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Connectivism

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"We all regularly interact with our preferred people, digital devices, information sources and services, both online and offline, and in formal and informal contexts, in the ways, times and places of our choosing. This is our Personal Learning Network.
Learning through our PLN is something we can do throughout our lives – it becomes a tool for Lifelong Learning. This is going to become increasingly important as the future of work changes."

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"It sees knowledge as distributed across a network of connections - networks where humans, technologies, actions and social relationships act continuously together to create and distribute knowledge.

There is an equally important role for the individual, the social, and the technological in discovering naturally occurring connections to knowledge. Knowledge, in all its forms, emerges from our interactions with our connections. This includes our interactions with technology and non-human information resources. Our connections and interactions form together into a network, which we use to learn with.

Teaching and learning
This theory focuses on the process of making specific and reusable patterns of connections between technology, people and information and then the successful navigation of those networked connections in a range of formal and informal situations.

It sees learning not as dependent on a specific place, person(s), or time, but as an unlimited action across a distributed network. Some aspects of this approach have been referred to as Networked Learning.

The teacher acts as a guide and advisor in how to build, manage and activate our learning networks in an appropriate and effective manner. They also try to minimise the effects of our digital differences by helping us to develop our digital literacies at every stage of the learning journey."

picture: © Viktoria Kazakova/Shutterstock.com

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"Like Cognitive Constructivism, our mental maps (schema) are important, so is actively ‘doing things’. However, this theory argues that it is through the socially accepted frameworks of language and culture that meaning is developed and knowledge transmitted. Reconstructing our mental maps can not be separated from the social contexts in which we sit and the social interactions we participate in.

Meaning is not just interpreted and constructed ‘inside our brain’, but is co-constructed through social interactions with other people using a shared understanding of language and culture.

Teaching and learning
Social Constructivism suggests that learning is fundamentally a social activity. With someone (a teacher) to start the discussions off in the right direction and provide guidance along the way, small groups or communities of people situated in similar contexts, motivated to work together on a challenging, yet achievable, task, and with plenty of time for discussion, will learn most effectively. This is known as Collaborative Peer Learning.

This approach to learning is reliant on the existing motivations, skills and knowledge within the group, and the dynamics between its members, all of which are unlikely to be equal."

picture: © Torwaistudio/Shutterstock.com

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"This theory considers knowledge as contained in a series of ‘mental maps’ - or schema - inside our brains. As we experience new things, we make sense of them by using our current mental map.
However, by ourselves, we reach a new understanding by actively reconstructing our mental maps to accommodate the new information gained from an experience through dynamic mental processes (thinking), not by passively learning a set of automatic behavioural responses.

Teaching and learning
This theory suggests that actively discovering new information by individually doing things will lead to the construction of knowledge inside our brain.
However, the process of reaching the other side might be accelerated by having someone around to guide us and help with the resources we need.
This way of teaching & learning is known as Experiential and the teacher acts as a guide, not as ‘the expert’."

picture: ©TheGigerRanger/Shutterstock.com

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"A theory called Behaviouralism (also known as Behaviourism), which considers knowledge to be a collection of conditioned behavioural responses to external stimuli.

Teaching and learning
Learning is best achieved by passively absorbing information given to us by someone more knowledgable than us (an expert). This is known as an Instructionist approach.

Centred on the expert, it often involves a lot of repetition and reinforcement, until we store it as the desired response."

picture: © Julia Tim/Shutterstock.com

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LEARNING IN THE NETWORK AGE
University of Southampton / Future Learn