, video, software,

scholarship


Learning/life had changed


The few became the network


Points of failure

• Unneeded control• LMS models (centralized/clunky)

– Good for administrators– Terrible for learners and faculty

• LOs starting to peel hype layer• Structured and planned=outdated


Heisenberg principle of information/learning: if you can describe it, it

has changed


Origin• Lots of stuff before I ever got here• 2003 article – networks, ecologies• 2004 article – self-published• 2005 – IJTDL• 2005 – Downes: Connective Knowledge• 2006 – Wilson: “The diagram”• Simultaneous: networked learning • Edublog space exploded (see edublog

awards)


Connectivism: Theory of learning

developed in the manner it states learning occurs

• Downes, Cross, Richardson, Verhagen, Kerr, Anderson, Blackall, Sessums, Fisher, Hiebert, Wilson, Fiedler (plus a few hundred others)

• How did they contribute?• Why did they contribute?

• How’s that for authentic?


What is connectivism?

• Knowledge distributed• Learning as networked process (i.e.

forming connections)

• Principles form base of all design


Three levels:

• Neural• Conceptual (Sweller, Novak)• External (people, information

sources)


But is that learning?


“More than anything else, being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways”

William Cronon, 1998


The network became the locus of change


What is knowledge?


Where is it found?


“All the knowledge is in the connections”

David Rumelhart


Learning in relationship to knowledge and mind

• Distributed – – Hutchins – Not “in skull”– Spivey et. al. – “not always inside brain”– Bereiter – “knowing outside the mind”

• Externalization – Wittgenstein, Vygotsky

• Socialization – Papert, Piaget, Bruner, Bandura


The network became a lever of influence


The aim:

• Deep understanding• Complex worldviews• Multi-context• Assimilative/adaptive• Agility/stability (Oblinger)

connectivism 101

Education

knowledge distributed

developing learning

theory of learning

learning didnt

view of learning

information fields

information sources

information upheaval