Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age? – Ying’s Review of Siemens and Downes Originated and Promoted Learning Theory

George Siemens and Stephen Downes originated a new learning theory Connectivism. On Siemens paper Connectivism: A learning Theory for the Digital Age, it introduced a new term Connectivism to explain how internet technologies have created opportunities for people to learn and to share information across the World Wide Web and among learner themselves (Siemens, 2004).

These technologies include Web browsers, email, wikis, online discussion forums, social networks, YouTube, and any other tool which enables the users to acquire and to share information with other people. However, the author did not witness the learning application among Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin worldwide and wechat, weibo, Line in the east, while they initiated the theory 13 years before. It neither discussed the impact of mobile usage as a learning activity and its impact among learning community. 

A key feature of connectivism is that much learning can happen across peer networks that take place online. In connectivist learning, a teacher will be taking a new role, which is guiding students to information and answering key questions as needed, in order to support students learning and sharing on their own. Students are also encouraged to seek out information on their own online and express what they find. A connected community around this shared information will often set up. This learning theory does challenge the traditional role of a teacher (a facilitator, a librarian, a mentor, a coach or a class coordinator?) and its relationship with learners. It transfers the power from teacher to the students during the process of learning.

  The massive open online course (MOOC) phenomenon comes from connectivist theory. Siemens and Downes actually launched their own MOOC to promote this learning theory. In a connectivist MOOC (cMOOC), it is open to anyone who wants to enroll, it uses open software and systems across the Web to facilitate learning and sharing, it takes place primarily online, and it happens according to a specified curriculum for a designated period of time. While facilitators guide the cMOOC, its participants are largely responsible for what they learn and what and how they share it; this connected behavior largely helps create the course content.

Siemens emphasized that Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. He illustrates the principles of Connectivism as follows,

1. Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
2. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information resources.
3. Learning may reside in non-human appliance.
4. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.
5. Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
6. Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
7. Currency (accurate, up-to-date, knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
8. Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

  Connectivism also addresses the challenges that many corporations face in knowledge management activities. Knowledge that resides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning. The earlier learning theory as Behaviorism, Cognnitivism, and Constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference. Ying is trying to find whether this theory could interpret the practices initiated by corporate universities to engage their managers and employees on skill requirements and leadership improvements.

Connectivism presents a model of learning that our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate know knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses. Connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.  

For Ying, more areas needs to understand are as follows,

1. Who are those learners this theory is researching on, Digital Natives or Digital Immigrants?
2. How MOOC runs to meet the needs from online communities, what is a sustainable model of it?
3. In corporate environment, whether Learning Management System or Social Network plays more important role on training needs?
4. How to combine online community learning with offline traditional learning?

While I am talking with Taobao University (the biggest e-commerce network in China under the umbrella of Alibaba) Head, their training psychology and approach is more or less echoes the learning theory of Connectivism. All Taobao sellers are depending on online learning community to gain and share knowledge. However, Taobao's practice also emerge a new issue which needs more research on how to interpret learning occurred among an eco-system which is a closed system (not open to everyone who would like to access) but with very large scale and among different group of companies.

(To be continued)