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In 2011, renowned Stanford University professor and Google executive Sebastian Thrun launched his now famous, free online course on artificial intelligence, attracting a whopping 160,000 students worldwide and vaulting higher education onto the front pages of major international newspapers. It was dubbed a massive open online course, or MOOC. And just like that a movement was born. " Welcome to the college education revolution," declared the influential New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman. That same newspaper pronounced 2012 as " the year of the MOOC."

But as the year progressed, so too did the backlash against MOOCs, for a variety of reasons. As 2013 drew to a close, Dr. Thrun confessed to Fast Company that the scales had fallen from his eyes. "We don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished," he said, in reference to the low proportion of students who complete a MOOC that they had started with Udacity, the company he'd co-founded in 2012. "We have a lousy product."

Was the revolution over as soon as it had begun? To put the events of the past three years into perspective, University Affairs checked in with George Siemens, professor at the Centre for Distance Education and associate director of the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University, and an early MOOC innovator. Dr. Siemens, along with Stephen Downes, senior researcher at the National Research Council, years earlier had launched what is widely recognized as the first MOOC, in 2008. It was a course on learning theory offered through the University of Manitoba where Dr. Siemens then taught. Dr. Siemens is also principal investigator of the MOOC Research Initiative, a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund research that assesses the impact of MOOCs on teaching and learning. The group held its first conference in December in Arlington, Texas with dozens of researchers presenting their findings.

Dr. Siemens recently spoke to University Affairs about how MOOCs have evolved, where they are headed, and why it may be time to eliminate the MOOC acronym from the higher-ed lexicon.

Dr. Siemens: No, I don't think they have and I don't think anything could live up to the hype that MOOCs were being proclaimed to be able to achieve. And I should mention it wasn't really educators [making the claims]. It was really coming from a few individuals who had a bit of a vested interest in either their companies or venture capital firms. I think it had more to do with marketing and positioning and PR. One of the classic [examples] was Sebastian Thrun's statement that in the future there would be 10 universities and Udacity would be one of them. And then you look at his very shocking admission, basically saying our product is crap. So I think the people that were driving the MOOC hype never really had an interest in the MOOC landscape. They were trying to position for a new technology product.

Dr. Siemens: No, not at all. Online learning has in the past struggled with higher attrition rates than traditional university courses. We found that with the early MOOCs we ran, starting in 2008, that people weren't necessarily focused on getting a degree or getting a certificate of completion. They were there for a variety of personal or professional reasons. The other aspect is if I go to the University of Toronto, just as an example, and I am accepted into a bachelor's program and I live in northern Ontario and I relocate to Toronto and I incur significant expenses, if I drop out there's a huge economic, psychological and emotional cost. When a student drops out of an online course or a MOOC, they haven't paid anything, so there's no psychological affiliation necessarily with it. So even just using the word dropouts to refer to MOOCs in the same way we use dropouts to refer to the classroom reflects a lack of understanding of what MOOCs actually are and what they are intended to be.

Dr. Siemens: I don't think so. The MOOC providers that have a tight affiliation with the academy, such as edX and FutureLearn of the U.K. and Coursera, have a more disruptive vision. They have a vision of getting learning out to the masses. I think what Udacity did early on is they relied heavily on venture capital funding. I think the reason they made that transition [to professional development training] was economic. The big thinking and the big ideas the company initially supported, they turned their back on it and decided that for us it's more important that we make money and pay back our venture capital supporters than that we transform the higher education sector. Projects like edX don't have those same financial constraints because it is not a for-profit venture. Those systems, I think, will continue to have a huge impact on the university sector and I think they have a capacity for disruption. Coursera is venture-capital funded but it seems they have been a bit more forward thinking. They are still growing rapidly. I think they are approaching around six million learners and just closed another $20 million (U.S.) in funding, so obviously there is something there that the venture capitalists are willing to bet big on long-term.

Dr. Siemens: Regarding Thrun and Udacity, I think the gloating is absolutely justified because this was an individual that was able to get front page coverage in the New York Times and USA Today for saying really absurd things. I think it's important that we recognize that Udacity failing in their MOOC quest says nothing about MOOCs. It doesn't say anything about open learning or learning at scale. These are things that go back long over a decade, open learning in particular. It's still going strong. It's making a huge impact in developing regions of the world. There are now [almost] 10 million students internationally who are able to access free, open, online education. That's the equivalent of opening 40, 50 or more universities.

Dr. Siemens: Opening up education and opening up parts of the teaching and learning process don't necessarily serve a clearly defined end-purpose other than just making education accessible and openly available. If you will recall, San Jose State had a failure with a Udacity project where their at-risk students were not completing the course. At the same time, edX and San Jose State ran a pilot that was a blended pilot, basically on-campus courses with a MOOC layer. And that produced far better outcomes than on-campus [courses] alone. The failure and attrition levels are real concerns, but once we stop thinking hype and bravado and promoting our companies and we start looking at the impact of the residential university systems, all of a sudden we start to see that there's a role that MOOCs can play. But they're not replacement models. They don't replace the existing university systems. They augment it and help those universities become more relevant in the digital space. We've known in online and distance learning for 20 years or more that students who are at risk, you can't just give them access. There have to be support systems in place that help those students to succeed.

Dr. Siemens: Those numbers vary. Some of the data that Coursera has shared indicates that only about 40 percent of their students come from Canada, the U.S. or Europe. India is a big area. China is less so but plays a big part. Africa, unfortunately, isn't very well represented but is there. It will depend on the course and topic. One of the first courses run by MITx (a precursor to edX) was an electrical engineering course. One of the top performers was a 15-year-old girl from India. This is, I think, exactly what we mean when we talk about making knowledge available.

I was in India shortly after this MOOC rage was picking up. I was a little critical of the Coursera and edX MOOC model. But I met with a group of students there who said the quality of education they received through these MOOCs was far and away superior to what they were receiving at their own technology institutes. ... Maybe rhetoric is all fine and good, but when there are people on the ground getting educational opportunities that result in actual employment, you have to reflect on some of that ideology.

I think MOOCs have an opportunity to give students in those regions opportunities and access. The problem is that a heavy part of what the existing MOOC providers offer is video-based, and there are parts of the world where Internet access is a legitimate challenge and that needs to be overcome. I'm hoping that [eventually] there will be an African MOOC portal that will serve the needs of African learners, rather than just importing the pedagogy and the knowledge that's coming out of Harvard or Stanford. And I think, more importantly, these local hubs have to export their knowledge as well so that we have a better understanding of the issues that might exist in Africa, Latin America, China or India.

Dr. Siemens: Absolutely. I think we are starting to see a maturing of our understanding of what MOOCs are. Coursera, for example, now has a [job] ad for a director of learning and teaching which shows a maturation of their product. They realized that they are weak on pedagogy but strong on technology. ... You see systems like edX that are starting to partner regionally and provide the technology but not necessarily the content and the information - which means that local regions can start to do that. The hype is finally starting to die. We're now starting to realize that MOOCs don't do everything. But they do serve a particular need, and they are an important research opportunity for universities to help transition their activities and offerings in those spaces.

Dr. Siemens: I think we still will be. As the year progresses, though, I'm hoping that we will start to talk more about digital and online learning and blended learning, because I think that's what MOOCs really reflect. MOOC is still a term that allows us to encapsulate a movement. I'm reminded of what happened with Web 2.0. In 2004 and 2005 we were inundated with Web 2.0 nonsense. Web 2.0 was supposed to do everything, make our coffee, raise our kids, change society. We all hated the term by the time it was done. MOOCs, I think, will do exactly the same thing. Going forward, I hope we will be able to do away with the MOOC acronym.

Dr. Siemens: If you overhype something, you eventually learn to hate it. The legacy of MOOCs in the higher education system, I think, will be valuable. The acronym, though, not so much.

Rosanna Tamburri is a regular reporter for University Affairs. This interview has been edited and condensed.

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An interview with Canadian MOOC pioneer George Siemens | University Affairs

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In 2011, renowned Stanford University professor and Google executive Sebastian Thrun launched his now famous, free online course on artificial intelligence, attracting a whopping 160,000 students worldwide and vaulting higher education onto the front pages of major international newspapers. It was dubbed a massive open online course, or MOOC.

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Flattening the online education curve

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It struck me last night that what is happening at many institutions right now in response to COVID-19 is our own version of "the curve".

You are likely well aware of the curve in COVID-19 terms. It is what we are all working on flattening with physical distancing, cancellation of mass gatherings, and moving much instruction to virtual environments.

There are many reasons why we are flattening the COVID-19 curve, but high among them is to protect our health care systems from being overwhelmed with an influx of COVID cases at all once, making it impossible to keep up and leading to their potential collapse. The idea is, if we can work on reducing this sudden influx of patients requiring urgent care in our hospitals and spread the cases out over time, it buys time for our health care systems to keep up and manage the cases.

One of the effects of flattening the health care system curve, however, has been the sudden stress it has put on other systems, like the systems at our educational institutions that support instructors and students with online learning. Overnight there was a spike in demand at institutions for help and support to transition instruction online. In effect, measures taken to flatten the COVID curve created other curves; massive spikes in systems that were not designed to support such a massive scaling up overnight.

This spike at our educational institutions has put a great deal of pressure, stress and focus on the systems at institutions designed to support online and distance learning, and the people who are feeling this acutely right now are the people; IT staff that need to keep the systems up, instructional designers, faculty support, educational technologists, people who have experience working at the nexus of education and technology, specifically online education. These are our institutional front line workers who are struggling to cope with a spike in supporting online teaching & learning.

Hopefully a bit of immediate pressure will be let off soon as the end of the academic term is approaching for many on a traditional semester system (others in trades training or who are on a quarter system may not be in this position). This academic term was the scramble term with the closure of face-to-face classes happening right in the middle of the term. The chaos term is coming to a close.

This is not to imply that things will get easier. Indeed, a second spike is coming, albeit at a traditionally slower part of the academic year with the start of spring terms and a summer term on the way. But hopefully as the end of term arrives for many institutions, this will provide a bit of reprieve from our own front line workers, and give administrators some time to prepare for the tsunami that is likely coming our way in September as many are predicting we will continue to see some kind of physical distancing restrictions in place.

By prepare, I hope that one of the measures institutions will seriously consider is shoring up the people who support faculty and students. Increasing the people capacity in their teaching and learning centres, faculty development, instructional design, IT support areas with people who have experience in online teaching & learning and educational technology. As the initial emergency response settles over the coming weeks, now would be a good time for administrators to consider hiring reinforcements to help prevent a collapse of the people who are currently working to flatten our own curve.

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It struck me last night that what is happening at many institutions right now in response to COVID-19 is our own version of "the curve". You are likely well aware of the curve in COVID-19 terms. It is what we are all working on flattening with physical distancing, cancellation of mass gatherings, and moving much instruction to virtual environments.

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George Siemens interview about MOOCs and where he's headed next

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When George Siemens was in the seventh grade, in the early 1980s, he committed what his parents believed to be a sin: he used a computer. It was a Commodore PET, a precursor of the personal computers that would soon reshape the world and everything in it.

[ This is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, America's leading higher education publication. It is presented here under an agreement with University World News.]

To his parents, conservative Mennonites, the computer was akin to a false idol. They held that technology - and higher education, for that matter - steered people away from God.

But Siemens had made his choice. And decades later - in 2008, when he was a researcher at the University of Manitoba - he helped invent the massive open online course, or MOOC.

In the hands of other academics at better known institutions, MOOCs evolved into something very different from Siemens' original vision.

Since 2011, when two Stanford University professors attracted 160,000 students to their free online course on artificial intelligence, university leaders and faculty members around the world have been under pressure to decide whether to hop aboard the MOOC train or lie down on the tracks in protest.

The MOOC Research Initiative

But solid, scholarly information about the strengths and weaknesses of MOOCs has been scarce.

Now the most powerful private foundation in education wants Siemens to help usher the conversation into a more enlightened phase.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last year committed more than US$800,000 towards the MOOC Research Initiative. The goal was to get researchers to bring hard data to bear on specific questions about what this new breed of online course might be good for.

The foundation put Siemens in charge of the project. After years of being confined to the footnotes of the MOOC movement, the father of the first massive open online course has been given a hand in directing its future.

The road to MOOCs

Then again, Siemens knows better than to think parents can control their offspring.

For the first six years of his life, George Siemens did not have access to electricity, let alone a computer. He grew up on a farm in the Chihuahua state of Mexico. His parents grew corn and soybeans, living "basically a hand-to-mouth existence," according to Henry Siemens, George's older brother.

It was an education controversy that had driven the Siemens family to Mexico years earlier. George's great-grandparents were German Mennonites who settled in Canada in the early 20th century after fleeing Europe in search of more religious freedom.

But when the Canadian government wanted them to send their kids to public schools, the family moved again - this time to a Mennonite village in rural Mexico. The residents spoke a German dialect and got around by horse and buggy. The world was as small and closed as they wanted it to be.

For George, whose later interest in openness and networks led him to the initial experiment with the MOOC form, farm life provided an early frame for how knowledge works under extremely limiting circumstances.

"Our community was without paved roads and electricity and its many associated benefits," George later wrote of his early childhood. "News and information didn't travel very quickly."

It was the mid-1970s, and the outside world was accelerating towards globalisation. Some families in the Mennonite community had diesel generators that they used to power radios for several hours each week; the adults would gather and listen to news broadcasts. They would sometimes discuss the news later, in the Siemens home, by the flickering light of an oil lamp.

George was too young to understand much of what was said. But he was discovering something that would inform his ideas about how education should work in a larger, faster, more connected world: learning is not just about the content of a lesson. It is about belonging to a community.

"While modern networks of electricity, news, information, roads and technology were largely nonexistent in this setting, the spirit these networks serve for me today already existed," he wrote. "It was the spirit of being human. Of connecting."

Siemens, now 43, still has a boyish look about him, with eager blue eyes, a mop of curly auburn hair, and a stocky frame containing a seemingly endless supply of energy.

He did not start learning English until he was six, but he speaks with no discernible accent and, in fact, seems to overcompensate by enunciating his words with unusual precision.

A prolific blogger and public speaker, he tends to talk in long paragraphs that are thoughtful, if not entirely improvised - one effect of having reflected repeatedly on most questions you might ask him about his work and background.

As part of the MOOC Research Initiative, Siemens arranged a conference in early December 2013 near the University of Texas at Arlington, where he will begin working this spring after several years as an assistant professor at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada.

We met the night before the conference and headed to a nearby Tex-Mex restaurant for dinner. We promptly got lost.

The challenge put Siemens in an analytical mood. While I cursed the navigation app on my iPhone for leading us astray, he gave an impromptu lecture on how the proliferation of technology tools as "sense-making agents" has led people to understand their environments in a way that is broader but more abstract.

"In the absence of data," he said, "sometimes you just have to drive around for a while to figure out where you are."

Becoming an academic technologist

It took some wandering before Siemens found his calling as an academic technologist.

One day, in high school, George decided he wanted to be a doctor, says Henry Siemens. So he studied Gray's Anatomy for weeks, copying the diagrams into his own notebook.

"Then he woke up one morning and decided he didn't want to be a doctor and put it down and moved on to something else," his brother says.

His undergraduate studies were, in his own words, "a bit scattered". He earned the most of his college credits at the University of Manitoba but also took courses from Briercrest College and Seminary, a Christian institution in Saskatchewan.

Through Briercrest, Siemens had his first experience with distance education: he took a Greek-language course that involved studying pronunciation from cassette tapes that came in the mail.

He took courses in management leadership and accounting through Certified Management Accountants, a professional society. He and his brother ran a few restaurants together.

When he was 28, he went on a religious retreat. "If you're always moving away from something, you'll be lost," Siemens remembers a priest telling him. "Always be moving toward something."

Eventually he went back to higher education and earned a doctorate at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, where he studied "way-finding and sense-making" in complex information systems.

Siemens says he does not like to spend more than two or three years on a project. Some researchers hold on too tightly to their legacies, he says, which is a good way to ensure that a project will die once the researcher is gone.

"If you care about it," he tells me, "you should make it something that can outlast you, that people can make their own".

When George was six, his parents moved the family back to Canada, where they settled in a town in Manitoba called Morden. There, his desire to connect to the wider world would lead him to seek a different kind of freedom than his forebears had sought in Mexico.

Farming had proven financially untenable for George's parents, but they carried their disdain for the trappings of modern society to Morden, where they worked at a poultry slaughterhouse. There were no televisions, radios or newspapers in the Siemens home.

The future pioneer of open learning made his early forays into contemporary media in secret. He kept a copy of "Love at First Sting", a record by the heavy-metal band the Scorpions, hidden from his parents. And then there was his affair with the Commodore PET.

Despite their distrust of secular culture, George's parents allowed him and his five siblings to attend public school. George was bright and a voracious reader, but in the classroom he was disruptive. "He was always very stubborn," says Henry Siemens. "He knew what he wanted."

One thing George Siemens wanted was to go to high school. His parents wanted otherwise. Their view was, "Once you got to a certain level in school, you entered the world of evil," George recalls. "There was this sense that if you get too educated, you've started to deny God's presence in your life."

He had watched his parents pressure Henry, who is two years older, into dropping out after eighth grade. Henry went to work at the slaughterhouse. "George was very emphatic that that wasn't going to be him," his brother says.

Henry, too, aspired to more than a life of piety and manual labour. Together the brothers wore down their parents, who eventually allowed both boys to attend high school. Their four younger sisters would also go to high school. Henry Siemens now owns a media marketing business in Manitoba.

"George is a fairly strong-willed person," he says. "That kind of emboldens everybody else as well."

The first MOOC

In 2008, Siemens ran the first MOOC with Stephen Downes, a researcher with the National Research Council of Canada. They were soon joined by David Cormier, an instructional technologist at the University of Prince Edward Island.

That course looked a lot different than today's MOOCs: the Canadian technologists did not teach the course so much as facilitate it. The idea was to supply the students with the basic framework for the course and then lead from behind.

The students were not confined to a prescribed online learning platform. They were encouraged to figure out what environment suited them. Some Spanish-speaking students even created places in Second Life, a virtual world, where they could hold discussions in their own language.

The course, called "Connectivism and Connectivist Knowledge", ending up attracting about 2,300 non-paying, non-credit students in addition to the 25 who took it for credit through the University of Manitoba.

It was not 'massive' by the standard of today's MOOCs, but Siemens was not especially interested in scale. He was more interested in connections.

That first MOOC was an attempt to teach and simultaneously put into practice a learning theory, connectivism, that Siemens had developed several years earlier.

Connectivism

The basic idea of connectivism is that knowledge is something that does not reside in a person's head, but rather is distributed throughout networks. In other words, knowledge is not just the contents of my brain; it is also the apps on my iPhone, the people in my address book, and the websites in my browser.

"Most learning needs today are becoming too complex to be addressed 'in our heads'," Siemens wrote in a 2008 blog post. "We need to rely on a network of people (and, increasingly, technology) to store, access and retrieve knowledge and motivate its use. The network becomes the learning."

Education, then, is "a connection-forming process" in which "we augment our capacity to know more" by adding nodes to our personal networks and learning how to use them properly.

The idea behind the first MOOC was not to make credentialing more efficient, says Siemens. It was to make online instruction dovetail with the way people actually learn and solve problems in the modern world.

He and his colleagues wanted "to give learners the competence to interact with messy, ambiguous contexts", he wrote, "and to collaboratively make sense of that space".

"Connectivism and Connectivist Knowledge" inspired a number of similar open courses in Canada and a few in the United States.

Siemens and his colleagues have become minor celebrities in some academic circles. At a cocktail hour here in Arlington, one conference attendee said that when she first met Siemens, it was "like meeting Julia Roberts".

In the larger conversation about how online might change higher education, however, the connectivist MOOCs have remained on the margins. The Stanford professors, with their astronomical registration figures and futuristic grading techniques, had better luck capturing the imagination of the mainstream press.

One of those professors, Sebastian Thrun, used the spotlight to make several bold proclamations about the future of higher education in light of MOOCs.

Last November, after Thrun started backtracking, Siemens slammed him. "No one will do more damage to MOOCs as a concept than Thrun now that he realises how unfounded his statements actually were," he wrote on his blog at the time.

An unlikely alliance

The Gates foundation and George Siemens make an unlikely alliance.

The foundation has spent nearly US$500 million towards getting more students to finish their degrees, among other things, and while massive open online courses may have a role to play, Siemens is a relic from a time before MOOCs became reoriented to scale and economics.

But Siemens does not dislike edX and Coursera, purveyors of the newer, more massive MOOCs. He says he is impressed by their reach, especially overseas. The connectivism scholar likes talking about theory, but more than that he wants to make a difference.

"If you're sitting there with your MOOCs theories," he says, "and then there are these people at Coursera who are literally changing people's lives, there has to be some boundary on your personal rhetoric".

As for the Gates foundation, Siemens is aware that some academics are dubious of its motives. He published the complex process for selecting the winning research proposals on the MOOC Research Initiative's website, "so they don't just jump to conclusions about a bunch of shady stuff going on".

Some studies will examine specific teaching techniques for open courses, while others will focus on larger questions, such as whether succeeding in MOOCs can increase people's economic mobility. The best of the studies will be peer-reviewed and published in the spring.

The December conference in Arlington, meanwhile, was about making connections. Downes and Cormier were there, alongside representatives of Coursera and edX.

The Gates foundation has been accused of trying to reduce teaching and learning to a series of measurable inputs and outputs, and the latter-day MOOC providers share the foundation's orientation toward promoting technology that can affect tens of thousands of students with a single nudge.

Siemens' connectivist friends think differently about education. "For me, we can't even talk like that," Cormier tells me. "It's messy, and it's always going to be messy, and those sort of clean lines are not even something we should strive for."

Predictably, the two camps entered and exited the conference with unresolved differences of opinion about how the ideal MOOC should run.

But squaring the past with the present has never been Siemens' goal. He simply wants to expose both sides to different ways of imagining the future. The Mennonite technologist put his faith into networks a long time ago.

Siemens does not fault his parents for trying to steer him away from what would become his life's work. Their views on technology have become more flexible in recent years, he says. His father now drives a truck for a living, and recently got an iPhone.

"My parents did the absolute best that they could with what they had been taught," he says. Besides, other parts of his heritage - such as the instruction to serve others rather than try to convert them - has stuck. Siemens says he still identifies as Mennonite.

When I ask about his family, his gaze softens. Siemens has three children. His older daughter, who is 19, has taken MOOCs from Coursera and edX. He thinks she would enjoy a connectivist MOOC, but he is not about to try to make her take one.

His 15-year-old daughter, he confesses, would hate taking a connectivist MOOC, where the role of the teacher is to blend into the scenery. "She loves a good teacher," says Siemens.

"I've been working with her to say, 'Knowledge is ambiguous, you have to be able to understand that what the teacher tells you is a guidepost, a framework for you to develop your thinking'," he says. "But, ah, no."

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MOOCs creator George Siemens gets connected

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When George Siemens was in the seventh grade, in the early 1980s, he committed what his parents believed to be a sin: he used a computer. It was a Commodore PET, a precursor of the personal computers that would soon reshape the world and everything in it.

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Chronicles of Higher Education Article presenting views from the teacher and student sides of online learning

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In his work as a professor, Stephen Downes used to feel that he was helping those who least needed it. His students at places like the University of Alberta already had a leg up in life and could afford the tuition.

So when a colleague suggested they co-teach an online class in learning theory at the University of Manitoba, in 2008, Mr. Downes welcomed the chance to expand that privileged club. The idea: Why not invite the rest of world to join the 25 students who were taking the course for credit?

Over 2,300 people showed up.

They didn't get credit, but they didn't get a bill, either. In an experiment that could point to a more open future for e-learning, Mr. Downes and George Siemens attracted about 1,200 noncredit participants last year. They expect another big turnout the next class, in January.

The Downes-Siemens course has become a landmark in the small but growing push toward "open teaching." Universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have offered free educational materials online for years, but the new breed of open teachers-at the University of Florida, Brigham Young University, and the University of Regina, among other places-is now giving away the learning experience, too.

"We have to get away from this whole idea that universities own learning," says Alec V. Couros, who teaches his own open class as an associate professor of education at Regina, in Saskatchewan. "They own education in some sense. But they don't own learning."

Openness proponents contend that distance education often isolates students behind password-protected gates. By unlatching those barriers, professors like Mr. Couros are inventing a way of learning online that feels less like a digital copy of face-to-face classes and more like the open, social, connected Web of blogs, wikis, and Twitter. It can expose students to a far broader network than they would encounter discussing their lessons with a small group of graduate students.

Some open professors are finding, though, that exposure brings its own challenges. Like disruptive jerks who inject themselves into your class. Or a loss of privacy that some students find jarring.

Still, the concept is spreading. The classes have even spawned a new name: Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC. In February, Wendy K. Drexler, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Florida who studied with Mr. Siemens and Mr. Downes, will help lead a new would-be MOOC about technology and learning. Ms. Drexler calls their course, which she took for credit as a high-school teacher, one of the most valuable learning experiences of her life.

She found herself interacting mostly with participants who weren't taking the course for credit. Corporate instructional designers, other classroom teachers, consultants: The chance to engage with so many different people on a focused topic, she says, was "mind-boggling."

Openness vs. Control

But the difficult questions remain.

Start with privacy. How do professors protect students who feel uncomfortable-or unsafe-communicating in a classroom on the open Web? How do they deal with learning content that isn't licensed for open use? What about informal students who want course credit?

And, most basically, if professors offer the masses a chance to pull up a virtual seat in class, how do they make sure the crowd behaves?

Dave Cormier, who co-taught a 700-person open class with Mr. Siemens this year, says he shut off registration because a couple of people had clearly signed up to spam students.

In the class taught by Mr. Downes, a research officer at National Research Council Canada, and Mr. Siemens, a researcher and strategist with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University, one woman joined simply to attack the concept of the course, Mr. Downes recalls. She slammed the forum like a "one-woman posting machine," accusing the teachers of being pretentious unqualified technocommunists.

"The minute you open this up to anybody in the world to participate, you are giving up a considerable amount of control-and just going with the adventure," Ms. Drexler says. "Not everybody is comfortable doing that."

The Students' View

But she learned to love it. It's a feeling shared by some other open-course alumni, both students and professors, whose glowing descriptions can make these happenings sound like digital Woodstocks for the educational-technology set.

Not that everything was revolutionary. As a for-credit student, Ms. Drexler jumped through some of the usual hoops: papers, final project, weekly readings (though those were posted openly on a wiki). What was different was the radically decentralized, "kids in control" environment.

Instead of restricting posts to a closed discussion forum in a system like Blackboard, the class left students free to debate anywhere. Some used Moodle, an open-source course-management system. Others preferred blogs, Twitter, or Ning. In the virtual world Second Life, students built two Spanish-language sites. Some even got together face-to-face to discuss the material.

"This is a very different way to learn," Ms. Drexler says. "I as a learner had to take responsibility. I had to take control of that learning process way more than I've had to do in any traditional type of course, whether it's face-to-face or online."

Instructors, for their part, curated rather than dictated the discussion. Each day they e-mailed a newsletter highlighting key points. While 2,300 people got the newsletter, a far smaller group, perhaps 150, actively participated in the course. Only those taking the course for credit had their work evaluated, although in smaller open courses at least one faculty member has volunteered to grade work by nonpaying students.

Much like the founders of Napster shredded the notion of an album, allowing users to remix songs however they pleased, Mr. Siemens is hacking the format of a class.

"It's a construct that is necessary in a physical world," he says. "But it's not a construct that's necessary in a digital world."

The course-hacking did have frustrating elements, though. Users were flooding Moodle at first. More than 1,000 messages were posted to the Introductions forum by 560 participants, according to one of the multiple research papers that emerged from the course, "The Ideals and Reality of Participating in a MOOC."

What's more, the course design "allowed for disruptive trolling behavior in the forums to go unchecked," the researchers found. "This made some participants feel 'unsafe' in the forums and caused them to retreat to their blogs."

Future of Open Teaching

The question is whether open teaching has a future beyond early adapters. Distance educators who haven't taken the plunge yet are interested, but also cautious.

Like many institutions, the University of California at Irvine publishes free online learning materials, such as lecture slides and syllabi. But Gary W. Matkin, dean of continuing education, says he can see inviting outsiders to participate in an online course only if they did so in a separate space.

Partly, he says, it's about student privacy. But it's also about setting a learning context for paying students, meaning what they see and how their education is structured. If instructors don't control that context, he says, "they're in some sense abdicating their responsibilities to their own students."

"Let's say a bunch of dummies got into the class and started asking all kinds of stupid questions," Mr. Matkin says. "How would we preserve the learning of our students and not have it confused and corrupted and messed up by people who really weren't qualified?"

On privacy, some open teachers are already adjusting their courses to address student needs. Mr. Couros, at Regina, has begun more explicitly emphasizing a "safe space" for enrolled students, who are typically hesitant at first and crave a private forum for certain questions. He sets up protected areas for them with tools like Google Groups and Moodle. He even allowed one for-credit student worried about privacy to participate in the course under a fake name.

Mr. Downes, who writes a well-known education technology blog called OLDaily, permits students to create private groups if they like. But that isn't the default position. He also argues that closed classes provide a lot of latitude for misbehavior, such as prejudice or acting inappropriately toward women.

"People say, 'Well I'm a lot more comfortable in private,'" he says. "I sometimes think of that as meaning, 'I'm a lot more comfortable being a jerk in private.'"

Beyond privacy, distance educators also question how well the open-teaching model, which has been limited mostly to educational-technology courses, would apply to more-traditional subjects that may require more guidance for students.

But the biggest obstacle might be technology. At the end of the day, the popularity of open classes will depend on whether learning-management software companies like Blackboard make it easy to publish open versions of online courses, says David Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young and an open-teaching pioneer.

If there were a simple feature to open up a course, perhaps with different tiers of access, "then I would bet 50 percent of people would do it," says Mr. Wiley, who has also been a blogger on The Chronicle' s Wired Campus.

For now, anyway, professors who use Blackboard will have to settle for its guest-access feature, which typically has to be approved by both a system administrator and an instructor. Administrators can also assign guest accounts that allow broader participation in course discussions, wikis, and blogs, without exposing confidential information like grades, says Greg Ritter, director of product management. He says Blackboard is considering ways to make guest access easier in the future.

Even Manitoba, the university hosting the Downes-Siemens class, has so far limited its model to a pilot project in an emerging-technologies certificate program. Open teaching is up against academe's history of private classrooms and intellectual-property ownership, says Lori Wallace, dean of extended education. For it to spread more broadly in distance education, she says, would involve "some very significant changes to the culture."

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'Open Teaching': When the World Is Welcome in the Online Classroom

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In his work as a professor, Stephen Downes used to feel that he was helping those who least needed it. His students at places like the University of Alberta already had a leg up in life and could afford the tuition.

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Example of providing a node to students to gather information

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Mindmap by George Siemens depicting connectivism - www.connectivism.ca - source: www.elearnspace.org/media/ProfessionalDevelopment/player....

Principles of Connectivism

Siemens (2004) identifies eight core principles of Connectivism:

Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.

Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.

Learning may reside in non-human appliances.

Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.

Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.

Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.

Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

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Connectivism : a learning theory for the digital age.

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Mindmap by George Siemens depicting connectivism - www.connectivism.ca - source: www.elearnspace.org/media/ProfessionalDevelopment/player.... Principles of Connectivism Siemens (2004) identifies eight core principles of Connectivism: Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. Learning may reside in non-human appliances.

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Connectivism and Other Learning Theories 

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Connectivism and Other Learning Theories 

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Connectivism and Other Learning Theories

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2.6 Connectivism – Teaching in a Digital Age

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Chapter 2: The nature of knowledge and the implications for teaching

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4 min video

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With the arrival of the digital age, learning styles have naturally adapted, and with it comes a learning theory that provides a contemporary and collaborative fusion between technology, people, and individuals. Called Connectivism.

Connectivist Learning Theory addresses this new era and how it enhances social and cultural learning by highlighting 8 key principles. These include diversity, connection of sources, cognition, quantity of information, nurture & preservation, networked ideas and concepts, the individual at the source and finally the currency of the information.

Historically, there have been acknowledged experts in different fields, the increased complexity of working in our generation means that no one person can be completely knowledgeable within a field. The proliferation of information and opinion makes it easier for us to challenge the status quo and make informed choices.

An individual's knowledge base can now include conflicting, contradictory, and unique perspectives.
However, whether we choose to access, and how we choose to action the diversity and breadth of opinion is up to the individual.

The focus of learning is not on acquiring more knowledge from sources of information, but on connecting these sources, maintaining them and expanding upon the complexity of these connections - in other words, making networks. Connection is a powerful force that helps establish links between the learner and a world of knowledge.

The components of the networks are known as nodes. A node can be represented by almost anything: an image, a feeling, an organisation, data and information, an opinion. Nodes can be static, dynamic, or self-updating. What's important is how an individual interacts with the nodes within the network.

A further principle is that knowledge and learning is not just based in humans. Connectivism believes learning may reside in non-human appliances. Learning (in the sense that something is known, but not necessarily actuated) can rest in a community, a network, or a database.
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We now have technology which has vast reservoirs of knowledge that is constantly being updated and added to. The information storage and retrieval can be handled much more efficiently by this technology. This generation learns, works, entertains and expresses itself through open collaborative tools.

Connectivism stresses two important skills that contribute to learning are the ability to seek out current information, and filter secondary and extraneous information. These abilities to make decisions on the basis of information that has been acquired is considered integral to the learning process.

The implications for educationalists is that its not sufficient to test what is known but to equip learners with the tools and techniques for reflection and continuous development. According to Siemens (2008) Learning is considered a "knowledge creation process, not only knowledge consumption"

Learners now need to be able to develop the ability to seek out and build collaborations with others that help to pool and share knowledge. The ability to continually make these connections and use those connections to access knowledge and thus learn from the process, is something that we need to facilitate our students to do.

This ability to build and maintain connections with others and with sources of information is what is thought to lead to continuous learning. Without this core skill students will find it difficult to access the knowledge required to solve current and future problems.

Being able to connect the dots between the different sources of information is also a core skill. Building on the diversity of opinions, managing ambiguity, making connections to arrive at a new knowledge, which is shaped by your own perspective and inference, constitutes learning.
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The interaction between the individual and the network requires mutual trust to nurture and maintain information flow. It's this process of feeding into a network and then collecting back information that has been added to and developed, that helps an individual to remain current in their knowledge.

Currency, meaning accurate and up-to-date knowledge, is the intent of learning activities.
New knowledge and information is available everyday and some of this knowledge will contradict previous notions and ideas.

New knowledge is produced with considerable speed.
And information is growing and changing exponentially.
The intent of learning is no longer acquiring information, it is acquiring accurate and up-to-date knowledge.

Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality.
The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital.

Connectivism is therefore driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations.
New information is continually being acquired.
The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.

Connectivism is a learning theory for the digital age. Learning has changed over the last several decades. The theories of behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism provide an effect view of learning in many environments. They fall short, however, when learning moves into the informal, networked, technology-enabled arena.

In short, Connectivism states that learning in this age is based on making connections, knowing where to find knowledge (even in non-human sources), filtering the vast amount of available information and learning the important, accurate and up-to-date information. Learning is a knowledge creation process, not only knowledge consumption.

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With the arrival of the digital age, learning styles have naturally adapted, and with it comes a learning theory that provides a contemporary and collaborative fusion between technology, people, and individuals. Called Connectivism. Connectivist Learning Theory addresses this new era and how it enhances social and cultural learning by highlighting 8 key principles.

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On Line Daily Blogs

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Stephen Downes

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George Siemens gives an overview of Connectivism

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Overview of connectivism - Dr George Siemens

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Connectivism

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A Learning Theory for the Digital Age

George Siemens

Editor's Note: This landmark paper, originally published on Siemens's personal website in 2004 before being published in the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, has been cited thousands of times and is considered a landmark theory for the Internet age. Siemens has since added a website to explore this concept.

Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1). Retrieved from http://www.itdl.org/

Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology. Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn. Learning needs and theories that describe learning principles and processes, should be reflective of underlying social environments. Vaill emphasizes that "learning must be a way of being-an ongoing set of attitudes and actions by individuals and groups that they employ to try to keep abreast of the surprising, novel, messy, obtrusive, recurring events . . ." (1996, p. 42).

Learners as little as forty years ago would complete the required schooling and enter a career that would often last a lifetime. Information development was slow. The life of knowledge was measured in decades. Today, these foundational principles have been altered. Knowledge is growing exponentially. In many fields the life of knowledge is now measured in months and years. Gonzalez (2004) describes the challenges of rapidly diminishing knowledge life:

One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. The "half-life of knowledge" is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete. Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD). To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.

Some significant trends in learning:

Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.

Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways-through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.

Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same.

Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.

The organization and the individual are both learning organisms. Increased attention to knowledge management highlights the need for a theory that attempts to explain the link between individual and organizational learning.

Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology.

Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).

Driscoll (2000) defines learning as "a persisting change in human performance or performance potential...[which] must come about as a result of the learner's experience and interaction with the world" (p.11). This definition encompasses many of the attributes commonly associated with behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism-namely, learning as a lasting changed state (emotional, mental, physiological (i.e., skills)) brought about as a result of experiences and interactions with content or other people.

Driscoll (2000, p14-17) explores some of the complexities of defining learning. Debate centers on:

Valid sources of knowledge-Do we gain knowledge through experiences? Is it innate (present at birth)? Do we acquire it through thinking and reasoning?

Content of knowledge-Is knowledge actually knowable? Is it directly knowable through human experience?

The final consideration focuses on three epistemological traditions in relation to learning: Objectivism, Pragmatism, and Interpretivism

Objectivism (similar to behaviorism) states that reality is external and is objective, and knowledge is gained through experiences.

Pragmatism (similar to cognitivism) states that reality is interpreted, and knowledge is negotiated through experience and thinking.

Interpretivism (similar to constructivism) states that reality is internal, and knowledge is constructed.

All of these learning theories hold the notion that knowledge is an objective (or a state) that is attainable (if not already innate) through either reasoning or experiences. Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism (built on the epistemological traditions) attempt to address how it is that a person learns.

Behaviorism states that learning is largely unknowable, that is, we can't possibly understand what goes on inside a person (the "black box theory"). Gredler (2001) expresses behaviorism as being comprised of several theories that make three assumptions about learning:

1. Observable behaviour is more important than understanding internal activities

2. Behaviour should be focused on simple elements: specific stimuli and responses

3. Learning is about behaviour change

Cognitivism often takes a computer information processing model. Learning is viewed as a process of inputs, managed in short term memory, and coded for long-term recall. Cindy Buell details this process: "In cognitive theories, knowledge is viewed as symbolic mental constructs in the learner's mind, and the learning process is the means by which these symbolic representations are committed to memory."

Constructivism suggests that learners create knowledge as they attempt to understand their experiences (Driscoll, 2000, p. 376). Behaviorism and cognitivism view knowledge as external to the learner and the learning process as the act of internalizing knowledge. Constructivism assumes that learners are not empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. Instead, learners are actively attempting to create meaning. Learners often select and pursue their own learning. Constructivist principles acknowledge that real-life learning is messy and complex. Classrooms which emulate the "fuzziness" of this learning will be more effective in preparing learners for life-long learning.

A central tenet of most learning theories is that learning occurs inside a person. Even social constructivist views, which hold that learning is a socially enacted process, promotes the principality of the individual (and her/his physical presence-i.e., brain-based) in learning. These theories do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e., learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). They also fail to describe how learning happens within organizations.

Learning theories are concerned with the actual process of learning, not with the value of what is being learned. In a networked world, the very manner of information that we acquire is worth exploring. The need to evaluate the worthiness of learning something is a meta-skill that is applied before learning itself begins. When knowledge is subject to paucity, the process of assessing worthiness is assumed to be intrinsic to learning. When knowledge is abundant, the rapid evaluation of knowledge is important. Additional concerns arise from the rapid increase in information. In today's environment, action is often needed without personal learning-that is, we need to act by drawing information outside of our primary knowledge. The ability to synthesize and recognize connections and patterns is a valuable skill.

Many important questions are raised when established learning theories are seen through technology. The natural attempt of theorists is to continue to revise and evolve theories as conditions change. At some point, however, the underlying conditions have altered so significantly, that further modification is no longer sensible. An entirely new approach is needed.

Some questions to explore in relation to learning theories and the impact of technology and new sciences (chaos and networks) on learning:

How are learning theories impacted when knowledge is no longer acquired in the linear manner?

What adjustments need to be made with learning theories when technology performs many of the cognitive operations previously performed by learners (information storage and retrieval).

How can we continue to stay current in a rapidly evolving information ecology?

How do learning theories address moments where performance is needed in the absence of complete understanding?

What is the impact of networks and complexity theories on learning?

What is the impact of chaos as a complex pattern recognition process on learning?

With increased recognition of interconnections in differing fields of knowledge, how are systems and ecology theories perceived in light of learning tasks?

Including technology and connection making as learning activities begins to move learning theories into a digital age. We can no longer personally experience and acquire learning that we need to act. We derive our competence from forming connections. Karen Stephenson states:

Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people's experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. 'I store my knowledge in my friends' is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people (undated).

Chaos is a new reality for knowledge workers. ScienceWeek (2004) quotes Nigel Calder's definition that chaos is "a cryptic form of order." Chaos is the breakdown of predictability, evidenced in complicated arrangements that initially defy order. Unlike constructivism, which states that learners attempt to foster understanding by meaning making tasks, chaos states that the meaning exists-the learner's challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden. Meaning-making and forming connections between specialized communities are important activities.

Chaos, as a science, recognizes the connection of everything to everything. Gleick (1987) states: "In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butterfly Effect-the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York" (p. 8). This analogy highlights a real challenge: "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" profoundly impacts what we learn and how we act based on our learning. Decision making is indicative of this. If the underlying conditions used to make decisions change, the decision itself is no longer as correct as it was at the time it was made. The ability to recognize and adjust to pattern shifts is a key learning task.

Luis Mateus Rocha (1998) defines self-organization as the "spontaneous formation of well organized structures, patterns, or behaviors, from random initial conditions." (p.3). Learning, as a self-organizing process requires that the system (personal or organizational learning systems) "be informationally open, that is, for it to be able to classify its own interaction with an environment, it must be able to change its structure . . ." (p.4). Wiley and Edwards acknowledge the importance of self-organization as a learning process: "Jacobs argues that communities self-organize is a manner similar to social insects: instead of thousands of ants crossing each other's pheromone trails and changing their behavior accordingly, thousands of humans pass each other on the sidewalk and change their behavior accordingly." Self-organization on a personal level is a micro-process of the larger self-organizing knowledge constructs created within corporate or institutional environments. The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge economy.

Networks, Small Worlds, Weak Ties

A network can simply be defined as connections between entities. Computer networks, power grids, and social networks all function on the simple principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole. Alterations within the network have ripple effects on the whole.

Albert-László Barabási states that "nodes always compete for connections because links represent survival in an interconnected world" (2002, p. 106). This competition is largely dulled within a personal learning network, but the placing of value on certain nodes over others is a reality. Nodes that successfully acquire greater profile will be more successful at acquiring additional connections. In a learning sense, the likelihood that a concept of learning will be linked depends on how well it is currently linked. Nodes (can be fields, ideas, communities) that specialize and gain recognition for their expertise have greater chances of recognition, thus resulting in cross-pollination of learning communities.

Weak ties are links or bridges that allow short connections between information. Our small world networks are generally populated with people whose interests and knowledge are similar to ours. Finding a new job, as an example, often occurs through weak ties. This principle has great merit in the notion of serendipity, innovation, and creativity. Connections between disparate ideas and fields can create new innovations.

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.

Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.

Principles of connectivism:

Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.

Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.

Learning may reside in non-human appliances.

Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known

Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.

Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.

Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

Connectivism also addresses the challenges that many corporations face in knowledge management activities. Knowledge that resides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning. Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference.

Information flow within an organization is an important element in organizational effectiveness. In a knowledge economy, the flow of information is the equivalent of the oil pipe in an industrial economy. Creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow should be a key organizational activity. Knowledge flow can be likened to a river that meanders through the ecology of an organization. In certain areas, the river pools and in other areas it ebbs. The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow.

Social network analysis is an additional element in understanding learning models in a digital era. Art Kleiner (2002) explores Karen Stephenson's "quantum theory of trust" which "explains not just how to recognize the collective cognitive capability of an organization, but how to cultivate and increase it." Within social networks, hubs are well-connected people who are able to foster and maintain knowledge flow. Their interdependence results in effective knowledge flow, enabling the personal understanding of the state of activities organizationally.

The starting point of connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.

Landauer and Dumais (1997) explore the phenomenon that "people have much more knowledge than appears to be present in the information to which they have been exposed." They provide a connectivist focus in stating "the simple notion that some domains of knowledge contain vast numbers of weak interrelations that, if properly exploited, can greatly amplify learning by a process of inference." The value of pattern recognition and connecting our own "small worlds of knowledge" are apparent in the exponential impact provided to our personal learning.

John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few. The central premise is that connections created with unusual nodes supports and intensifies existing large effort activities. Brown provides the example of a Maricopa County Community College system project that links senior citizens with elementary school students in a mentor program. Becuase the children "listen to these 'grandparents' better than they do their own parents, the mentoring really helps the teachers . . . the small efforts of the many-the seniors-complement the large efforts of the few-the teachers" (2002). This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.

The notion of connectivism has implications in all aspects of life. This paper largely focuses on its impact on learning, but the following aspects are also impacted:

Management and leadership. The management and marshalling of resources to achieve desired outcomes is a significant challenge. Realizing that complete knowledge cannot exist in the mind of one person requires a different approach to creating an overview of the situation. Diverse teams of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely exploring ideas. Innovation is also an additional challenge. Most of the revolutionary ideas of today at one time existed as a fringe element. An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy survival. Speed of "idea to implementation" is also improved in a systems view of learning.

Media, news, information. This trend is well under way. Mainstream media organizations are being challenged by the open, real-time, two-way information flow of blogging.

Personal knowledge management in relation to organizational knowledge management

Design of learning environments

The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.

Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity. How people work and function is altered when new tools are utilized. The field of education has been slow to recognize both the impact of new learning tools and the environmental changes in what it means to learn. Connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.

Application Exercises

Use a comparison chart (such as a T-chart or Venn Diagram) to compare elements of Connectivism with elements of Behaviorism, Cognitivism, or Constructivism.

According to connectivism, how has the rapid increase of access to knowledge affected the way we should view knowledge?

Think of the most recent job you have held. How did the principles of connectivism affect the way you learned in that job?

How would you summarize the main points of connectivism if you had to explain it to a friend with no background in this area?

Barabási, A. L., (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks, Cambridge, MA, Perseus Publishing.

Buell, C. (undated). Cognitivism. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://web.cocc.edu/cbuell/theories/cognitivism.htm.

Brown, J. S., (2002). Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn. United States Distance Learning Association. Retrieved on December 10, 2004, from http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/FEB02_Issue/article01.html

Driscoll, M. (2000). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Needham Heights, MA, Allyn & Bacon.

Gleick, J., (1987). Chaos: The Making of a New Science. New York, NY, Penguin Books.

Gonzalez, C., (2004). The Role of Blended Learning in the World of Technology. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://www.unt.edu/benchmarks/archives/2004/september04/eis.htm.

Gredler, M. E., (2005) Learning and Instruction: Theory into Practice -5th Edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Pearson Education.

Kleiner, A. (2002). Karen Stephenson's Quantum Theory of Trust. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://www.netform.com/html/s+b%20article.pdf.

Landauer, T. K., Dumais, S. T. (1997). A Solution to Plato's Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction and Representation of Knowledge. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://lsa.colorado.edu/papers/plato/plato.annote.html.

Rocha, L. M. (1998). Selected Self-Organization and the Semiotics of Evolutionary Systems. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/ises.html.

ScienceWeek (2004) Mathematics: Catastrophe Theory, Strange Attractors, Chaos. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://scienceweek.com/2003/sc031226-2.htm.

Stephenson, K., (Internal Communication, no. 36) What Knowledge Tears Apart, Networks Make Whole.Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://www.netform.com/html/icf.pdf.

Vaill, P. B., (1996). Learning as a Way of Being. San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Blass Inc.

Wiley, D. A and Edwards, E. K. (2002). Online self-organizing social systems: The decentralized future of online learning. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://wiley.ed.usu.edu/docs/ososs.pdf.

Please complete this short survey to provide feedback on this chapter: http://bit.ly/ConnectivismTheory

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Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology

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A Learning Theory for the Digital Age George Siemens Editor's Note: This landmark paper, originally published on Siemens's personal website in 2004 before being published in the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, has been cited thousands of times and is considered a landmark theory for the Internet age.

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Comparing Learning Theories

Recommended readings: In addition to the classics by founding authors of these theories, I found these articles useful in writing the scenarios and reflections that follow.

Al-Huneidi, A. M., & Schreurs, J. (2012). Constructivism Based Blended Learning in Higher Education. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 7(1), 4-9.
Boghossian, P. (2006). Behaviorism, Constructivism, and Socratic Pedagogy. Educational Philosophy & Theory, 38(6), 713-722. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2006.00226.x
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71. doi: 10.1002/piq.21143
Kop, R., & Hill, A. (2008). Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? International Review of Research in Open & Distance Learning, 9(3), 1-13.
Nagowah, L., & Nagowah, S. (2009). A Reflection on the Dominant Learning Theories: Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Constructivism. International Journal of Learning, 16(2), 279-285.
Storey, V. A., & Wang, V. C. X. (2017). Critical Friends Protocol: Andragogy and Learning in a Graduate Classroom. Adult Learning, 28(3), 107-117. doi: 10.1177/1045159516674705

Behaviorism

Background: Behaviorism has its origins in psychology in the late 19th/early 20th century. Focusing on objective facts and behaviors as ways to discern meaning and understanding instead of trying to decipher the innerworkings of consciousness, it was a departure from dominant paradigm of the time. Watson and, later, Skinner are the big names tied to this theory. In thinking about behaviorism with regards to education, the instructor's goal is to foster certain behaviors in their students by providing the appropriate prompts that would elicit said behavior. This is accomplished with a lot of repetition, question and response type activities, and positive/negative feedback where needed.

Example: Teaching adults how to use a counterintuitive but important computer program called EndNote. To be successful using this program, you need to memorize sequences of clicking, therefore behaviorism could work well here. The instruction is built around a series of tasks that the instructor demonstrates, then the students do it. While the students attempt the tasks, the instructor walks around and praises those who have completed the task. Such tasks may include successfully downloading references from PubMed then importing them or automatically downloading PDFs for references in the library. At the end, the instructor asks a series of questions (stimuli) that the students go through and answer (response) reflecting the day's learning. These could include, "What file formats can EndNote accept references in?" "How do you modify your favorites list?"
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Constructivism

Example: (Building on the behaviorism scenario laid out above). An additional learning objective could be, now that the students know how to add citations to papers, when should they cite things in their writing? This is perfect to think about with regards to constructivism instead of behaviorism because it's such a culturally variable practice and where students have come from (heritage, previous institutions, disciplines, etc.) is going to hugely matter. Skills in ZPD would be: distinguishing between original thought and thought influenced by other works that warrants a citation and also identifying situations in writing that necessitate citations (quotations, paraphrasing, summarizing, facts/information/data). A social constructivist activity - students could be given a section of an article with all of its citations stripped. They would have a short amount of time to note where they think citations likely belong, then they will discuss with another student their answers. The pair must present what they talked about back to the bigger group, leading to a dicsussion of citation norms in US academia.
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Cognitivism and Connectivism

Example: (Thinking about the same situation laid out above). Taking a cognitivist approach to thinking about this EndNote class and the learners in the room, I would have to think beyond inputs I'm providing, the expected outputs, and the Zone of Proximal Development. Cognitivism is concerned with existing knowledge and how new things learned must be attached to existing schema to stick. What kind of computer skills do students have? Have they manually formatted citations before? These foundations and existing skills will absolutely determine how students take the information presented in the class and what they can do with it. If you are unfamiliar with Apple computers, EndNote for Mac could be completely incomprehensible without the needed context of how this operating system works. Connectivism thinks less about the connections within a person's mind and more about the collective human network of knowledge. In this mindset, a student's ability to Google answers to questions to understand alleviates some of the worries the cognitivist approach might have. This site and this site were useful in constructing the above venn diagram.
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Andragogy

Example: Continuing our EndNote example, designing a class in line with the principles of andragogy may move away from the controlled demo-activity-demo-activity and move toward students working through a list of tasks on their own time, which recognizes more learner autonomy. The designer here would also want to think about incorporating a lot of examples of application of this material to the work of the attendees to both ensure that the information sticks and that they feel the class is worthwhile. Hand in hand with this idea is that the class would need to be very forward about the specific takeaways it offers and what is and is not within the scope of the class in order to gain full buy-in. This site was very useful in learning about the characteristics of adult learners.
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Recommended readings: In addition to the classics by founding authors of these theories, I found these articles useful in writing the scenarios and reflections that follow. Al-Huneidi, A. M., & Schreurs, J. (2012). Constructivism Based Blended Learning in Higher Education. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 7(1), 4-9. Boghossian, P.

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Brief definition

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Summary: Connectivism is a learning theory that explains how Internet technologies have created new opportunities for people to learn and share information across the World Wide Web and among themselves.

Originators & Proponents: George Siemens, Stephen Downes

Keywords: communication, connection, distributed cognition, distributed learning, information, Internet, knowledge sharing, links, massive open online course (MOOC), nodes, online, open educational resources (OER), social networks
Connectivism[1][2]
Connectivism is a learning theory that explains how Internet technologies have created new opportunities for people to learn and share information across the World Wide Web and among themselves. These technologies include Web browsers, email, wikis, online discussion forums, social networks, YouTube, and any other tool which enables the users to learn and share information with other people.

A key feature of connectivism is that much learning can happen across peer networks that take place online. In connectivist learning, a teacher will guide students to information and answer key questions as needed, in order to support students learning and sharing on their own. Students are also encouraged to seek out information on their own online and express what they find. A connected community around this shared information often results.

The massive open online course (MOOC) phenomenon comes from connectivist theory. In a connectivist MOOC (cMOOC), it is open to anyone who wants to enroll, it uses open software and systems across the Web to facilitate learning and sharing, it takes place primarily online, and it happens according to a specified curriculum for a designated period of time. While facilitators guide the cMOOC, its participants are largely responsible for what they learn and what and how they share it; this connected behavior largely helps create the course content.

References

1. Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3-10.

2. Downes, S. (2010). New technology supporting informal learning. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, 2(1), 27-33.

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Summary: Connectivism is a learning theory that explains how Internet technologies have created new opportunities for people to learn and share information across the World Wide Web and among themselves.