Categories for Program Planning along Connectivist Lines

Key Principles

- Build relationships between people, and between people and content

- Help people discover relationships between different contents

- Avoid calcification and allow for change, shifts, chaos, creativity, innovation, unpredictability

- Allow for "rapture" by managing chaos to some degree

- The smallest unit matters, because it is the seed for inquiry

- Chaos, self-organization, emergence, challenge/disruption, change, renewed chaos is the path of learning

- The medium IS the message ... plant the initial seeds for content and process carefully

- Reflective practice and metacognition are critical

Objectives

- Instructor-suggested

- Learner-defined

- Mutable and transformative

Approach to Learning

- inquiry-based learning

- project-based learning

- problem-based learning

- critical reading

- open learning

- action learning; discovery learning

- experiential learning

- emergent curriculum

- the classroom (virtual or otherwise) is a learning community, a community of practice

Role of the Teacher

- animateur

- provocateur (Siemens)

- curator (Siemens)

- responsible catalyst

- connector

- audience

Learners

- autonomous but connected

- engaged

- thinking

- re-assembling

- connection-seeking

- meaning-making

Outcomes

- Cognitive and affective, but hard to measure

- Knowledge production

- Connection creation

Oh Yeah, and Content

- Initially, loosely focused

- Initially, somewhat filtered

- Fluid, but not vaporous

- Coherent even in moments of dissonance

Transfer from Facebook Discussion

Over the past year, a group of adult educators in adult literacy were sharing ideas about connectivism, fluid learning opportunities, rebellious curriculum development and transformative education. The following is a synopsis of the key ideas that came out of the discussion.

- Discovery of connectivism ... is it a learning theory or a teaching approach?
- Does connectivism offer an opportunity for more holistic learning and renewed desire to learn, not just online but also in the classroom?
- It seems so much more learner-directed, with students feeding into and growing their own learning networks.
- It raises the question about the role of the teacher.
- It subverts the power of the teacher and other authorities (in a positive way) because it hands power back to students.
- It reminds us of activists like Freire and Macado, who struggled with the role of the teacher in learner-directed education
- It is a matter of finding balance between order and chaos, of structure and freedom
- It's about creating "learning experiences" that learners can tap into
- What then, as educators, is to be our working process?
- We have to consider things like emergent curriculum.
- We also need a more "emergent" structure through which to present our information ... everything is so linear.
- Some software may be starting to break out of the linear learning model (eg. Waterlife)
- We still need to manage the flow of information, so we find a good balance between "trickle" and "deluge".
- What does Jungian psychology offer us about learning and soul/brain growth?
- There are specific things we can consider (metrics) that have been developed for online learning that apply to "connected learning" as a whole
- We're trying to (and more likely to) reach "rapture" through connected learning.
- There are similarities to participatory action research and design, and inquiry-based learning
- Technology has certain effects on our brains and learning that need to be considered
- The concept of knowledge is shifting in society; our PLEs look different than they did 20 years ago.
- We need to create opportunities for "double-loop thinking" if we want real change.

NAMES THAT CAME UP

Siemens and Downes
Michael Wesch
Freire
Macado
Konrad Glogowski
Czicksentmihalyi
Michelle Fine
James Gee