LaaN Revisited

In my opinion, douple-loop learning and connectivism complement and enhance each other. Connectivism focuses on making connections (at external, conceptual, and neural levels) and seeing patterns. Connectivism, however, misses some of the douple-loop learning concepts which are crucial for learning, such as learning from failures, error detection and correction, inquiry, challenging and eventually changing our theories-in-use to meet the requirements of the new environment.

On the other hand, double-loop learning aims at detecting and correcting errors by changing the values, strategies, and assumptions of the theory-in-use according to the new setting. Double-loop learning, however, does not recognize the power of connections/networks that help us operate in dynamic and uncertain environments, characterized by knowledge overload and fast-paced change.

The Learning as a Network (LaaN) perspective draws together some of the concepts behind double-loop learning and connectivism. It starts from the learner and views learning as the continuous creation of a personal knowledge network (PKN). For each learner, a PKN is a unique adaptive repertoire of:

- One's theories-in-use. This includes norms for individual performance, strategies for achieving values, and assumptions that bind strategies and values together (conceptual/internal level)

- Tacit and explicit knowledge nodes (i.e. people and information) (external level)

The role of learning institutions would then be to help us build our PKNs, by providing an emergent environment, in which we can make connections, see patterns, reflect, (self)-criticize, detect/correct errors, inquire, test, challenge and eventually change our theories-in-use.

I believe CCK08 was a great example of such an environment. Each participant entered the course with his/her initial PKN, including individual theories-in-use, i.e. a personal string of norms, values, strategies, and assumptions, as well as a base set of external knowledge nodes. In my case, my theories-in-use included norms (understand what connectivism is), values (build my private image of connectivism), strategies (active participation by following and contributing to the distributed discussion), and assumptions (Building my private image of connectivism depends on the continual contribution to the discussion). My initial set of external  knowledge nodes involved selected people and a collection of reflections in form of articles and blogposts, that, prior to CCK08, helped me build a first private image of the connectivism perspective, which I tried to share here.

CCK08 then provided an open environment that fostered reflection, critique, trial-and-error, inquiry, and helped participants find their niches to make connections, compare and adjust their private images of connectivism. The result of CCK08 was a restructuring of one's PKN, that is, a reframing of one's theories-in-use (conceptual/internal level) and an extension of one's external network with new knowledge nodes (external level).

New Technology Supporting Informal Learning by Stephen Downes

An excellent paper by Stephen Downes who talks about the connectivism course experience, personal learning environments, and gRSShopper as a prototype PLE.

Connectivist Learning and PLEs

A neat presentation by Stephen Downes on connectivism, CCK08 and PLEs...

Connectivist Learning and the Personal Learning Environment

View more presentations from Stephen Downes.

Connectivism/LaaN - Learning Theories

In this table, I tried to compare the connectivism/LaaN perspective with dominant learning and social theories. These include behaviorism, cognitivism, (social) constructivism, situated learning, activity theory, and actor-network theory.

Comments and discussions are most welcome!

Assessment in Education

The recording of the wrapup conversation for CCK08 is now available... 

I'd like here to briefly comment on George Siemens' view on assessment in education. According to George "assessment should be seen as matching patterns: what the learner knows and what she/he needs to know in order to achieve a degree/certificate". This sounds pretty much similar to what Vygotsky calls "Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)". 

Vygotsky distinguishes between two developmental levels:

- The level of actual development is the level of development that the learner has already reached.

- The level of potential development is the level of development that the learner is capable of reaching.

I believe that the "level of potential development" or in George's terms "what she/he needs to know in order to achieve a degree/certificate" can never be fully predetermined or predicted, given the complexity of learning. In my opinion, we do need a more open assessment model that brings together informal learning, lifelong learning, self-organized learning, and networked learning. Maybe something between self-assessment and peer-assessment (net-assessment)...

Connectivism and the Networked Student

Via Shuchi Grover.

A nice video by Wendy Drexler, Alex Drexler, and a group of students,  in the 'Paperworks' style of the Common Craft videos, depicting the image of a 21st networked student. According to the authors, this video was inspired by the CCK08 course. I would like to take this opportunity to thank again Stephen and George for their great efforts to facilitate this course. In my eyes, CCK08 was a very successful networking event, that helped me extend my personal knowledge network with great stuff and smart people interested in the concepts of connectivim and connective knowledge. 

The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On

Stephen Downes has released a very interesting paper titled "The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On". A must read for everyone interested in TEL. I also support Stephen's nomination for most influential blog post for 2008.

CCK08 - More on Instructional/Learning Design

What did others say about Instructional/Learning Design:

- Adrian: “For some learners, however, we know that the linearity of courses that have been developed with a lock-step linear scope and sequence are not desirable, with the exception of their being the means to accreditation or certification”.

- Inez: “As we design instruction, it is important to remember that we're not building a path or constructing a house as much as we are nurturing a garden”.

- Bradley: “What I have come to realize is that up to 2 years ago, I often relied on others description of who the learner/user was. I never got to meet the learners; instead I relied on a subject matter expert who told me who the target audience was and provided the details and I applied objectives, wrote content and provided testing. Often the subject matter expert was several years removed from interacting with the end-users.”

- Lani: “Those rules in the districts in which I worked were stringent, imposed not by educators but technicians interested in security, not learning. And they prevented, and continue to prevent, learners from making important connections with content, with people, with ideas, with networks, with the world... I’m wondering if the instructional designs I’ve developed in Blackboard don’t hold some similarity to the notion of that impenetrable firewall?” – I like the ID-Firewall analogy made there.

CCK08 - Instructional/Learning Design

Grainne Conole gave a presentation on learning design (LD) at CCK08. The slides are available on Slideshare. Actually I’m not a fan of LD, for two main reasons:

Firstly, learning is complex and multifaceted to be captured within a LD model. Learning design is a complex task, due to the dynamics of the learner’s knowledge and the diversity of the parameters that should be taken into consideration in the design equation, such as the context of the learning environment, the nature of the learning activity, learning styles/goals/preferences, motivation, cognitive capacities, disabilities, etc. LD suggests predefined inputs and outcomes. However, in learning, neither the input can be predetermined, nor the outcome can be anticipated. In learning, a wide range of interacting entities produce unpredictable outcomes. It is an illusion that learning can follow a clear predetermined direction, controlled by predefined condition-action rules.

Secondly, LD is specified with control in mind, and thus cannot be easily adopted by learners. In fact, LD prescribes a sequence of activities for a learner, which are carried out in a particular environments initiated and controlled by learning designers, rather than the learners themselves. In my opinion, If we insist to have LD, then it should be LD triggered by the learner; i.e. personal learning design.

Conole Ouldi

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cck08 conole)

You...at the center...

Terry Anderson has given a presentation on "Groups, Networks and Collectives" to CCK08. The presentation is available on blip and the related paper can be downloaded here.
According to Terry "each of us participates in groups, networks, and collectives". While I do agree with the difference Terry made between the three social forms, I do not see that we are merely members of groups/communities or nodes in networks/collectives. In my opinion each of us is at the center of her very own personal knowledge network.

YOU are the sun and everything travels around YOU...

Connectivism and LaaN

The Connectivism and Connective Knowledge online course, facilitated and coordinated by George Siemens and Stephen Downes started yesterday and I would like to take this opportunity to present my own viewpoint on connectivism by discussing what I would call the Learning as a Network (LaaN) perspective, which represents a knowledge ecological approach to learning.

The LaaN view is built upon four premises:

- Knowledge and learning are two sides of the same coin.

- Knowledge and learning are fundamentally social in nature.

- Knowledge is in the network, or even more knowledge is the network.

- Learning is a matter of knowledge networking within knowledge ecologies.

LaaN starts from the individual learner and focuses on her personal knowledge network (PKN) as the unit of analysis. A PKN is comprised of a myriad of knowledge nodes with complex connections. A distinction that is often cited in the literature is made between explicit and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge (or information) is systematic knowledge that is easily codified in formal language and objective. In contrast, tacit knowledge is hard to formalize, difficult to communicate and subjective (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Consequently, we have two types of knowledge nodes: (a) explicit knowledge nodes are different explicit knowledge assets available in a variety of forms such as texts, images, sounds, videos and captured in distributed information repositories such as blogs, wikis, pod/vodcasts etc. and (b) tacit knowledge nodes are people performing in diverse, frequently overlapping social forms.

LaaN views learning as the personal networking of knowledge nodes. In order to learn, we extend our PKN with new explicit/tacit knowledge nodes and when needed we activate the nodes that we believe are able to help us in mastering a learning situation. What we are trying to do all the time is either to pull together explicit knowledge nodes from more than one source, reflect, detect patterns, remix and assemble it to form a new explicit knowledge asset or to expand our personal social networks with new tacit knowledge nodes by connecting to different social domains to create and share tacit knowledge in a collaborative way, through participation, dialogue, discussion, observation, and imitation.

Within a LaaN perspective, everyone is treated as a knowledge networker, one who has the ability to:

- Create, harness, nurture, maintain, and extend her PKN.

- Identify connections, recognize patterns, and make sense between different knowledge nodes.

- Locate the knowledge node that can help achieving better results.

- Cross boundaries, connect and collaborate.

- Navigate and learn across multiple knowledge networks.

At the heart of the LaaN perspective lie knowledge ecologies.