Thinking out loud about Connectivism — from iterating toward openness by David Wiley
The first part of commentary from David:
I’ve been reading George’s writing on the unique ideas in connectivism. Two assertions leap out at me in his list of how connectivism is different from other approaches.
First is the statement that “the same structure of learning that creates neural connections can be found in how we link ideas and in how we connect to people and information sources (emphasis DSC). One scepter to rule them all.”
This sounds almost exactly like the claim made in John Anderson and Lael Schooler’s 1991 Reflections of the Environment in Memory, which I consider one of the finest pieces of research in our field:
Availability of human memories for specific items shows reliable relationships to frequency, recency, and pattern of prior exposures to the item. These relationships have defied a systematic theoretical treatment. A number of environmental sources (New York Times, parental speech, electronic mail) are examined to show that the probability that a memory will be needed also shows reliable relationships to frequency, recency, and pattern of prior exposures. Moreover, the environmental relationships are the same as the memory relationships. It is argued that human memory has the form it does because it is adapted to these environmental relationships. Models for both the environment and human memory are described. Among the memory phenomena addressed are the practice function, the retention function, the effect of spacing of practice, and the relationship between degree of practice and retention.
From DSC:
David’s posting, George’s posting entitled, “What is the unique idea in Connectivism?”, and the comments therein create in my mind the image of a living, ever-changing, learning ecosystem…full of “nodes” that come into (and may eventually be removed from) our learning environment / sources of information.
Also from #CCK09 First Paper (Draft): ‘Positioning’ Connectivism, here are some more references regarding connectivism:
- Stephen Downes, A quick introduction to connectivism(ustream)
- Rita Kop & Adrian Hill, Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964 (2006)
- George Siemens, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age
- George Siemens, Defining Connectivism and Comparing connectivism with other learning theories
- George Siemens, What is the unique idea in Connectivism?
- Plon Verhagen, Connectivism: A New Learning Theory?