When I first read about connectivism I thought yes, that is what I do, I connect to people and/or computers to gather information to learn how to do something (eg: learn a new computer program) or to acquire knowledge to enable me to make an informed decision.We have to accept that formal education does not meet all of our needs…so we need to experiment with other ways of learning.
In the group discussion,we thought that actually connectivism is not something new at all. A lot of sources stated that connectivism is a learning theory for digital age that is not true since we all have learned so many things by connecting to others via different types of channels such as from peer,TV,newspaper,etc. I do agree that these emerging technologies: google,youtube,blog,social networking sites have been used to facilitate and expand this concept greatly.
Here some critism of connectivism that I found it's interesting.
A challenge to connectivism
Networks are important but haven't changed learning so much that we need to throw away all of the established learning theories and replace them with a brand new one. How do we test whether a new idea is an interesting speculation or something more substantial? A good learning theory should:
- contribute to a theory/practice spiral of curriculum / learning reform,
- provide a significant new perspective about how we see learning happening
- represent historical alternatives accurately.
Connectivism fails on the first count by using language and slogans that are sometimes “correct” but are too generalised to guide new practice at the level of how learning actually happens.
Connectivisim does contribute to a general world outlook but we already have theories and manifestos for that view (systems theory, chaos theory, network theory, cluetrain manifesto), so we don't need a new -ism in this respect.
Finally, connectivism misrepresents the current state of established alternative learning theories such as constructivism, behaviourism and cognitivism, so this basis for a new theory is also dubious.
from http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2006/12/challenge-to-connectivism.html
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Suchada,
ReplyDeleteGood points about what a good learning theory should have.
"- contribute to a theory/practice spiral of curriculum / learning reform,
- provide a significant new perspective about how we see learning happening
- represent historical alternatives accurately."
I think connectivism somehow (partly) has failed in the second item too. In the articles and researches associated with connectivism we do not see significant new perspectives about how learning is happening in- depth for learners.
Suchada,
ReplyDeleteI agree with what your criticism here of Connectivisim:
Networks are important but haven't changed learning so much that we need to throw away all of the established learning theories and replace them with a brand new one. How do we test whether a new idea is an interesting speculation or something more substantial? A good learning theory should:
- contribute to a theory/practice spiral of curriculum / learning reform,
- provide a significant new perspective about how we see learning happening
- represent historical alternatives accurately.
I think it would be scary if we taught children only by the connectivism theory and had to leave our historical representations up to the resources found on the Internet by the students. Just imagine the amount of content in this web 2.0 world that people would begin to create in order to change the views of history!
I think the idea of connectivism is talking more about the importance of the social dimension outlined in cognitivism and constructivism.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to note that constructivism faces/faced many of the same criticisms or not really being different enough.
Perhaps we can talk about connectivim as a dialect of cognitivism. American Sign Language was considered a dialect for some time before being recognized as a language. It was not until enough discreet culture and legislation had developed around ASL that the perceptions changed.
I am also perpetually disappointed at the absence of discussion around ideology in relationship to these theories. It is as if they suddenly pop up from nowhere.
I think a conversation around Post-modern pedagogy would help situate the conversation around the fragmentation and flattening of education.