Is Connectivism a new learning theory?

Let me be very honest and state as an outsider who got into training, I have not spent a lot of time pondering over learning theories. But I am very interested in how people learn and I spend a lot of time traveling and observing people inside and outside the classroom, trying to figure out how they are acquiring new skills and knowledge.

Let me provide a bit of geographical context to my observations. Most of my work has been in China, India and South East Asia. These are regions where we are seeing the following

1. Larger younger population who are keen to go online

2. Very partial to online sources, in fact lots of love for information built online vs. traditional sources. (as traditional sources are most of the time not even available in their languages)

3. People changing occupations (and getting promoted at a much faster pace) and needing to learn stuff quickly

One very good illustration is the example of friend in Sichuan province in Western China. She used to work in tourism and she had just joined a lawyer’s office. I watched her as she spent the evening navigating and joining various law related  forums on the Chinese internet. Couple of days days later she had already identified active members on these forums and added them as a contact on her QQ (the internet messaging platform in China). Whenever she had a question or needed to understand something, she would seek guidance on QQ or the forums. And this was back in 2004.

Always connected via QQ in China.

In recent years, we have also had massive rise in the numbers of informal learning events. These events (barcamps, devcamps, educamps etc.) are hubs where professionals show up, demonstrate something they have learnt and make connections that they sustain online even after the events.

A Barcamp in Can Tho, Vietnam.

The last barcamp in Yangon (Myanmar)  had 4000 developers, designers, educators and students attending. In the last one month in Singapore, we had a FilmCamp, a MusicCamp, and a WorkCamp (discussing collaboration and alternative forms of organizing businesses). And I think this is happening because the traditional learning providers are too slow to anticipate changes in professions. They are slow at updating their syllabi and they provide very little interaction with the latest in the industry, and are expensive. To sympathize with formal education providers, the region as a whole is changing so quickly that they have a hard time catching up.

So from this background, when I look at the key ideas of Connectivism, I find that probably more that any other learning theory (or what I understand from other theories), Connectivism matches our learning model the best.

Weaknesses of Connectivism.

One of the criticism we often hear is “yes, they have made a connection and they learn stuff from each other but deep do they understand the concept, also the knowledge that they have is only as deep as the smartest person in the community – not as good as an expert.

Usually I answer this criticism with another question “Why is the expert not joining this community?”

Strengths of Connectivism

It is the most natural model for young people today. More so in areas which lack formal institutions and there is a dearth of learning materials. I think even if we suddenly see these resources made available, people will continue building networks and learning via them as learning is more fun this way. Connectivism also encourages the learner to look beyond their physical and cultural space.

References