Terry’s Blog

Having read George Siemens’ Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and listened to his podcast interview with David, I have begun to think about the implications of connectivism as a model of learning for designing learning activities, particularly using blogs and wikis. These are a few notes to expand on later … maybe.

GS says the new (social?) technologies have developed by reflecting the changes, the key shifts, in society. He then maps these new technologies onto a pedagogy that meets the needs of a particular model of learning - connectivism. Is this the way humans generally learn? Or is it also new; a new way of learning that has been necessitated by the social changes GS outlines? GS says that on the whole educational design has lagged behind the social shifts and the new technologies and their uses, and that there has been a tendency to force them into the service of old outmoded models of learning. However, the new technologies enable educational designs that are in tune with the social shifts and meet the needs of the connectivist learning model. But other models of learning are still appropriate to certain stages of social development (theocracies e.g?) and for certain types of practical knowledge.

But student centred teaching styles and educational designs based on constructivist ideas are resisted as much by many students as by traditionally orientated academics and teachers. They want to be ‘taught’ and too often all we want to do is ‘teach’ them. Perhaps Connectivism as a learning process needs to be taught (induced, introduced,enabled?) and does not come naturally to students. It is not a ‘hard wired’ attribute. So educational design cannot simply be based upon the model of connectivist learning. It must also take into account that this style of learning is a possibility for students rather than ‘natural’ and already acheived. Connectivist educational design needs to create a learning ecology that teaches the connectivist learning process rather than assuming that it is what students already do. Maybe the structures and constraints I build into my educational design must de-traditionalise (is this a contradiction?) the students learning styles and encourage and motivate them to consciously embrace the connectivist learning model and see it as appropriate, and buy into it. How do I do this?

Supporting learners in recognising their own learning is a proposed heading in the usecases wiki http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?elgg/usecases. Recognising their own learning in the sense of their own existing styles of learning and the potential for developing and exploiting the connectivist style and the appropriateness of this in the ‘information age’?

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