Connectivism

Learning in the Digital Age

José Antônio

Theory put forward by George Siemens

 About knowledge

• What is
knowledge?
• How is it created?
• How is it shared?
Creating Instructional Environments

• Behaviorism
• Cognitivism
• Constructivism
• Connectivism
 Connectivism

• Does learning always occur inside a

person?
• What vs. value of what is being learned.
• Action without the need of personal
learning
• Dramatic change in conditions making
impossible to revise
 What is Connectivism
• Connectivism is the integration of principles
explored by chaos, network, and complexity and
self-organization theories. Learning is a process
that occurs within nebulous environments of
shifting core elements – not entirely under the
control of the individual. Learning (defined as
actionable knowledge) can reside outside of
ourselves (within an organization or a database),
is focused on connecting specialized information
sets, and the connections that enable us to learn
more are more important than our current state
of knowing. (George Siemens – December 2004)
Knowledge and Connectivism
The current state/trends in learning

• Learning impacted through technology

• Information growth
• The amount of knowledge in the world
• The shrinking half-life of knowledge
• The challenge of keeping current
• Learning as a way of being
The current state/trends in learning

• Mobility of learners
• The role of informal learning
• Learning as a continual, lifetime process
• Technology rewiring of our brains
• Organizations and individuals as learning
organisms
• Offloading knowledge
• Knowing how and what replaced by knowing
where and who
 Seven broad societal trends

• 1. The rise of the individual;

• 2. Increased connectedness;
• 3. Immediacy and now;
• 4. Breakdown and repackaging;
• 5. Prominence of the conduit;
• 6. Global socialization; and
• 7. Blurring worlds of physical and virtual.
 An Alternative Learning Theory

• Technology and connection

• Chaos is a new reality
• Learning as a self-organizing process
• Networks, small worlds, weak ties
 Principles of Connectivism

• Diversity of opinions
• A process of connecting specialized nodes
• May reside in non-human appliances
• Capacity to know more vs. what is
currently known
• The need to nurture and maintain
connections
 Principles of Connectivism

• Ability to see connections

• Currency
• Decision-making
• The pipe is more important than the
content within
• Learning happening at the point of need
 Skills in connected world
• Anchoring
• Filtering
• Connecting with Each Other 
• Being Human…Together
• Creating and Deriving Meaning 
• Evaluation and Authentication
• Altered Processes and Creative Thinking
• Pattern Recognition 
• Navigate Knowledge Landscape
• Acceptance of Uncertainty 
• Contextualizing 
 Final Thought

It has been observed many times that a new technology evolves in two stages. In the
First stage it evolves previous practice. Early automobiles were known explicitly as
Horseless carriages, and only later did we get motor coaches, transports and
Interstate highways.
Stephen Downes, The Buntine Oration 2004
 Thanks a lot

José Antônio da Silva

joseaock@yahoo.com /
joses@thomas.org.br
http://joseantoniook.wordpress.com