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This is a GoogleDoc created by George Siemens for an MOOC he co-facilitates on Connectivism through the University of Manitoba. It outlines the differences between Connectivism and other prominent learning theories. It details the distinctions of the Connectivism learning theory.

Thanks for sharing this! I love the chart because you can compare the different learning theories all in one place! I always struggle to keep them straight :)

I really enjoyed this brief handout because it did such a nice job of summing up some of Siemens other work that I had found during my own search.

In this article, Duke, Harper, and Johnston extend the explanation of connectivism penned by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Their argument states that connectivism, even though it is a critical tool that should be used in the learning process in order to bridge the gap that exists between behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism in the 21st century, it is not a learning theory that can stand on its own.

The section, "Why Connectivism is a new learning theory for a digital age," provided a great explanation of how learning has changed in the last several years, and therefor education as well. The explanation that, "concepts can be viewed much like a mind map... rather than as a linear progression of ideas" really stuck out to me. I tend to be a linear thinker and my school struggles with very traditional knowledge dissemination. Thinking about concepts in this way is giving me a better idea of Connectivism.

Stephen Downes defends the ability of Connectivism to provide for instruction against some of the common critiques. He argues that many of the critics cite the lack of changes in educational institutions as proof that Connectivism is impractical. However, Downes believes we should not look at if the changes have happened, but what the outcomes would be if they did change. While he agrees the model can be chaotic, he asserts that it does not mean it can not be effective.

Great resource! Reading Sephen Downes takes me back to my Edtech 504 days! Two great points he makes about connectivism. 1."These arguments, it seems to me, are circular. They defend the current practice by the current practice." 2. "Saying that "can lead to some educational chaos" is therefore not a criticism of connectivism. " Each of these statements from the article are very profound and support well the fact that just because education has its issues doesn't mean the theories are wrong.

Found the google doc in particular very helpful. I made the argument in my blog entry this week that connectivism is in part hard to nail down because you have two ideological who are on similar (but not identical wavelengths). The only thing I am not sure I jive with is the whole "yes, you're going to be overwhelmed, but that's the modern world, deal with it" philosophy. Information filtering and search advances over the next several years are going to mitigate a lot more of this cognitive overload, I believe.

This text highlights the eight major principles of the connectivism theory and connects them to the Association of College and Research Libraries informational literacy standards. This source objectively evaluates the effects of connectivism when implemented for the purpose of teaching literacy standards. The big idea to be taken away is that as school librarians are embracing the digital media world, which is drastically altering student library experience, they are intuitively embracing connectivism, but would benefit from being more intentional about applying the theory. The theory applied to the library experience would involve the domains of information management, contacts, synchronous communication, and RSS. The goal would be that the conenctivism theory is applied so that students make personalized networks using the domains that maintain a dominance in secondary and post-secondary libraries.

Connectivism is an integration that encompasses social and individual learning, and experience. Connectivism is knowledge and the process of learning, principle of learning, technology, nature of knowledge, and the flow of information.

From the P2P Foundation (what is more Connectivist than that?), this an essential description of Connectivist Learning Theory and how it ties to knowledge networks. It includes a history and glossary of key terms.

Connectivist learning theory, by George Siemens This is the process of knowledge as well as learning. Connectivism focuses on the inclusion of technology. We must focus on our interactions with one another with Connectivism.

A quick read, highlighting the major concepts of connectivism.

Great reference site. Could probably be used as a primer when getting into connectivism for the first time - use it as a cheat-sheet when reading an article with more density.

Simply put this is the connectivism home page. It goes into descriptive measures of such a concept and talks about what learning is.

Two more of those "C" words- helping to discern between them. The argument here is that connectivism is new, thus the misspelled word suggestion every time I type it in, whereas Constructivism is the "old" term and connectivism brings in more social media use to let people be more connected. I'll have to book mark the other blog they mention so look for that to be posted soon.

Mark, I agree with your point, although my thought is that Siemens and others associated with the theory would not discount the importance of offline interaction (traditional social constructivism) but rather highlight the new opportunities to learn that until now where being ignored in formal educational settings.

This blog talks about online education specifically science in an online environment. The blog post attached here talks about connectivism vs. constructivism. The post runs through how both of these learning theories discuss how students learn. The blog then goes into his takes on constructivism and connectivism.

Questions whether learning theories reflect the needs of learners of the future. Identifies that school systems haven't developed a connectivist model for curriculum instruction because educators aren't sure of all the possibilities technology is able to offer. Author feels that connectivism is an important part of developing theories but shouldn't be considered a learning theory, on its own.

Connectivism This article defines the important role of Connectivism in developing of new pedagogies where power is being taken over by the autonomous student.

I love this article. The article briefly describes the learning theory of Connectivism. The article also reviews learning theories of the past. The main point this article works to answer is whether Connectivism has a place as a learning theory for today's learners. Should Connectivism be the new learning theory that replaces older theories because they no longer address the needs of today's learners.

This article discusses the four principles of learning: autonomy, connectedness, diversity, and openness. It also investigates how these principles and the theory of connectivism have been tested through MOOCs - massive open online courses.

@Ahallteacher Great share! Interesting to read how autonomy, diversity, connectedness, and openness appear in MOOCs.

Great article Allison! I like how it discusses MOOCs! I haven't seen many articles that have brought those up specifically and how those types of technology have been considered "testing ground".

The purpose of this study is to explore the experiences of students in post-secondary online courses through the lens of connectivism. This mixed methods study was framed around Downes' four properties of connectivism. The results showed that the principles of connectivism encouraged positive online learning experiences.

Written by George Siemens, focuses on learning theories for the digital age. He hits on several learning theories but comes to focus on networks and connectivism. He defines it and shares principles of connectivism.

Learning theories are frameworks describing how knowledge is absorbed, processed, and retained during learning but they never focus on the networks and connections. It is interesting that the three major learning theories Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism are still so dominate in education when the digital age is more than acquiring information; it is how that information is organized and share with others.

George Siemens seems to be the authority on Connectivism. While I do think his theory has merit, I cannot completely agree with him on all points. I did look at this article and I think it does a good job of explaining his theory particularly the examples.

This link downloads an article by Antonio Calvani from the University of Florence. He gives his take on whether connectivism is a legitimate learning theory or just a re-branding of the traditional three. He comes to the conclusion that digital access requires that we must re-think learning theories based on tools that were un-imaginable when those said theories were created.

Calvani, A. (2009). Connectivism: new paradigm or fascinating pot-pourri?. Journal of E-learning and Knowledge Society, 4(1). This article is a little hard to swallow at times. In what seems to be a love affair for his own writing he denounces, disagrees, and argues against the text Knowing Knowledge, By Siemens. I am all for disagreeing and arguing but not at the expense of the writer's own opinion where he cannot incorporate any research that supports his position. The author argues that many are too quick to adopt "isms" as a new learning theory and web 2.0 buzzword. He seems to jump from Connectivism as an unfinished theory and being incomplete, again though with no research backing up his own opinion and claim. Just when I thought he was done speaking about anything that I could connect with, Mr. Calvani did illicit a head nod. "A wild transfer of Connectivism to school would lead to think that putting students on the net is enough to produce knowledge, thus consolidating that widespread harmful cliché according to which the more technologies we use, anyway we do it, the better it is for learning".(Calvani,) As an alternative viewpoint to Connectivism he does draw some interesting end points, albeit at the sake of providing actual research for his own defense.

This post explains very clearly what the purpose of connectivism is and why it is critical to student learning. It explains 6 things educators should do with their students and how to encourage them to explore and connect with ideas. At the end it provides a few examples of tools readily available to use in connecting people and technology.

This article states the knowledge exists "through the variety of connections established amongst students, instructors, and technologies." It gives 6 skills that connectivist educators need and examples of networks and tools.

Great article! I have been very intrigued about connectivism since I heard about it in my learning theories class. This article gives good reasoning behind connectivism as well as a few ideas for how to incorporate it.

This wiki page lists the principles of connectivism and gives a short summary of origin and theory. It is very succinct and helped me understand how connectivism differs from other learning theories.

This article describes academic advisors using connectivism to help students decide on future careers. There is a great list of questions that facilitates connectivism through academic advising and encourages each student to envision their future endeavors.

This is a link to an audio/visual presentation given by George Siemens on connectivism. The entire presentation takes about 15 min, but you can navigate to specific areas using the menu on the left sidebar. In this presentation he explores what connectivism is and our needs/desires as humans to create meaningful connections. This is a great resource for the auditory or visual learner that doesn't require endless reading!

An audio presentation on this topic is a great resource! I saw several YouTube videos I thought were nice for overviews but I like that this is from the "founder" of connectivism.

What a find! I love having information via audio or visual presentations and the combination is even better. Siemens does (of course) such a nice job of explaining connectivism-making it super clear for me to develop a clear understanding. I also appreciate the navigation menu as I wanted to go back to certain sections. Thanks so much for sharing this resource @kristiedtech

Introduction of Digital Connectivism and it's impact on learning. This article focuses on the impacts in English Language Teaching. It defines Connectivism, states the principles, and relates it to English Language Teaching.

Connectivism breakdown from Massive Open On-line Course called Connectivism & Connected Knowledge 2011 by a learner and EFL teacher.

A mostly visual representation to explore connectivism as it occurs through an open learning system. Points brought up include learners making meaningful choices while exploring their personal interest in order to guide learning. And as participants engage in making connections, a natural result will be content development and eventually those more experienced students becoming mentors.

Great video that has a section about how our students are "different" than when we were in school. "They [Students] expect to learn from technology because that is what they are used to." As soon as ALL teachers realize and accept this fact, then we as teachers can be one step closer to helping our students achieve their FULL potential!

I like the idea of learners making meaningful choices. Anything that can guide students to make effective and relevant connections is a great resource. I also think teachers have a lot to learn about the way our students learn these days. The idea that students actually need to be a force in their own learning and that they expect instant gratification are concepts I have been seeing more frequently in my own classroom. Great resource!

This document is a research paper Beth Transue completed for EdTech 504 on Connectivism Theory and Information Literacy. It demonstrates the alignment between Connectivism principles and ACRL Information Literacy standards, and recommends that librarians consider Connectivism learning theory when creating information literacy instruction sessions.

Don't let the academic sound of the title push you away from reading this article. The author, Bopelo Boitshwarelo, presents arguments: "This paper set out to propose a research framework that will aid in advancing the research agenda of connectivism, particularly developmental work. " It is very dense with lots of synthesis of research that has been done on Activity Theory, connectivism, and Communities of Practice from 2000 - 2011, when it was published. If you need to do a content-based paper on activity theory, connectivism, or communities of practice, this has several references listed at the end that will help you find original sources of ideas.

Thanks Melissa, this is helpful. No doubt that many of us are going to benefit from this type of research in our own academic pursuits. As you said, this study is fairly dense. But I also found that it breaks things down in nice chunks. I liked the explanation that a learning community is "a group of people learning together through continuous dialogue."

The author, Bopelo Boitshwarelo, from University of Botswana, points out the interconnections of online communities of practice, design-based research, and activity theory. The author proposes designed-based research as a framework to advance connectivism. I found the first half of this article particularly helpful with definitions and key points synthesized from pioneers in the field of connectivism. Central ideas encompass the importance of learners connecting in a CoP both as providers and gleaners of information. Learning networks or communities of practice are complex and dynamic in nature, providing challenges to researchers and studying their effectiveness. The article provides food for thought about the complexities of the interconnections of these theories and the development of frameworks to monitor and assess learning success when putting them into practice.