Connectivism and Changing Times: Learning for a Socially Wired World

George SiemensNovember 19, 2010Massey University

Palmerston North, New Zealand

All of these change models are converging

Martin Prosperity Institute, 2009

“It’s a war for talent”Eric Schmidt

Excellence Research Chairshttp://www.cerc.gc.ca/cpch-pctc-eng.shtml

“If you read the British press you will see they are screaming bloody murder that we’re taking the best from Britain and bringing them to Canada. Well, precisely. That was the name of the game”

Derek Burney

Astonishing pace of change

(in less than five years)

Shift Index Metrics

Shift Index, 2010 Deloitte Center for the Edge, p.133

Adapted from: UNESCO, Trends in Global Higher Education, 2009

Divesting public support of higher education

California: Significant reductions (2010) budget. More coming…

UK: Severe system wide cuts

Seeking relevance for traditional universities

Sloan-C, Class Differences 2010, p. 6

Sloan-C, Class Differences 2010, p. 7

“Somebody is going to figure out how to deliver online education for credit and for degrees in the quality sector—i.e., in the elite sector…I think it ought to be us”

Christopher Edley Jr.Dean, Berkeley Law School

Impact of disconnection

“…the fundamental task of education is to enculturate youth into this knowledge-creating civilization and to help them find a place in it…traditional educational practices – with its emphasis on knowledge transmission – as well as newer constructivist methods both appear to be limited in scope if not entirely missing the point”

Scardamalia and Bereiter (2006, Cambridge Handbook of Learning Sciences)

In networks, knowledge and learning are the same thing: one is the product,

the other the process

“In today’s networked world, learners are placing greater value on knowing where to find information than on knowing the information themselves.”

2010 New Zealand, Australia Horizon Report

Process of discovery of corona virus (SARS) as future university model?

Late February, 2003

Global, networked research, sensemaking, & knowledge growth

April 16, 2003

Distributed, social, networked knowledge growth (Connectivism)

Massive Open Online Courses

Open teaching & learning

2008, 2009,

(soon) 2011

What is the impact of hyper-connectedness

(social & informational)?

Challenge to repurpose education on an explicit system-wide connections

and connectedness model

Focusing on:

Complexity, emergence, self-organization

Social and knowledge connections

Knowledge-building (growing)

Small worlds

Weak/strong ties

Coherence

Depth (of knowledge)

Resonance

Knowledge and competence as states and patterns of connections

Which introduces learning and knowledge analytics

Complete (or nearly) connectedness requires emphasis to shift to data

analysis, visualization

Connectivism & Connective Knowledge 2008Moodle Forum Analysis

Week

Purdue Signals“To identify students who are at risk academically, Signals combines “predictive modeling” with data-mining from Blackboard Vista, Purdue University’s course management system. When an instructor runs a Signals intervention, each student is assigned to a “risk group”, denoted by one of three stoplight ratings -- corresponding to green (not at-risk), yellow (may be at-risk) or red (at-risk) stoplight icons – which are released to the student’s Blackboard course page.”

Breakups (via status changes)

Twitter/Facebook/Quora: gsiemens

Newsletter: www.elearnspace.org

Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference: https://tekri.athabascau.ca/analytics/ (February 27-March 1, 2011. Banff, Canada)