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