Mohsen Haghighatpasand

I’m an education technologist and I look at education and learning through Connectivism learning theory. I believe knowledge is not merely located in brains but shared with neurons in brains, people in a society and bits in computers (Downes, 2012). Technology has reorganized how we learn so our learning theories should be reflective of our social environments. I believe my role as a connectivist educator is to ensure that students have as many connections with knowledge servers, digital sources and experts as possible. My job is to guarantee the quantity and quality of connections. Learning relies on student’s abilities to build knowledge based on connections with other pieces of information and imitating experts in an authentic context until they become one. Knowing where to find knowledge is replacing knowing-how and knowing -what (Siemens, 2005). They have to decide what to learn and that is a learning process itself. In my classes, I try to exploit OER (Open Educational Resources) and OEP (Open Educational Practices) in my courses. Here are some examples:

 

• Asking students and helping them to adapt or remix OERs.

• Asking students to help reframe and re-present course content in new and inventive ways.

• Teaching students how to edit Wikipedia articles and helping them to do it.

• Facilitating student-created and student-controlled learning environments.

• Encouraging students to apply their expertise to serve their community. 

• Engaging students in public chats with authors or experts (like Twitter).

• Building course policies, outcomes, assignments, rubrics, and schedules of work collaboratively with students. 

• Letting students curate course content. (e.g. as a group research project - content as a process, not a product).

 

I would like my students to be concerned with the value of what being learned in a networked world. The process of assessing the worthiness of learning something is part of learning leads to active learning. Learning starts with assessing what to learn and not only during the process of learning. Providing the students with some resources circumscribes a world of resources for them and restricts them from the open networked world of knowledge. For this aim, activities should encourage the students to go beyond the class, explore, assess and learn self-directedly.

 

 

References:

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: Learning as network-creation. ASTD Learning News, 10(1), 1-28.

Downes, S. (2012). Connectivism and connective knowledge: Essays on meaning and learning networks.