Why Connectivism is a Learning Theory

Domains of major fields of physics (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

David Wiley recently made a comment on his blog, in response to a very succinct posting by Stephen Downes, that the learning theory Connectivism, though he is sympathetic to it, was incomplete. I am not sure what to make of that. I understand David's point that terms need to be carefully defined. A solid theory needs operationally defined key terms. But I am not sure that Connectivism is really incomplete. There are a lot of great theories out there that work well and are very useful but are not "complete" in every sense. Einstein thought that his theories of relativity would lead to a Universal Field theory and because his work does not account sufficiently for quantum mechanics, in that sense his theory is incomplete. But it is still quite useful and irreplaceable in many fields of study and in practical application.

When Einstein first published his theory it had to go through years of refinement and testing. That is the process. There are still things being worked out with Darwin's Theory of Evolution but the days of wondering if it is valid are long behind us. It has been proven, observed, and tested. There are still evolutionary mechanisms to be worked out and the history of evolution will take more field work.

Looking at the history of theories, I am beginning to think that the discipline a given theory arises from is often the one least capable of evaluating it. But that is where all of the experimental and observational evidence is going to come from. Most of the criticisms I have read of Connectivism boil down to the new theory is not like the old theories. A theory is meant to provide a conceptual framework for viewing and understanding phenomena. As an instructional designer, I have a purely practical approach. I am only interested in a theory's usefulness, but for me, a theory must

• account for current theories (either through refutation or inclusion)? A theory shouldn't just account for a given phenomena, it should do so in some measurably better way (more complete, elegant, etc.).
• sufficiently explain where we are now.
• make predictions. Any theory that can't predict anything is basically a conjecture at best.
• be subject to testing. Here I would emphasize that the theory should change what we do based on experiment and empirical data.  

In my experience, Connectivism has met those four conditions. Those shouldn't be the only ones but as an instructional designer, the theory accounts for current issues in my work in ways that other theories do not. 

One of the problems of learning theory is that it is usually an interpretation of learning based on a psychological school of thought, sociology, or philosophy. It would be difficult for learning theory not to come from those disciplines, but learning theory seems to get stuck because while the derivative disciplines may have moved on, the learning theory often does not because educators are not participating or doing research in the parent disciplines.

New theories come about when the current theories no longer account for new information or phenomena. This is what made Connectivism particularly important to my work. The theory was created by Stephen Downed and George Siemens (Connectivism: a learning theory for the digital age) at the same time that networks and social media were impacting education in some profound ways. Some of the phenomena that Connectivism accounts for are phenomena that many educators fight against: online classes, social media,  MOOCs, student-driven learning, etc. Connectivism for these instructors will never be a valid theory because they will never be comfortable with some of the implications of the theory: it would represent a profound change in their world view that they are not ready to accept. Connectivism is a learning theory because it accounts for the changes we are seeing in our society and in education in ways that the older theories cannot. Even social constructivists have a hard time wrapping their minds around social networks.

With that said, I am no ideologue either. I have my own bones to pick with Connectivism. It is still unclear to me how learning "may reside in a non-human appliance." It should either be the case or not. My definition of learning requires someone to actually do the learning. I see non-human appliances storing information, processing information, even mimicking pattern-making (chess computers). I don't understand how learning resides there. That is my "why a duck?" moment with the theory. It also feels like a left over principle from another theory that is not necessary for Connectivism to be a strong theory on its own.

But Connectivism is not just an explanatory or descriptive theory. As an instructional designer, I can use it to help analyze the success and failure of a particular course. So how would I test it? There are a number of ways. First, we build a course design rubric based on the tenets of Connectivism, and compare the success and retention rates, and course satisfaction (for students and teachers). Second, we repeat the experiment, and share the finding so others can reproduce the results.

The jury is still out for Connectivism. This is as it should be! The jury should always be out for all theories if we are going to engage in the scientific method and reason together. 

Related articles

• Cmap's Fault (x28newblog.wordpress.com)
• Thoughts on Connectivism (elearnspace.org)
• A Critique of Connectivism as a Learning Theory (downes.ca)
• Understanding the Social Component of Games and Learning Through Connectivism (gamedlearning.com)

Connectivism - The First 2000 Years

I would like to highly recommend a book I am currently reading to educators interested in Connectivism. It is called Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2000 Thousand Years by Tom Standage, the digital editor at the Economist. The point of the book is that social media is not a new phenomena but it is something that we have been engaging in for millennia and that it is part of being human. The book is interesting, well-researched and brings pieces of history that have been floating freely in your head together in some unusual and useful ways. He ties how we used to communicate with everything from cuneiform tablets, pottery shards and graffiti together with Twitter, email and Facebook. Some of those themes are discussed were discussed here in postings about the Silk Road as a network, The Republic of Letters, and other postings. I have also written here about Connectivism being "nothing new" and, for me, that is a great compliment to a theory - it means that we can use the theory not only to account for where we are now and where we are going, but also use it to analyze where we have been.

How this vision informs instructional design is that we recognize the social dimension of learning and how learning experiences happen in networks. Instructional design and teaching is the facilitation of these networks. The one-way delivery of information is a one sided "conversation" that has some use. I can gather information through reading a book or hearing a lecture, but I learn when I discuss it, through writing, talking, meeting others (in whatever medium) and make connections.

Related articles

• 'Writing on the Wall,' by Tom Standage (nytimes.com)
• Facebook and Twitter aren't new - social media is 2,000 years old (metro.co.uk)
• Some Notes on Connectivism and Peer Review (cain.blogspot.com)
• Connectivism (tracyg4walden.wordpress.com)
• A Critique of Connectivism as a Learning Theory (downes.ca)

Scientific Discovery and the Creative Commons

Tim Spuck's students discuss their search for T Tauri stars with renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at the American Astronomical Society conference in January 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a recent episode of Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey, Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke of the dissemination of scientific ideas and publishing as part of the scientific method: "Science requires openness to flourish: our understanding of nature belongs to the world." Ironically, in the same week, I visited our university library to discuss how the College of eLearning and Extended Ed could support their work and one of the librarians told me that they had to drop the journal Nature because it is too expensive. For our little institution it would be over 10k a year for the basic journal - forget about specialty journals. The old model of publishing hampers scientific progress! It certainly limits the examination and testing of ideas to only the colleges that can afford those particular journals. What happens to us if the genius that will cure cancer can only afford a state college? Or is in another country? How much do we lose when the responses, counter-arguments, and reproduction of experiments can only come from a particularly privileged perspective? We all benefit from diverse points for view, including the original investigators. Yes, I would like it if some alumni were able to pool their resources and get us a subscription to Nature and its associated journals. But I would like it even more if more journals followed a Creative Commons model and opened research up to everyone. I loved what the Creative Commons website has to say about this:

The more we understand about science and its complexities, the more important it is for scientific data to be shared openly. It’s not useful to have ten different labs doing the same research and not sharing their results; likewise, we’re much more likely to be able to pinpoint diseases if we have genomic data from a large pool of individuals. Since 2004, we’ve been focusing our efforts to expand the use of Creative Commons licenses to scientific and technical research. (Emphasis my own.)

There are new models of scientific publishing that include openness. Even Nature is taking advantage of open licenses in a limited way.

Another exciting development is the Directory of Open Access Journals which searches 5,622 journals at the full-text article level.

Everyone benefits from open access to data and information. Lets serve the research, not the business models. As the Berlin Declaration on Open Access puts it open access scientific literature should be publicly available, free of charge, and on the Internet "so that those who are interested can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, refer to and, in any other conceivable legal way, use full texts without encountering any financial, legal or technical barriers other than those associated with Internet access itself."

Related articles

• Science and math are the 'engines of tomorrow's economy,' says astrophysist Neil deGrasse Tyson (amanpour.blogs.cnn.com)
• [from krillion] Explosive, Daring Cosmos Just Launched a New Crusade for Science | Underwire | Wired.com (wired.com)
• More storytelling lessons from "Cosmos" (presentationzen.com)
• The awkward copyright collision of Fair Use and Creative Commons (blogs.scientificamerican.com)
• Cloud computing charts a path to scientific discovery (blogs.msdn.com)

Connectivism, Neuroscience, and Education

I have never been comfortable with proclamations by educators or scientists (and yes, there is a difference) about how the brain works. The logical fallacy goes something like this: "we have isolated a mechanism in the brain, learning takes place in the brain; therefore, we now know how learning works." Whenever a psychologist says something smug like "the brain doesn't work that way" (around 1:21), I want to pull my hair out. The latest theories about how the brain supposedly works also include huge gaps in our understanding of how the brain supposedly works and plenty of lines of research that may one day soon give us a more complete picture of how the brain supposedly works. The idea is that if we know how the brain is supposed to work, then we will somehow know how we learn. There are so many layers here though that it seems to be an impossible task. First, it assumes a purely mechanistic view of the mind and learning. Not that we have to get metaphysical, but this could be something that is so complicated that thinking of the mind as a flow chart or a network may not even scratch the surface of what is really happening. When educators talk about what neuroscience has to say about learning, we have to remember that neuroscientists aren't even sure what neuroscience has to say about neuroscience. It is a difficult field because each year brings in a new raft of technologies that reveals more and more about the physical properties, chemical reactions, and neural connections in the brain. But I think there is some promising work in neuroscience that we should be keeping an eye on as educators. One of the more interesting lines of research includes the mathematical models around "deep learning." I think this is finally getting at the complexity necessary to account for the complexity of thinking, language, and learning.

I think there are some promising avenues of discovery in the work of Gary Marcus that could one day help address how we learn. Gary Marcus describes deep learning this way: "Instead of linear logic, deep learning is based on theories of how the human brain works. The program is made of tangled layers of interconnected nodes. It learns by rearranging connections between nodes after each new experience." In other words, the brain is not seen as a series of connected flowcharts but as intersecting nets of connections that create patterns.

Additionally, Geoffrey Hinton describes the brain as a holograph. Daniela Hernandez writes about Hinton in Wired saying that "Hinton was fascinated by the idea that the brain stores memories in much the same way. Rather than keeping them in a single location, it spreads them across its enormous network of neurons."What I like about Hinton is that he says that his work involves creating computer models of intelligence and he seems to avoid the heavy handed proclamations of discovering how learning works. His work discusses "machine learning" which is an entirely different concept. I think it is very important to remember that we are talking about models and not "how the brain works." The networks involved in learning are even more complex than his model because our layers include language, behavior, culture, society, etc. Never mind the chemical and quantum connections in the brain. It is just possible that one day Hinton's work can speak to the complexity of the interplay of all of those networks and their seemingly infinite interrelations.

How does this shape my practice as an educator? I teach workshops on concept mapping and have used concept mapping in my classes, not because I feel that they somehow mimic the way the brain learns but because it is an engaging learning and teaching method that provides opportunities to utilize visual and kinesthetic learning modalities as well as using critical analysis. In other words, it is a method of teaching and learning that engages multiple ways of knowing. And it may also be a good metaphor for how learning may occour in networks, including neural networks. I have seen this discussion around the learning theory, Connectivism. I think we could go into any learning theory and use it, somewhat clumsily, as a way to discuss how learning arises out of the formation and interplay of network, but fortunately George Seimens and Stephen Downes have done a better job with their work around Connectivism.

Related articles

• Theories of Learning. Connectivism: A new type of learning for the digital age (sequenturverbe.wordpress.com)
• Technology Can Read Your Mind, Privacy Advocates Concerned? (securestate.com)
• Theories Related to Connectivism (downes.ca)
• Meet the Man Google Hired to Make AI a Reality (wired.com)

Reports on the Death of the Book are Greatly Exaggerated

William Shakespeare

I was at a poetry reading at the library a while back and one of the poets had a poem about how lost in cyberspace everyone is and the implication was that he was seeing the end of print culture and the book. Never mind that there was not an empty seat in the house to hear a poetry reading on a Thursday night! But there we have it - technology is phasing out the book. But it is just changing media. We don't need hand copied books either. More and more books are being written electronically and read on electronic devices. This isn't news. What is funny is to watch people with one foot in the old paradigm trying to make sense of the new. This includes myself. I have always thought of books as something that I had to own. They are objects to be held and even if they are not held in my hand, they must be contained in something that I own!  I had a funny thing happen the other day. I was downloading an ebook onto my iPad and I got an error message that said my iPad was full. I was incredulous. How could this happen? I have 16 gigabytes of space! I went through Kindle and iBook to take a look at what happened. I downloaded a lot of books. My electronic book shelves had swelled to the autodidactic, polymathic, bibliomaniacal proportions that my home bookshelves used to have. I got onto a vintage, historic cookbook jag and that cost me some room. I have the Washington DC Cookbook from the turn of the century which allowed me to send my actual hard copy to my Best Man, Steve Boutchyard, who is currently in culinary school. But I also have a copy of Beeton's and numerous others. I had the complete works of Poe; a raft of Elizabethan playwrights that are not Shakespeare as well as the complete works of the Bard; numerous volumes of Balzac; a complete library of philosophical works; everything related to Art History that is free in iTunes and Google Books that is downloadable and the list goes on. And so here I am, just like I was in the 80s, before I had a computer, with book shelf issues. I have noticed an uptick in people talking about classic literature and I think it is because so much of it is freely available in accessible formats via places like Gutenberg.org. I also have a couple of ebooks that I actually bought that I am reading with no small amount of irony: I am reading an electronic book about a physical archive where the author is able to convey in deeply poetic detail what it is like to work with the physical texts that go back hundreds of years in the Paris police archives.

I still own a lot of physical books, but not nearly as much as I used to since the dawn of the internet. I love a good physical copy of a book as much as anyone: there are some books that I have that are gorgeous old books with fine bindings, thick paper that has the wire ridges where the paper dried on a screen, and beautiful fonts that press deeply into the paper. They have a texture and presence that you can't get from an etext. That said, I was looking for a book on Ausonius on line today and I found what I was looking for on Amazon and the physical book was going for $540. And you can bet they are not being as thoughtful about design and fonts as they once were. Needless to day, the electronic version of an equivalent text from Google Books at no cost will suffice.

In the late 90s, I thought that there would be no limit to the amount of books I could put on a computer. So how I could eat up 16 gigs is just incredible; a bit is the smallest unit - a 1 or a 0, on or off, a byte is 8 bits which make a single character, 10 to 15 bytes go into a sentence, and a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes, and a gigabyte is a 1000 megabytes. And I had 16 of those! If you are using an Apple or Android product, you probably already know about the iBook and Google Book apps, but there are other sources of free books. If you want to fill up your iPad or eReader quickly with free books I would suggest spending a rainy afternoon browsing:

1. Gutenberg.org
2. The Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania
3. The Internet Archive's Digital Books Collections
4. Forgotten Books  
5. The Sacred Text Archive
6. World Digital Library
7. ManyBooks.net
8. Libravox - free audio books

On top of all of that, there are the numerous texbooks that are licensed with the "Creative Commons" license that you can download through various repositories like the Open Textbook Library and College Open Textbooks. There, I just exploded your iPad!

Related articles

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• The Bibliomaniacs Review: Better Off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg (acplteen.wordpress.com)
• Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes... What Are They? (latest-tutorial.com)

When is a MOOC not a MOOC?

Statue of John Harvard Wikipedia

The Comical of Higher Ed has a headline that says "Harvard U. Will Offer Exclusive MOOCs to Alumni." After reading the article, the reader learns that what they are doing is giving alumni access to segments of courses and course content. The alumni are not taking a class. If it is not "massive," if it is not "open," and it is not a "class," it is not a MOOC! It is just the "online" part - it is an "O" not a MOOC.

I need to put together a collection of articles that maps out how the CHE has gotten MOOCs completely wrong, and thereby polluting the discourse around MOOCs with misinformation, exaggerations and over-simplifications. It is a huge disservice to the academic community. They seem to have attempted to help by writing up an article about George Siemens.

There are a number of great discussions going on around universities, journals, and the web about what MOOCs are and their possibilities (especially cMOOCs). It is a shame that the CHE misses the boat so often. 

Related articles

• Harvard Business School seeks to overcome the isolation of MOOC learning (clatac.wordpress.com)
• Harvard U. Will Offer Exclusive MOOCs to Alumni (chronicle.com)
• MOOC: The Course to Change the World (headsup911.wordpress.com)
• Are MOOCs already over? (washingtonpost.com)

Open Textbooks and Student Success

Cable Green (Photo: Jeffrey Beall)

The tirelessly brilliant and ubiquitous Cable Green sent out today's announcement from Creative Commons about the U.S. PIRG Education Fund report called, “Fixing the Broken Textbook Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives." This report reinforces what the research is already showing - open textbooks can be a significant contributing factor to student success. The results we saw with projects like the Kaleidoscope Project was that students were actually doing better in courses that were using openly licensed, free textbooks. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the reasons at College of the Redwoods was that the faculty created textbooks were written for a particular student population to solve particular problems. The books actually addressed the needs of the community. You can still find articles out there about the so-called suspect quality of open education resources, but they are being written by folks who have not looked at what is out there now.  Articles like “The cost and quality of open textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students” by TJ Bliss, John Hilton, David Wiley, and Kim Thanos go a long way to dispel those myths as does "A Preliminary Examination of the Cost Savings and Learning Impacts of Using Open Textbooks in Middle and High School Science Classes," by David Wiley, John Levi Hilton III, Shelley Ellington, and Tiffany Hall.

Commercial textbooks have their own myths to deal with - like whether or not they are reliable!

This is a very dynamic time to be involved in open textbooks!

Related articles

• Open-education partners hope to save students $10 million by 2015 (news.rice.edu)
• Lumen Learning / OpenStax Partnership (opencontent.org)
• OER Research Hub: Our first year in review (2012-2013) (oerresearchhub.org)
• U.S. PIRG report finds students would perform better with open textbooks (creativecommons.org)
• Students saving money with open textbooks (downes.ca)
• Majority Of Students Have Skipped Buying A College Textbook Because They're Too Expensive (huffingtonpost.com)

Humboldt State's Moodle Office is Makes the News!

Humboldt State University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our own inimitable Bill Bateman's video tutorials for Moodle 2.5 are featured at the Moodle News Website as were four of his videos for 2.3.

Bill is the lead Moodle Support Specialist in Humboldt State University's Moodle Office located on the third floor of the library. Bill's team manages the day-to-day operations of the learning management system, one-on-one student support, one-on-one faculty support as well as going out to faculty offices and classrooms. The Moodle Office is a good place to drop in for help and a cup of coffee. And if all that wasn't enough, Bill still takes the time to produce the video tutorials. The instructional design team and I rely on the Moodle Office pretty much on a daily basis.

Moodle News is the international hub for all things Moodle. It is the brainchild of Joseph Thibault a Course Manager at StraighterLine.com, and Mel Benson, a writer who runs Moodlerific.org, a site to share and explore Moodle ideas. She is also Moodle tech support for a school district Minnesota. Moodle News is a valuable resource for all things Moodle: it "is a collaborative project bringing order to news and information pertaining to the open source project and learning management system called Moodle. We scour the web for the freshest, most interesting and valuable Moodle information and publish it here."

Related articles

• 8 Moodle 2.5 Overview Videos for Faculty from Humboldt State University (moodlenews.com)
• Looking back at 2013, a huge year for Moodle (moodlenews.com)
• Moodle Tutorial: Using the book module (jasonrenshaw.typepad.com)
• Teaching and Learning with Moodle (moodlenews.com)

#Rhizo14: "Cheating" as Learning Modality

I have had to address "cheating" in education is a very real way here at Humboldt State. I have instructors who are new to online learning and that is one of the first things they asked - how do we know the students won't cheat? I usually direct faculty to resources for designing assignments and tests to minimize cheating and how to promote an environment of academic integrity. I wrote a blog posting on academic integrity and ways to minimize cheating last year.

I used to have some students in one of my English classes who would ask me what they had to do to get an "A." I would tell them to follow the steps in the assignment and turn their work in on time and they would get an "A" and they would say "no, really, what is the system here?" They assumed that there was a back door somewhere or some way to game the system. They thought I was a bad teacher because I wouldn't tell them. I wouldn't let them in on the secret. Many of my students saw the end of education, the assessment or final paper as "the product" of education. What I taught though was the process of learning. There were a lot of steps in my class and not really any short cuts. I think that there is a lot to the gamification of learning. I think that letting the students loose on the learning outcomes of a course and letting them discover what the relevant information might be that would address those learning outcomes would teach them a lot about learning. It would also teach teachers how to write precise learning outcomes!

The traditional fears about cheating baffle me. I always say that if the questions you are asking your students can be answered by Google, you are asking the wrong questions.

For every act of "cheating" there should be a corresponding action for "legitimate" learning:

              Cheating                   Rhizomatic

Copying sources without attribution	Share sources (social bookmarking) - teach citation
Looking at someone else's work	Collaborate - Students can create collaborative knowledge via wikis
Buying or stealing the answers to tests	Have students create the test questions, debate answers
Sneaking notes into class	Open book, open internet tests
Downloading papers from the internet	Assignments use the latest news and student experience
Recycling papers	Have students create assignments that are relevant

There are some faculty who think that students who do not buy the textbook are cheating. Often, this comes from professors who do not know how much their textbooks cost. Jordan Epp and I discussed the idea of hacking the syllabus a while ago when he told me about a student who did Google searches on the weekly learning outcomes from the syllabus rather than buying the textbook.

Related articles

• Teachers unions blame 'test-crazed system' for Atlanta cheating scandal (theblaze.com)
• Cheating as Learning #rhizo14 (connectiv.wordpress.com)
• Students Using Mobiles To Cheat (opencolleges.edu.au)
• When Cheating is Learning - Inadvertent Plagiarism #rhizo14 (balimaha.wordpress.com)

Using a Blog-Based Environment to Support a Community of Learners

Presentation notes for: "Using a Blog-Based Environment to Support a Community of Learners"
Institute for Student Success, Humboldt State University
Presenters: Daniel Fiore, Riley Quarles, Claire Knox, and Child Development Faculty

Riley introduced everyone by saying that the network of blogs (Wordpress) created with the Child Development department began with solving a problem: communication. Claire Knox pointed out that there was learning that they wanted visible to everyone, they wanted everyone participating in the conversations. They wanted the learning to not be locked down behind a learning management system. Resources for the presentation are at the Child Development site for the Institute.

They created a network of blogs to support their program. The network of blogs arose from the users - the needs of the faculty. All of the course blogs reflect the interest and needs of the individual classes. The blogs serve as eportfolios.

The department blog provides calendars, advising, and a link to all of the other classes. The site supports online and hybrid courses. It allows students to feel and be connected throughout the program.

They also wanted to engage alumni in an open site. They are expanding the community to include former students. Students create their own blogs that feed into course and department sites. They are using RSS feeds and categories in Wordpress.

Blog posts help students get to know one another before they work together in the class or in other classes. This has increased the sense of connectedness and community.

The students sign up for a blog at Wordpress.com, send the address to the instructor, the instructor puts them into a plug-in that gathers the students postings that are labeled or catagorized according to the class instructions. The pulg-in automatically pulls in all of the materials that the students tag to the class blog. Instructors and students then comment on the postings.

The blogs allow students to explore topics further. The instructor was using the blog to post more articles and resources and the students began to do the same on their blogs.

Carole said that she is not a technological person but found that Wordpress was easy to use and the program allows the faculty to go at their own pace in using these tools. The blogs assignments were good tools to discuss web presence, communicating online, and our web history. They had conversations about how the blog can represent the student to prospective employers and how what you put online represents you.

They want the students to carry their experiences in the program and their relationships after they leave the program. Learning management systems do not allow that. They want the learning community to continue.

All of the course content from the courses stays visible. Students can look at other classes and see how course materials are related to other courses. They begin to link what they are learning to their other classes. Students can go and look at any courses that they are going to take in the future. They can see how all the courses fit together. Faculty can also visit the sites and find new ways to make connections to other classes in the program. Typically, faculty in purely face-to-face courses might not have that opportunity. The blogs also serve as a community orientation site.

They have also had a lot of discussions about privacy - there are some materials that they put into Moodle (the learning management system). Observations of children or copy written materials,  for instance, need to be kept private.

Even though the environment looks structured, the community created by the students and their comments represents another network within the network - this is like the idea of rhizomatic learning posited by Dave Cormier. There are opportunities here for collaborative learning and team-based projects. Blogs allow students to communicate their processes, to reflect on how they learn. Peer instruction and support can begin in this network and follow them throughout the program (also much like Eric Mazur's ideas on peer instruction). This is also a good example of students learning through their connections with one another (connectivism).

#Rhizome14: Community as Curriculum

This is my introductory post. I am participating in a MOOC facilitated by Dave Cormier called "Rhizomatic Learning - The Community is the Curriculum." Dave's 2008 article "Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum" has informed many of my education projects since including courses, student orientations, professional development, as well as my own teaching which has included English and Health Information Management. Back in 2008, I participated in an early MOOC, Connectivism and Connective Knowlege '08, and Dave's article was an essential node. You will notice that on the side-bar of this blog (if you scroll down) you will find the resources for my presentations on the "Connectivist Classroom" and that article is always there. It is also on my reading lists for new instructional designers. I am participating in this MOOC for a number of reasons but one of them is that I am in the middle of developing an online orientation to online learning called "eLearning 101" that I want to run as a MOOC.

I think it is important to practice what you preach and to give back to your community. I have been to too many workshops on "active learning" that were one-way dumps of information. We need to model and practice. I feel as an educator, I want to help shape this new knowledge landscape. That is the difficulty of this kind of education. I can't get a certification and then shift into neutral! Degrees or past accomplishments don't mean anything in this environment - you have to participate.

Another reason to participate is that the tools, methods, and people in online collaborative education are always changing. It is important to stay connected!

Related articles:

• #rhizo14 Introduction (connectiv.wordpress.com)
• Unravelling -> a model for an open course? (davecormier.com)
• Why #rhizo14? (balimaha.wordpress.com)
• What is rhizomatic? (connectiv.wordpress.com)
• eLearning 101: Presentation from DET/CHE (cain.blogspot.com)

Social Networks and The Good Way to Do History

Biblioteque Nationale

There is a fascinating article by Harvard librarian Robert Darnton in this month's New York Review of Books called "The Good Way to Do History." It is a review of Arlette Farge's book The Allure of the Archives. This book was originally written in 1989 before the rise of the internet and ebooks, and yet, as Darnton  points out, Farge's work addresses issues that are quite relevant. Farge's work talks about how information travelled in earlier centuries. I think that what we will find is that the patterns of communication are strikingly familiar. Darnton addresses what he says are some of the myths about our time with Farge's work:

1. We live in the information age.
Darnton says that this is misleading and that every age was an age of information. I agree with this - the networks people created through letter writing and books were slow but just as significant and useful as the networks we have now. He points out that Farge once used the phrase "the logic of the crowd" to talk about how inflammatory information spreads revolt - much like Twitter in our age but through word of mouth. "The logic of the crowd" is like Howard Rheingold's concept "Smart Mobs." As Darnton puts it:

"Farge shows how information traveled through the media of eighteenth-century Paris. Primarily oral but intermixed with printed material such as chapbooks and popular engravings, the flow of talk and images (also, I would add, songs) shaped a collective consciousness that often erupted in violence."

I have a note here on the Republic of Letters that describes some of these early modern networks.

2. All information is available online.
Darnton says that this is false. He says that there are an estimated 129,864,880 books and Google has only digitized 20,000,000 of them. He discusses the miles of archives that exist: 252 miles of them in the Biblioteque Nationale alone. Although I get his point, the significance of Google is that I do not have to be a member of an elite academy to get access to the information. The internet can represent the democratization of information (and yes, there are problems to overcome with that idea). Farge documents in her book the arduous process she had to go through to get access to the archives.

3. The future is digital.
Darnton calls this myth true but trite and misleading. The death of the book is routinely predicted since the invention of just about every other media (movies, television, comic books, etc.). Darnton points out that "more books are produced each year than the year before - an increase of 6% in the United States in 2012." He goes on to say that new media actually expand and enrich the experience of the old.

I think it is important that I read outside of my discipline. We need to stop thinking so much about specific disciplines and make the connections between them to solve problems. Sometimes it feels like we spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel by addressing issues that may have been solved, in part, by other scholars elsewhere. I really appreciate publications like the New York Review of Books because it gives me a chance to read about what is happening in other fields and make connections that I would not readily be able to make.

I actually bought the Kindle version of this book. I like to read physical books as much as anyone else but this is a short one and I could not resist the price or the irony.

Related articles

• Robert Darnton: Lessons Learned from Gutenberg-e (mbanks.typepad.com)
• Claire Fallon: Why You Should Read More In 2014 (huffingtonpost.com)
• Event: Seminar on the History of Libraries, University of London (fmrsi.wordpress.com)
• The Digital Public Library of America Launches Today, Opening Up Knowledge for All (tutoringtoexcellence.blogspot.com)
• ✍ The Devil in the Holy Water, or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon [2009] (introduccionalahistoriajvg.wordpress.com)

eLearning 101: Presentation from DET/CHE

I went to the DET/CHE conference in November and I had a presentation that I was going to give. What happened at the conference was interesting. After listening to other presentations and listening to the concerns, fears, and needs of other presenters, I wrote a brief "prelude" as a response. I also added more notes in the notes field. I am glad I had the opportunity to do this. Presentation from DET/CHE conference:


I was really impressed that the educators I met at the DET/CHE conference. I have received a lot of offers for help, advice, and some constructive criticism around our ideas about an orientation MOOC. I will definitely put the next DET/CHE on my calendar!

Related articles

• eLearning 101: An Open Class for New Online Learners (cain.blogspot.com)
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DET/CHE: Cognition, Learning Theory, Backward Design: The importance of instructional design.

Hierarchy of Instructional Design (Photo credit: jrhode)

Jim Monaghan, AVP Academic Technologies/Associate Professor, Educational Technology, CSUSB

Instructional designers take on many roles at campuses. The perspectives of the designers combined with the organizational structure of the campus can greatly impact the results of the instructional design process. This presentation examines the importance of instructional design to the construction of high quality learning environments. Topics to be covered include fundamental principles in cognitive science, learning theories and backward design. Implications for the design of courses which range from technology-enhanced to technology-centric (e.g. fully online courses and MOOC’s) will be presented. Applications of instructional design in strategic planning for learning environments as well as practical considerations for implementation of strategies will be discussed. Advantages and disadvantages of a variety of organizational reporting structures will be explored. Specific ideas participants will take away from the session

• Importance of instructional designers to the development of high quality courses that use educational

technology

• Importance of organizational structure in facilitating instructional design for learning

• Overview of cognitive science that applies to the instructional design process

MOOCs, the model from Thrun,

Its about design, not technology

Design Considerations
Why would online video work?
What do we lose when we record a lecture?
How do we allow for substantive interactions?

He refers to the WASC handbook for interactions online.

What can tech allow us to do that we couldn't do otherwise?

Backward Design
Start with the end in mind - quote from Stephen Covey
Could also be from McTighe

Key elements of ID

What do you want your students to know'
How will you know that students have met the objectives
Interaction
Other considerations

A review of learning theories.
Behaviorism, Constructivism, Constructionism

He claims that drill and practice has its place. [I disagree with
this, I think you can learn the same with contextual learning.]

Social constructivism, situated cognition

Refers to a 1999 paper that applies cognitive science to designing
learning spaces. "Designing Learning: Cognitive science principles for
the innovative organization" Penuel & Roschelle.

What is the role of instructional designers?

CSUSB Online Learning Modules Template

1. Reading
2. Short lecture
3. Discussion
4. Student research
5. Assessment

Where are instructional designers housed in your organization?
Why does it matter?

Access to infrastructure
Access to decision makers
Responsiveness
Agility
Strategic or operational focus

Related articles

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• Reflections on Instructional Design and Technology (libraryidt.wordpress.com)
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• Constructivism and Social Learning Theory (amywilliams5.wordpress.com)

DET/CHE: Teaching in the Digital Age

Azusa Pacific University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mike Truong, Founding Executive Director, Office of Innovative Teaching and Technology, Azusa Pacific University

 

The demands faculty teaching in the digital age face are immense rom keeping distracted students engaged (high touch) to keeping current on the latest technologies (high tech).

This presentation will provide some proven strategies on helping faculty meet these challenges.

Specific ideas participants will take away from the session

...

•  Articulate the challenges of teaching in the digital age.

•  Explain how technology can meet some of these challenges.

•  Emplo best- practices for teaching with technology.

Where as other voices are overly critical of MOOCs or on the other extreme overly Utopian, Mike says he is in the middle, looking at technology pedagogically.

He gave an extensive quote from Hamlet's Blackberry.
We need space between our tasks to reflect.

He then talked about the "really cool" Domino's pizza app. "It is
amazing what you can do with ordering pizza now a days."

He is excited about the apps that allow you to buy glasses and take a
picture of a paycheck and electronically deposit it.

You can buy a house online - you can buy a house without even looking  at it.

"We are immensely better because of technology."

We can learn any time, place, and device.

Students are demanding that faculty use more and more tech in the classroom.

Pedagogy - gains, losses, and implications

The essay is a good model for learning critical thinking  - but it is too alphabetic-centric. Word processing helps us but it promotes linear thinking.

Technology - Jose Bowen - technology maximizes teachers face-to-face contact with students. Henry Jenkins says that technology encourages participation. Sugata Mitra - technology self-educates.

He makes the claim that "the internet harms our ability to engage with difficult text and complex ideas" a quote from Nicholas Carr. Clifford Nass says that "Media multitasking impairs our focus, productivity, and creativity." We are losing the ability to focus on one task at a time. He gives the argument of Sherry Turkle's Connected Alone.

He comes back to Wiliam Powers Hamlet's Blackberry.

He then talked about the story in Wired "Minimally invasive learning." - the issue that has "The Next Steve Jobs" on the cover.

Technology's proper role is to supplement the learning.

Related articles

• Sugata Mitra via TED talks - Kids teach themselves (campbelltechteam.wordpress.com)
• Handwritten Stories in a Digital Age: PostSecret.com and More (deolaathompson.wordpress.com)
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• Alone Together~ by Sherry Turkle. (kimberleylsleen.wordpress.com)

DET/CHE: What Students Really Want

California State Student Association (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anthony Gibson, Chief of Staff, California State Student

Association, CSU Sacramento

James Harrison, Technology Affairs Senator, Santa Clara University

Dwayne Mason Jr., California State Student Association, CSU Fullerton

Brett Roberts, Technology Officer, California State Student Association, CSU Monterey Bay

Specific ideas participants will take away from the sessio

 

A broader understanding of student activism 

 

Student thoughts on

• student access,
• mobile computing and online learning initiatives 
• Components of the student initiated CSU technology strategic planning

Online education - Anthony Gibson
        "It is not about the past, its about the future."
        The CSSA is publishing a white paper.
Required Learning - it can't be mandatory
Implementation - it is not about replacing the current system but
about giving instructors a tool to make it better.
Encouraging the flipped classroom EdX vs. Udacity
Quality - online education is more than a YouTube video
Faculty - an essential component to the solution
        No faculty member should be forced to teach online
The Platform
        Like a university campus, its what allows online education to exist.
The student showed an iPad commercial and talked about the rapid
change in technology.

Classroom technology - Brett Roberts
Current
        Cannot be outdated
        Incorporate popular technologies
        Breaks learning curve for students
Call to action:
        Keep up with popular technologies

Affordability
        Technology is expensive
        Free online resources
                www.merlotx.edu
        The students need to know!

Accessible
        Computer labs, rental programs
        Most students have smartphones but not all
        Implement technology and train users

General requests - Jimmy Harrison
        Important to understand student sentiment
        Students and faculty come from different times

        Guest wifi networks
                For visiting parents
                For visiting competitors
        Student wifi
        Consolidated Internet Hub
                One portal for all online education
                Email, Files, discussions
                One log-in for students=increased participation
        Mobile Interaction
                Social Media interaction
                Connect students to various events on campus

        A lot of faculty feel that technology is an annoyance and inconvenient
        The teachers need trainin

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