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H817 Week 11 Activity 19 Implementing Connectivism

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Take the description of the short course on digital skills that you developed in Week 8 and recast it, so that it adopts a highly connectivist approach. Or, if you prefer, you could take this ‘Open education’ block as an example and recast it in a more connectivist model, or another course you have familiarity with. You should take each of the principles set out above and state how they are realised in your course, either as a general principle or by giving an example activity.

Blog your course outline, along with how the principles are realised.

Read and comment on some of the courses suggested by other learners. You might like to consider:

1.   whether you found connectivism useful

2.   whether connectivism was in conflict with the traditional concept of a course

3.   what it would be like to study or teach a course based around connectivism.


In Week 8, my proposed course was about “basic digital skills course for learners unfamiliar with using online technologies” (Page, 2021). Adding a strong element of connectivism to this course from the beginning could potentially be quite a leap for some of these learners, especially those whose previous experience of learning was more behaviourist or cognitivist in approach. Such learners may be seeking reassurance about their need to develop digital skills (some may be very keen while others might be skeptical) and may fear being overwhelmed by many conflicting opinions and approaches which could come from a connectivist network and prefer step by step guidance as “not all people are autonomous learners” (Kop & Hill, 2008) able to investigate without structured guidance.

A conundrum for connectivism is the issue that learners don’t know what they don’t know; learning to appraise and filter out what is not important for them to learn from the wealth of sources suggested via their connections takes time and experience, as does building the network connections.

I proposed the following topics for the basic digital skills course:

  • Week 1 Your digital hardware
  • Week 2 Navigating the internet
  • Week 3 Online communication skills
  • Week 4 Safety and privacy online
  • Week 5 Digital transactions

Recasting this into a predominantly connectivist approach is tricky though not impossible. I originally envisaged it as an online course with content guiding learners through a series of steps towards building their understanding and familiarity with the topics. Some activities might involve constructing knowledge on their own or with other learners. This would have made it a combination of behaviourist, cognitivist and constructivist approaches.

In connectivist mode, for learners who are beginners in the online world, the course might start with a small local group formed previously for other interests and meeting face-to-face (for example a local club). Some of the group identify the desire to learn more about online technologies to improve their digital skills, possibly to enhance a club activity. They may recently have acquired mobile devices and be tentatively finding their way around them, supporting each other as they go. Depending upon previous experience, some of the group may have more confidence and experience of digital technologies than others, know people who could demonstrate how to do particular processes and activities with the available hardware or have found suitable resources online which explain what to do.

As they become more confident with their digital skills, the group could form a social media group (e.g. using WhatsApp or Signal) to communicate with each other both about their newly found digital skills knowledge and their original face-to-face group interest. Some group members might join other online groups as they discover them and share some of their findings with the original group. Group members might do online searches to find courses and resources which are designed for building their digital skills and share the links with the group. Members may discuss and agree to use one or more of such online courses as a regular group activity (perhaps focusing on a different course topic each week or month, depending on their groups regular meeting pattern), with each person doing a course element at their own pace and using the group for support and encouragement. The learners would gradually build up their digital skills confidence as well as enhancing their search and connection building capabilities which could be applied to their group’s original interest too.

The above approach would meet the key principles of Connectivism set out by Siemans as follows:

Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.

The local group is likely to contain a diversity of opinions among its original members, gradually drawing upon wider connections will expose them to yet more diversity.

Learning is a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources.

The description of how this group might approach learning digital skills is an iterative process of gradually encountering, demonstrating, and sharing new skills from different information sources, including other groups.

Learning may reside in non-human appliances.

Online guides and videos they discover may demonstrate specific topics of interest.

Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.

Members of the group will need to have a willingness and capacity to learn and support each other as they discover new information.

Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

Finding new information via searches and connections with other groups and sharing back with the group in a continuous cycle of selecting a topic, seeking information, new connections and sharing will nurture and maintain connections and learning.

Ability to see connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill.

The approach will work for the group if members are willing to acknowledge that improving their digital skills will increase the variety of knowledge they can gain about their original group interest as well as build their digital skills and confidence.

Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.

In online searches for ‘how to do’ demonstrations, learners would look out for information about the currency of the online resource.

Decision making is itself a learning process.

The learners would be constantly evaluating and filtering information they discover in light of their previous understanding. They would use their connections to help choose what to learn and interpret meaning and relevance of incoming information.


Connectivism could be useful for this course of discovery because it would enhance and complement the learner group’s construction of knowledge about digital skills, they would be practicing both knowledge acquisition and participation (Sfard, 1998) while building their online communication skills. It may be daunting and overwhelming for the group to gradually discover and apply relevant digital skills without any single person with previous knowledge guiding them, it would depend upon the existing abilities and personalities in the group which direction their digital skills development might take. If everyone in the original group lacks digital skills and confidence it will be harder for them to get started, so they may need a teacher to provide guidance at the beginning (cognitivism) or they could use an existing online course as their scaffold for topics to cover. So a purely connectivist approach might not work for them. A blend of cognitivist, constructivist, behaviourist and connectivist might be a better approach.

 

References

Page, A. (2021) ‘H817 Week 8 Activity 8 An OER course’, Anna Page’s blog [blog] 27 March. Available at https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=236848

Kop, R., & Hill, A. (2008) ‘Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?’ The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 9(3). Available at https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v9i3.523 (accessed 12 April 2021)

Sfard, A. (1998) ‘On Two Metaphors for Learning and the Dangers of Choosing Just One’, Educational Researcher, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 4–13.


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