Article reflection: Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

 

“Ok, Google!” It is probably the most frequent phrase in all informatively baffling situations during the last twenty years and humankind has gone a long way to reach it from “Ok, Mommy!” This way began a long before any theory ever emerged or was coined by any of the academics in their theses. Education as a process started with the birth of the first human being, though, as I believe, not being articulated as a term at that times. Even there in the caves or bare wildernesses our ancestors accumulated and transmitted knowledge for their future generations and thanks to that ability of a human brain we as civilization at the point of development we are standing now.

The theories of education and beliefs on the way knowledge is perceived also changed through times. First, it was Behaviorism of John B. Watson based on stimuli and response from environment (Cherry, 2022), then Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget proposed a theory of Cognitivism which “focused on how information is received, organized, stored and retrieved by the mind” (OLCreate: General Teaching Methods: Cognitivism, 2020) and till the recent times very popular theory of Constructivism ‘an approach to learning that holds that people actively construct or make their own knowledge and that reality is determined by the experiences of the learner’ (Elliott et al., 2000). But with the development of technology and integrating it into the educational sphere, there was a demand into absolutely new theory of knowledge operation and the theory of Connectivism has emerged.  Connectivism is “a new learning theory that claims individual’s knowledge is distributed and resides not only in his brain, but also in connections with electronic and human components which the learner has developed in the course of his learning” (Davidson and Glassner, 2016). According to George Siemens, one of the main founder of connectivism theory, it reminds a cycle when “starting point of learning is the individual who feeds information into the network, which feeds information back to individuals who in turn feed information back into the network as part of a cycle” (Siemens, 2004). Thus, any person can become a mediator of knowledge and be a part of never-resting network of sharing and learning via all digital sources such as social media, google, blogs, youtube, forums, digital channels, etc. Unlike the previous learning theories, Connectivism posits that knowledge is created and controlled not only within individual, but also outside, which can include organizations or any databases. The picture of knowledge, as it represented in Connectivism theory, reminds an enormous human brain with a vast network of neurons, exchanging and processing the information, little cells and nodes, which are in constant movement of creating new neuron connections or removing unnecessary ones. This world brain of information pretty similar to any living organism never stops working as the informational domain never stops changing; this process is well described by Gonzalez (2004), where he elaborates “One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete” (cited in Siemens, 2005). The rapid change of the way people live and percept the world, entails the same changes in the world of knowledge and information. For example, now we will hardly ever find a person with a profession of a cabman or a chimney sweeper or our grandparents never could imagine that such professions as a blogger or a web-designer would exist. Such swift modifications of the living realities, when you never know in which world you will wake up tomorrow, required connectivism to be a guarantee, that we will be on the same page with environment, when next time something shifts or it shifts, because of the Connectivism epoch – arguable “vicious circle” J. 

Interestingly, the theories of learning very close resonate with the Bloom’s Taxonomy classification of learning outcomes (1956).

It seems that the theories were climbing the Bloom’s ladder beginning with behaviouristic approach, which was mostly based on remembering the information, then cognitive approach requiring the understanding and applying of knowledge, constructivism theory, mostly dealing with analyzing the information and constructing a new personal knowledge and now connectivism theory, which also requires analyzing, evaluating and creating after processing the massive volume of information provided by numerous network connections, otherwise, there is a risk to be drowned in the ocean of unnecessary “informational garbage”. Therefore, the ability of critical thinking, which allows individual to pick up, sift and connect the necessary puzzles of information among millions of gigabytes of unnecessary, in order to create the whole painting or a complete idea, is considered to be a very valuable skill, nowadays, and all modern educational institutions tend to incorporate it in their curriculum programs.

The role of the teacher also changed drastically along with approaches to learning, from simply a prototype, knowledge carrier and transporter to a guide and a facilitator. Incorporation Connectivism in the classroom, besides the digital equipment and literacy, requires from teachers to establish the environment for students, where they can be their own knowledge creators, experience their own learning and enlarging their network opportunities, which makes a role of a teacher more like designer and advisor or counselor. Siemens (2003)  also defines teacher’s responsibility is to “create learning ecologies, shape communities, and release learners into the environment” (cited in Toor, no date).

Fortunately, now there is a diverse choice of tools, which can be good platforms for implementing Connectivism approach, the ones I use are chats in MS Teams, Telegram, online games or Apps. They all engage inclusivity, collaboration and autonomy and help students to be the captains of their own educational voyage.

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References:

Cherry, K. (2022). Why Behaviorism Is One of Psychology's Most Fascinating Branches. Verywell Mind. Available from https://www.verywellmind.com/behavioral-psychology-4157183#:~:text=Behaviorism%2C%20also%20known%20as%20behavioral,are%20shaped%20by%20environmental%20stimuli. [Accessed 21 February 2022].

OLCreate: General Teaching Methods: Cognitivism (2020). Open.edu. Available from https://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/mod/page/view.php?id=147079#:~:text=Cognitivism%20is%20a%20learning%20theory,learning%20as%20internal%20mental%20processes. [Accessed 24 February 2022].

Elliott, S., Kratochwill, T., Cook, J. and Travers, J. (2000). Educational psychology, 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Connectivism by Siemens (no date). Ceebl.manchester.ac.uk. Available from http://www.ceebl.manchester.ac.uk/events/archive/aligningcollaborativelearning/Siemens.pdf [Accessed 4 March 2022].

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism:a learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1).

Toor, S. (no date). | Community | CGScholar. Cgscholar.com. Available from https://cgscholar.com/community/community_profiles/e-learning-ecologies-mooc/community_updates/72274 [Accessed 4 March 2022].