Roots of Connectivism

Roots of Connectivism September 29, 2009 EC&I 831

“ What we have here is a transition from a stable , settled world of knowledge produced by authority/authors, to a world of instability , flux, of knowledge produced by the individual...”
Institute of Education, London, 2007

Psychological/social/learning theory
Philosophy of Mind/Connectionist/Artificial Intelligence
Brought together/unified (corrected) in neuroscience

Behaviourism
Concept: Learning is a change in behaviour…mind is a black box
Figures: Pavlov, Thorndike, Watson, Skinner
B.F. Skinner

Epistemology/Pedagogy
Knowledge is objective, but secondary to behavioural considerations
Teaching is stimulus/response-based (conditioning)
Behaviourism

Cognitivism
Concept: information processing, metacognition, thought process, knowledge is organized/organizable
Figures: Ausubel, Gagne, Bandura, Bruner (both socially-focused)

Cognitivism
Motivation
Attribution
Self-efficacy
ARCS
Attention
Relevance
Confidence
Satisfaction

Knowledge is objective, acquired through cognition (objectivistic)
Information processing: attention to STM, LTM, and interaction between systems (encoding, retrieval, cognitive load)
Cognitivism

Constructivism
“ Knowledge constructed by learners as they attempt to make sense of their experiences”
Driscoll

Piaget
Piaget:
Process of development
Stages of development
“ I think that all structures are constructed and that the fundamental feature is the course of this construction: Nothing is given at the start, except some limiting points on which all the rest is based. The structures are neither given in advance in the human mind nor in the external world, as we perceive or organize it.”

Social Constructivism
Vygotsky
Language (symbols)
Social and cultural context

Constructionism
Concept: people learn through making things – “creative experimentation”
Learning vs. Teaching
“ find ways in which the technology enables children to use knowledge”
Seymour Papert

Situated Learning
Concept: “learning as it normally occurs is a function of the activity, context and culture in which it occurs”
Brown, Lave, Wenger

Activity Theory
Concept: “More than ever there is a need for an approach that can dialectically link the individual and the social structure”
“ Transcending Context”
Leont’ev (based on Vygotsky)
Engeström (in current iteration – expansive learning)

Epistemology/pedagogy
Knowledge is personally constructed, socially generated, contextually held
Teaching is indirect, supportive, learner-driven, experiential
Constructivism

Move from folk psychology
To scientific psychology (neural net view of learning/knowledge)
Philosophy of mind (Churchland, Clark, Damásio)

Connectionism
Concept: Learning - neural networks, not symbol processing
Figures:
Early: Thorndike (behaviourist)
More recently modular models of learning (Minsky), and AI focus: Bechtel, Abrahamsen, Pinker, Churchland, Hebb

Neuroscience as parent science for learning

Biological views of learning
“ It appears that complex and distributed systems of neurons are implicated in learning, with some systems centrally involved with the development and representation of a memory trace, and others peripherally involved in the expression of learned behaviour”
Donegan & Thompson

“ To the neuroscientist, learning is a whole-person/whole-brain activity what confounds received organizations”
Theodore Marchese

?
Connectionism/Neuroscience

Networked Learning

Learning in relationship to knowledge and mind
Distributed
Hutchins – Not “in skull”
Spivey et. al. – “not always inside brain”
Bereiter – “knowing outside the mind”
Externalization – Wittgenstein, Vygotsky
Socialization & negotiation – Papert, Piaget, Bruner, Bandura

“ The intelligences…are distributed …across minds, persons, and the symbolic and physical environments”
Roy Pea

Connectivism

Knowledge & learning as networked and emergent Synchronicity Amplification Resonance

Undiscovered public knowledge
When connections are weak…not more research, but better connections
Undiscovered public knowledge:
systems of information that are similar but distinct or not normally connected
Don Swanson

Participatory sense making
Our world makes sense through our interaction with information and others
....(and in turn, their interactions with information and others)
De Jaegher, Di Paolo, 2007

Depth and diversity of connections determines understanding
Frequency of exposure
Integration with existing ideas/concepts
Strong and Weak Ties
Determining understanding

The primacy of the connection Connections are to learning as atoms are to the physical world…

What connections are
How they form
What attributes/structure they exhibit at formation
What various formations mean

How attributes of connections reflect learning

But what about technology?

New media adds new opportunities for connections/relations, enacting latent ties
Haythornthwaite, 2002

Extension of mind

External mind

Epistemology/pedagogy
Knowledge as constellation of connections
Sensemaking/wayfinding
Network (social/technological) as assistive cognitive agent
Technology as externalization/extension
Connectivism

Thinking about tomorrow

Given the changes in how we interact with content and each other (make sense) and growing mediative role of technology, how should we change the educational process?

CCK08 & CCK09, EC & I831, OSIWA mindsets of design

Learnometer?
Physical device, network aware:
-Active search
-Semantic analysis
-Location-aware
-Tracks connections
-Links conceptual development
- Meaningful metrics

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Roots of Connectivism

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