Thoughts on Multiliteracy #4

Like Downes, Siemens (in "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age") does not mention multiliteracy per se; what he describes, however, is similar to Downes' thoughts, though Siemens is much more focused.

Essentially Siemens says that three major conceptual frameworks— behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism—no longer seem to work as viable ways of describing learning and the nature of knowledge. This has happened, Siemens suggests, for a number of reasons—among them, the exponential growth of knowledge and the rapid diminution of its "shelf life"; a trend to move from lifetime jobs/careers to work in a variety of fields, even "unrelated" ones; a trend to see learning as a lifelong process, not the gradual acquisition of a discrete but limited set of skills and knowledge; a trend for learning to move from a formal, individual effort to an informal, social one; the effects of technology on our thinking; an interest in understanding the interface of organizational and individual learning; the fact that many processes formerly explained by learning theories can now be transferred to or supported by technology; the fact that, since the rapid increase of technology has made information more available than ever before, evaluation of information has taken on paramount importance; and the fact that acquiring discrete sets of information ("know-what") and specific skills ("know-how") is rapidly being supplemented (though not replaced) by the need to locate reliable information sources ("know-where").

Siemens also notes other changes:

• Knowledge is no longer being acquired in a linear fashion.

• Many cognitive operations (e.g., information storage and retrieval) which were once done individually by learners are now being done by technology.

• Traditional approaches to learning cannot provide a means of keeping current as the rapid expansion of technology continually results in an information explosion.

• Traditional approaches do not address those moments in which one must perform even when understanding is incomplete.

• Traditional approaches focus on order, yet a seeming lack of order—i.e., chaos and complex pattern recognition—is becoming more and more necessary.

• Traditional approaches cannot sufficiently address the importance of establishing open, yet systematic interconnections in differing fields of knowledge—interconnections which must be fluid, since they involve making decisions based on changeable patterns.
  

• Networking—forming social connections—is becoming more important than acquiring specific sets of information and skills: sharing knowledge with others is becoming more important than acquiring it in isolation.

• Open, self-organizing processes are becoming more important than absorbing sets of information and skills in lock-step fashion.

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Siemens then notes a new approach at describing the nature of knowledge and how it is acquired—connectivism. Siemens describes connectivism by listing what might be described as key tenets:

• A diversity of opinions gives rise to both learning and knowledge.

• The learning process consists of connecting specialized nodes of knowledge or sources of information.

• Learning may be extra-human: it may reside in non-human appliances.

• If continual learning (a key characteristic of connectivism) is to be facilitated, nurturing and maintenance of connections are critical.

• The focus of all connectivist learning activities is being current (i.e., both up-to-date and accurate).

• Decision-making is not seen as being part of the learning process, but as being a learning process in its own right. Further, choosing what to learn and ascribing meaning to incoming information must be flexible and changeable: an answer, for example, might be right today but wrong tomorrow because the information climate affecting a decision may change.

Siemens then goes on to describe other characteristics of connectivism:

• It requires organizations to manage the distribution of knowledge (connecting the right people with the right knowledge) and it also requires information flow to be active. Creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow should, according to Siemens, be a key organizational activity.

• It depends on effective social networks, since organizations have a collective cognitive capability. Further, effective social networks are built around "hubs": well-connected individuals who are able to both foster and maintain knowledge flow and who are interdependent with (one assumes) other networks and other "hubs."

• It depends on pattern recognition—especially understanding, through inference, of the interrelationships between "vast numbers of weak interrelations." The ability to perceive patterns and to include our own limited knowledge within such patterns can have an impact on our personal learning which Siemens describes as exponential.

• It depends on connections of information nodes which are indirect and unusual; such connections amplify learning, knowledge, and understanding through extension of one's personal network.

Finally, Siemens gives several implications that the notion of collectivism has outside of learning:

• management and leadership: Effective management of resources is challenging, since there must be a realization that complete knowledge cannot reside in one person only. Accordingly, utilization of diverse teams, each with varying viewpoints, is critical, as is the importance which must be given to innovation: revolutionary ideas must not be limited to fringe elements. Siemens sums up by saying that in order to survive in a knowledge economy (and also to decrease the time between ideas and their implementation), an organization must have the ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information.
  

• media, news, and information: Siemens notes that structured mainstream media, news, and information organizations are already being challenged by the open, real-time, two-way information flow represented by the much less structured and much less mainstream phenomenon of blogging.

• personal vs organizational knowledge management: Siemens suggests (I think) that personal knowledge management will become (or is becoming) at least as important as organizational knowledge management.

• design of learning environments: Siemens also suggests (I think) that the design of learning environments will be greatly affected by the expansion of what he calls connectivism. (My own interpretation, here, is that learning environments will need to become less wall-confined, less formal, less rigid, less controlled, less sterile, and less bound by the "soldiers-in-a-row-listening-to-lectures" prototype typical of past learning environments.)

Siemens concludes by saying that connections are more important than acquisition of discrete units of content ("The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe"), since "when knowledge . . . is needed but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill." Siemens also both expands and highlights this key idea when he says, "As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses."

Siemens then states that connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges major changes in society—changes which have led to the shift of learning away from an internal, individualistic activity. He also notes that the field of education has been slow to recognize the impact of both societal change and the new nature of learning—but then adds that connectivism provides insights into the skills and tasks which are appropriate and needed if learners are to flourish in a digital era.

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Siemens and Downes

On the whole, I found Siemens easier to understand than Downes—probably because even though I'm to a large extent intuitive, I'm still a product of the era of linear thinking and acquisition of knowledge by predetermined "packets." However, I found both Siemens' and Downes' explications meaningful—but meaningful in very different ways.

I would say that Siemens took a "choreographic" approach: by outlining basic tenets and characteristics of what might be called the "dance" of multiliteracy, the dance itself began to acquire a form. In Downes' approach, however, the "dancer" (Downes) became the dance—so to glean any understanding of what his message(s) entailed, one had to synthesize and co-experience whatever Downes was feeling and thinking and suggesting vis-a-vis the whole presentation (sight, sound, text, the many interconnected references) in an intuitive way.

A more traditional approach would have been to attempt to "digest" Siemens before tackling Downes. If that had been done, however, I think the flavor of multiliteracy would have been lost.