Networked and Global Learning

poll.

“Attempts at integrating technology within education, however, have often focused on enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the status quo, replacing traditional instructional approaches with ones that are technologically reinforced, yet qualitatively similar” “Research continues to show that access to technology alone has limited impact on learning outcomes and instructional methods and is often used to support passive, teacher-centered, and didactic instruction”

learning is often seen as a single and sporadic classroom activity as opposed to an endeavor that is ongoing, lifelong, and independent of educational institutions and age

it is important for learners to understand, and instructors to acknowledge, that knowledge is distributed and that the instructor is not the sole source of knowledge on a topic

We should aspire for learning that changes the ways a learner acts in the world. We want learners to talk, discuss and share their learning with family and friends, rather than compartmentalising

“transformative learning experiences cannot be”imposed” on learners.” invited, and encouraged, and facilitated.

Siemens (2005) describes the following characteristics of connectivism: Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions

Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources

The near infinite potential of dancing with anyone, anywhere, anytime coupled with the vast sound tracks and light shows (open educational resources) accessible on the Net, demand that learning be an experience of connecting and applying resources, rather than memorizing particular tunes or steps. The art of improvisation, of learning to dance, becomes the life learning skill – accumulating static data or memorizing scripts becomes obsolete.

When I reflect on other courses of formal study that I have undertaken at this university there are a diverse array of online teaching practices evident. Some model, facilitate and challenge learning just like this one; while others have an approach of ‘here is the assessment, good luck…see you at the end’. I need to make sure that all of my teaching is supportive and challenging to students learning – there is limited learning with the ‘here is the assessment…enjoy’ approach.

‘As Student’

“It is through writing our ideas down that we make what we learn explicit, thus enabling us to “reflect upon it, and reanalyse it in light of new and sometimes conflicting information” (Goal et all., 2008).”

Riel and Polin reading is that we are a knowledge-based community given we “construct, use, reconstruct, and reuse knowledge in deliberate, continuous cycles” (p. 32).

‘As Student’

sharing our ideas in PCP is not scary and threatening, but can help ourselves and others. Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them. What is obvious to me is amazing for someone else.

I continue to do my work, I tell my little tales and share my point of view. Nothing spectacular, just my little thoughts.

‘As student’ I was initially hesitant to share my thoughts opinions and ideas because I wasn’t sure if they were worthy of sharing. They are nothing different or innovative. But through engagement in Blogging and the non-threatening nature of the task – just blog, it doesn’t have to be perfect – has assisted a great deal. Overtime I have noticed that I am more comfortable sharing ideas.

feeding forward’, as identified by Downes (2011).

“We suggest three distinct but overlapping forms of learning within communities (task-based, practice-based; knowledge-based learning) and discuss practical design implications of these distinctions.”

learning theory has evolved from a cognitive theory of acquisition of knowledge to a social theory of increased participation in activity (Bruner, 1973; Cole, 1988; Lave, 1988; Mehan, 1983; Nonnan, 1980; Rogoff, 1994; Wertsch, 1997).

ntellectual development becomes a process of negotiation of meaning in everyday practice with others (Dewey, 1916; Vygotsky, 1978).

Learning occurs through engagement in authentic experiences involving the active manipulation and experimentation with ideas and artefacts – rather than through an accumulation of static knowledge (Bruner, 1973; Cole, 1988; Dewey, 1916).

Wenger (2000) uses the metaphor of a garden to describe the nature of support that works for something as delicate as a community of practice. You cannot, he says, make the flowers grow by pulling on their leaves. You can, however, keep the flower beds free of weeds and pests, ensure there is water and sunlight, and you can even apply some plant food. But the flowers must do their own growing. What does that sort of support for the flowerbed look like in an isolated and troubled profession such as teaching?

‘As Student’

‘As Student’

sharing our ideas in PCP is not scary and threatening, but can help ourselves and others. Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them. What is obvious to me is amazing for someone else.

feeding forward’, as id

We suggest three distinct but overlapping forms of learning within communities (task-based, practice-based; knowledge-based learning) and discuss practical design implications of these distinctions.”

earning theory has evolved from a cognitive theory of acquisition of knowledge to a social theory of increased participation in activity (Bruner, 1973; Cole, 1988; Lave, 1988; Mehan, 1983; Nonnan, 1980; Rogoff, 1994; Wertsch, 1997).

tellectual development becomes a process of negotiation of meaning in everyday practice with others (Dewey, 1916; Vygotsky, 1978).

Learning occurs through engagement in authentic experiences involving the active manipulation and experimentation with ideas and artefacts – rather than through an accumulation of static knowledge (Bruner, 1973; Cole, 1988; Dewey, 1916).

Wenger (2000) uses the metaphor of a garden to describe the nature of support that works for something as delicate as a community of practice. You cannot, he says, make the flowers grow by pulling on their leaves. You can, however, keep the flower beds free of weeds and pests, ensure there is water and sunlight, and you can even apply some plant food. But the flowers must do their own growing. What does that sort of support for the flowerbed look like in an isolated and troubled profession such as teaching?

d social bookmarking in t

“Learners need to find their own unique pathway to transformative understanding of networked learning. There’s no simple and straightforward way to mastery that can be taught.”

‘The past always looks easy and the future always looks challenging’.

Our information overload is a filtering issue and we are having filter failure.

lexibility is the greatest strength.

online learning is that it is asynchronous and students can participate and engage with content anywhere, anytime. I believe the f

Siemens (2004) also notes that learning occurs in informal and non-formal learning contexts.

“Knowledge is contained in the links between interconnected nodes and learning is the creation of these connections and the ability to traverse these connections. “For an individual this is about growing the connections in the mind by growing the connections.”

Alec Couros pointed out in a keynote from FUSION 2013 that – “There is strength in weak ties. Our acquaintances, not our friends, are potentially our greatest source of new ideas and information” (paraphrased from Gladwell, 2010).

postal correspondence

three (or more) overlapping generations

mass media including television, radio and film.

interactive

Indeed, though the authors of this paper are not in complete agreement about this, it is possible to think of pedagogies (considered as the processes and methods used in an attempt to bring about learning) as technologies, integral parts of a technological assembly that must work together with all of the other technologies to bring about a successful outcome

technologies evolve not through adaptation but by assembly, incorporating pieces of earlier designs

We will see that the ubiquitous capacity of the Internet is creating very profound opportunities for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of all three pedagogical models.

instructional designer

positivist research paradigms and methodologies.

From behaviourist pedagogy emerged the cognitive learning theories that focus on how processing within the individual brain effects comprehension, understanding, storage and retrieval of information. Cognitive pedagogies arose partially in response to a growing need to account for motivation, attitudes and mental barriers that may only be partially associated or demonstrated through observable behaviours – yet they are directly linked to learning effectiveness and efficiency.

empirical testing

Methods that relied on one-to-many and one-to-one communication were really the only sensible options because of the constraints of the surrounding technologies.

“scientific models”

that guided the development, application and assessment of learning.

CB-based distance education is often developed in the suggested order

The model begins with designers selecting instructional goals. Instructional designers identify goals in discussion with subject matter experts with an eye to finding deficiencies in learners’ behaviour that can be rectified by new learning.

This is particularly salient when applied to a new generation of large scale MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)

ext and usually multi-media learning content. The effort and cost of “developing and selecting instructional

creation of brainstorming lists of possible goals, documentation of subject matter priorities, flow charts, gathering of lists

Today each of the instructional design activities (see figure Figure 1) is enhanced by a host of Web 2.0 tools.

f primary use are distributed text tools such as Google Docs, DropBox and wikis

As importantly, collaborative work and negotiation is not confined to text. Collaborative graphic tools, concept and mind mapping tools allow graphic representations of ideas and processes.

Low cost distributed project management tools allow teams to design, create, produce and distribute content at costs much lower than in pre internet days.

gh quality content defines CB models of distance education, its effective management and control is extremely important

the capacity to re-use content created by others is compelling – if not without its challenges.

multiple ways of sharing content

blogs to Facebook to YouTube and content management systems

Perhaps of deeper concern is the reluctance of distance educators to consume and customize content already created by others.

Many content developers define and pride themselves on the production of quality content – not by the consumption and customization of works that they did not produce.

The final affordance of the net – with tremendous, if as yet little demonstrated capacity to improve CB distance education pedagogy – is learning analytics.

mining information about patterns of behaviour in order to extract useful information about learning which can then be applied to improve the experience.

In this model, CB pedagogy may be adapted to service the unique learning needs, style, capacity, motivation and goals of the individual learner.

strive to create instructional designs that change and morph in response to individual learner’s needs and behaviours.

Open Learning Models (Bull & Kay, 2010; Kay & Kummerfeld, 2006) increase learner control and understanding of the system. Open models can also be used by teachers and other support staff to better understand and respond to individual learner needs, although there are potential and as yet unresolved issues with making such models intuitive to understand and control effectivel

important source of data to constructing the model is the user’s current and past activities with content in the learning context.

data minin

data mining

From the brief examples above we can see how technologies and especially the Net afford multiple ways in which CB pedagogies and related instructional designs are enabled, enhanced and made more cost effective.

MOOCs

CB models are inherently focused on the individual learner. While there is a tradition of cognitive-constructivist thinking that hinges on personal construction of knowledge, largely developed by Piaget and his followers (Piaget, 1970), the roots of the constructivist model most commonly applied today spring from the work of Vygotsky (1978) and Dewey (1897), generally lumped together in the broad category of social constructivism.

groups of learners, learning together with and from one another.

Social-constructivism does not provide the detailed and prescriptive instructional design models and methodologies of CB driven distance education.

efines social constructivist learning contexts as places “where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their guided pursuit of learning goals and problem-solving activities

eachers do not merely transmit knowledge to be passively consumed by learners; rather, each learner constructs the means by which new knowledge is both created and integrated with existing knowledge.

New knowledge as building upon the foundation of previous learning Context in shaping learners’ knowledge development Learning as an active rather than passive process, Language and other social tools in constructing knowledge Metacognition and evaluation as a means to develop learners’ capacity to assess their own learning A learning environment that is learner-centred and recognises the importance of multiple perspectives Knowledge needing to be subject to social discussion, validation, and application in real world contexts (Honebein, 1996; Jonassen, 1991; Kanuka & Anderson, 1999).

learning is located in contexts and relationships rather than merely in the minds of individuals.

leave more room for negotiation about learning goals and activities among teachers and students.

less prescriptive

Social-constructivist models only began to gain a foothold in distance education when the technologies of many-to-many communication became widely available,

that being the loss of freedom associated with a commitment to meeting at a common time.

Time constraint issues are especially important to distance students, most of whom are juggling employment and family concerns in addition to their formal course work.

ata mining and learning analytics are not only used to support independent study based on CB models but are being utilized to support and enhance group work.

extract patterns and other information from the group logs and present it together with desired patterns to the people involved, so that they can interpret it, making use of their own knowledge of the group tasks and activities” (Perera et al., 2009).

LMS Moodle

Standard Moodle analytics allow teachers to view contributions or activities of individual learners

Google Analytics

Constructivist pedagogies use the diversity of viewpoints, cultural experiences and the potential for divergent opinion that is best realized through interactions with group members from other cultures, languages and geographies.

Naturally, technological affordances of most relevance to constructivist pedagogies focus on tools to support effective establishment, operation and trust building within groups. The technologies that support rich social presence, including full range of audio, video and gestures, are associated with enhanced trust development and increasing sense of group commitment

connectivism

learning is the process of building networks of information, contacts, and resources that are applied to real problems.

communities of practice

Connectivist learning focuses on building and maintaining networked connections that are current and flexible enough to be applied to existing and emergent problems.

capacity to find, filter and apply knowledge when and where it is needed

The crowd can be a source of wisdom (Surowiecki, 2005) but can equally be a source of stupidity

iticism of connectivism as being merely an extension constructivist pedagogy and those who argue that it is not really a complete theory of learning nor of instruction

gain high levels of skill using personal learning networks that provide ubiquitous and on demand access to resources, individuals and groups of potential information and knowledge servers. The second is the focus on creation, as opposed to consumption, of information and knowledge resources.

Bloom’s (1956) cognitive taxonomy place creation at the highest level of cognitive processing

elies on the ubiquity of networked connections – between people, digital artefacts, and content, and thus can be described as a network centric pedagogy and thus may be the first native distance education pedagogy, without previous instantiation in classrooms.

Effective connectivist learning experiences demand that learners have the tools and the competencies necessary to effectively find, sort, evaluate, filter, reformat and publish content on the net.

hese capacities rely on effective tools, high skill levels and a developed sense of network efficacy.

individuals and groups are helped to create and continuously augment, adapt and use a personal learning environment (PLE)

second key defining characteristic of connectivist pedagogy is the import placed on creating, sharing and publishing learner artefacts.

Connectivist learning designs, like constructivist ones, often involve collaborative or cooperative work between many learners. However, contribution often grows beyond the group to further encourage collaboration across time and space.

eyond the tools of creation instantiated within a PLE is an understanding of the technical and legal means to distribute work, while maintaining appropriate privacy levels and not infringing on the copyright nor plagiarizing the work of others.

The only solution to the privacy dilemma is to let each student and teacher set the level of access that they feel is most appropriate for them and more explicitly for the nature of the content being distributed.

Privacy concerns are also being recognised by the social networking giants.

Connectivist designs also involve the discovery of and contribution to new learning communities.

Learners are encouraged to make themselves, their contributions and their personal learning environment accessible to others. T

create and rate bookmarked resources t

hat others find useful, document their learning accomplishments via blogs, and share their discoveries and insights via micro blog feeds. In this manner they create and sustain learning networks that begin at the course level, but grow and evolve as the course of studies ends.

the emphasis is far more on the individual’s connections with others than with group processes designed to enhance or engender learning.

arder to apply analytics than in the more contained contexts of CB and social constructivist models.

There is no central course, few common materials, no central binding point where interactions can be observed apart from each individual learner.

edagogy is, at heart, entirely focused on the individual learner.

The bottom three of Blooms original levels of learning – acquiring knowledge, coming to understand something or some process and applying that knowledge to a context – are clearly within the domain of CB pedagogies.

Moving up to the analysis, synthesis and evaluation levels brings us to the need for social perspective. This is often acquired through group and networked interactions characteristic of constructivist and connectivist pedagogical models.

Creation can be entirely original or as is more usual, creation involves the building upon, reinterpretation and contextualized application of older ideas to new contexts. Creation, the highest level of cognitive functioning usually requires mastery of the lower levels but, in addition, requires at least a small flame of creativity and insight.

Obviously the focus of connectivism with its inherent demand for students to create and distribute for public review and augmentation, fits well with the final creation level of the revised taxonomy.

here are many domains of knowledge in which creation of new knowledge is of much less importance than remembering and being able to apply existing knowledge.

No single generation has provided all the answers, and each has built on foundations provided by its predecessors rather than replacing the earlier prototype (Ireland, 2007).

As new technological affordances open up, it becomes possible to explore and capitalize on different aspects of the learning process.

For each mode of engagement, different types of knowledge, learning, and contexts must be applied.

students be skilled and informed to select the best mix(es) of both pedagogy and technology.

from the student-content interactions of cognitive-behaviourist models to the critical role of student–student interaction in constructivism, and finally, to the deeply networked student–content-teacher interrelationship celebrated in connectivist pedagogie

which students become teachers and teachers become students,

Connectivism is built to some degree on an assumption of a constructivist model of learning, with the learner at the centre, connecting and constructing knowledge in a context that includes not only external networks and groups but also their own histories and predilections.

he late Boston scholar Father Stanley Bezuska assembled a series of humorous quotes (see http://www.slideshare.net/committedsardine/funny-predictions-throughout-history) illustrating the doomsday predictions of teachers as they have been forced to deal with educational technologies.