Connectivist Learning for All!

This post originally appeared on Klingspace on 8/11/2014:

Kudos to Leslie McBeth on her recent post, “Klingenstein Summer Institute as a Model for Networked Learning.” It came in the midst of a summer when I’ve been thinking intensely about networked learning--for adults, as I prepare faculty professional development, but also for students. It’s always nice to learn that someone else is thinking on the same issues! (I suppose that’s largely the point of networked learning!)

Two giants in this arena are George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Downes writes the newsletter Online Learning Daily, and if you’ve got some extra time on your hands, you can read his 612 pages of collected essays on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge (no doubt he’s written much more in the two years since he published that collection). I highly recommend Siemens’ “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age,” as a primer on networked learning and its aptness for this information age. I recently tweeted out his Principles of Connectivism from that essay:

Together, Siemens and Downes are credited with inventing the MOOC, though CCK08 and the connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) they’ve taught since looked very little like today’s high production-value, often low connection-value exponential MOOC (xMOOC) offerings from providers like Coursera.

cMOOCs are Connectivism and networked learning fully realized. As they run, they leverage their scale to de-emphasize the instructor and highlight instead student-student interactions that ultimately build the lessons of the course. But because they run completely in the open, utilizing public social media platforms rather than in a closed Learning Management System, though the course may end, the class never really disbands. The network of learners remains, right in the same social media space(s) where it began, to continue learning on the course’s topic or new interests that find in common. 

From Hollands, F. and Tirthali, D. (2014). MOOCs: Expectations and Reality

What could these principles look like in a K-12 setting? Inspired by CCK08, Wendy Drexler provides a powerful vision in her video, “The Networked Student”:

One of the most exciting possibilities here is empowering students to engage in networked learning not only with other students, but with learners (and experts) of all ages. Furthermore, while students are still in school, a Connectivist approach practices them in the true habits of lifelong, self-directed learning.