Investigating Connectivism

[Fred Haas]

Having casually followed the work of George Siemens for well over a year now, I jumped at the chance to enroll in the second run of the open course Connectivism & Connective Knowledge, co-taught with Stephen Downes, someone who resurfaced on my radar last spring when I was working on the NetGenEd Project. Unfortunately, I missed the start of last year’s inaugural effort and regretted it all year. So, I was glad that they were repeating the experience.

The whole idea of an open course with global participants fascinates me. While the course is based at University of Manitoba, and there are a small group of students participating for credit, there are hundreds of people just tagging along for the shared experience and the learning. It makes me wonder how rich any class would be with this kind of open participation of for-credit and not-for-credit students?

In beginning my review of the week one’s material, my excitement is growing. It has all the makings of a powerfully, transformative learning experience. Based on the notion that all learning is social and networked, Siemens and Downes plan to lead the course in a freshly conceived role of network mediators. Understanding that they each are simply single nodes in a sprawling, living network of co-learners, Siemens states an initial challenge in the introductory video.

“In our particular, technological era we can let go of a lot of the assumptions we have held to date with regard teaching and learning. We can have rich learning experiences that don’t take place in the forums that we tell you go to.”

What strikes me about this comment is that it is an authentic realization of the nobody-is-smarter-than everybody ethos, which is one that I hold dear. I also love the premise that if conversations are made a priority context is established by contributions and interactions with others and the material, another introductory gem.

One of the first items of the class was to post an introduction, which I did. However, I am not sure that I addressed the questions that was posed about what needs to happen for me to consider the course a success. On some level it is already a success.

Logging into the intial Elluminate session, I was pleasantly surprised that there were so many familiar names in the room. Instantly I recognized the likes of Dennis Richards, someone I have been following on Twitter since the New Medial Literacies Conference, last spring. Unfortunately, I missed the chance to meet him in person at Alan November’s Building Learning Communities this summer. Additionally, Dave Cormier, of EdTechTalk fame among other insanely great projects, was heckling in the chat room of the session playfully. Sadly, it sounds like he may not be quite as involved as he was last time. It is hard to remember, but I think I learned of the course originally from following his blog. I imagine a few other usual suspects will appear at some point during week one.

I just hope that I really have the chance to invest and prioritize the kind of time and reflection needed to make the experience a deeply powerful one. I always seem to have too many things happening at once. Anyway, I thrilled to be involved.

[Fred Haas]

Connie:

Week 2 just began. So it is definitely not too late. Scott is right there is no way to truly keep up with everything. SO you will be overwhelmed, but in a good way. Yet, it really is an a la carte kind of opportunity, especially if you are not enrolled for credit. On some level, this particular open course is an effort to harness the power of conversations and provide opportunities for new connections to be formed. So as one of the participants suggested, and this is a completely paraphrased version of something far more elegant, it is like diving into a turged, wild water, knowing that you can get out and on the beach at any point, then prepare to jump back in. So jump in and see what happens.

I think it was mentioned that the course peaked at about 2400 last year, at one point.

[scott smith]

Hi Connie,

I'd say go ahead and dive in. I was in and out of it several times last year and the registered user population kept growing throughout the semester. I seem to recall that it began with about 2000 learners and added several thousands more.

My advice to newcomer is prepare to be overwhelmed :) Seriously, I recommend making an attempt to view George's and Stephen's suggested readings and perhaps try some of the live sessions. You will absolutely not be able to keep up with the Moodle discussions--there are way too many posts and responses, so this requires some strategic cherry-picking; something that I am not that good at.

Scott

[Connie Weber]

Fantastic blog! Wow--brand new to me, so glad to hear about this initiative. I just love to hear about such exciting things. Do you think I'm too late to get going this year? I haven't checked it out yet... got ideas about how to approach the course, without getting overwhelmed? Is there a way to come in and out of participation? What would you advise a newcomer, before she considers "stepping in"?

[Fred Haas]

Scott - I was really disappointed not to be involved last year. I kind of blanked on the timing. I am trying to stay pretty actively involved as much as possible. It sounds as though there have been some changes this time around.

[scott smith]

Fred, I just logged here to make a post about the Connectivism course. Happy that you beat me to it.

I haven't had a chance to engage myself too heavily, hoping to start that this evening. Looking forward to this edition of the course. Just from the little bit I was involved last year, it was a blast.

Scott