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Not too long ago, school was a place where students memorized vocabulary and facts. They sat in desks, read from a textbook, and completed worksheets. Now, memorization is not as prevalent because students can just “Google it” if they need to know something."

Though this is not very accurate,

What is a Learning Theory

theories explain

Explaining why learning occurs has two parts:

They're not taxonomies, in which a domain of enquiry is split into types, steps or stages

Theories answer why-questions

They identify underlying causes, influencing factors, and in some cases, laws of nature.

first, describing what learning is, and second, describing how it happens

The question of how learning occurs is therefore the question of how connections are formed between entities in a network

A learning theory, therefore, describes what learning is and explains why learning occurs.

What is Learning?

According to connectivism, learning is the formation of connections in a network

in behaviourism, learning is the creation of a habitual response in particular circumstances

in instructivism, learning is the successful transfer of knowledge from one person (typically a teacher) to another person (typically a student)

in constructivism, learning is the creation and application of mental models or representations of the world

Thomas Kuhn called this the incommensurability of theories.

The sort of connections I refer to are between entities (or, more formally, 'nodes'). They are not (for example) conceptual connections in a concept map. A connection is not a logical relation.

A connection exists between two entities when a change of state in one entity can cause or result in a change of state in the second entity."

How Does Learning Occur?

They're not handbooks or best-practices manuals

In both cases, these networks 'learn' by automatically adjusting the set of connections between individual neurons or nodes

In behaviourism, learning takes place through operant conditioning, where the learner is presented with rewards and consequences

In instructivism, the transfer of knowledge takes place through memorization and rote. This is essentially a process of presentation and testing

In constructivism, there is no single theory describing how the construction of models and representations happens - the theory is essentially the proposition that, given the right circumstances, construction will occur

four major categories of learning theory

which describe, specifically and without black boxes, how connections are formed between entities in a network

Hebbian rules

the principles of quality educational design are based on the properties of networks that effectively respond to, and recognize, phenomena in the environment.

Back Propagation

Boltzmann

what is knowledge a connectivist will talk about the capacity of a network to recognize phenomena based on partial information, a common property of neural networks.

Additionally, the question of how we evaluate learning in connectivism is very different.

a connectivist model of evaluation involves the recognition of expertise by other participants inside the network

Contiguity -

autonomy, diversity, openness, and interactivity

where learning is

the ongoing development of a richer and richer neural tapestry

the essential purpose of education and teaching is not to produce some set of core knowledge in a person

but rather to create the conditions in which a person can become an accomplished and motivated learner in their own right