We use cookies to give you the best experience and to help improve our website

Find out more about how we use cookies

Choose whether to use cookies:

No thanks Yes, I accept

Skip to main content

Jisc

You are in:

  • Advice
  • Guides
  • Curriculum design and support for online learning
  • Connectivist approaches

Utilities:

  • Search the Jisc website
    Clear search results

Search the Jisc website
Clear search results

Navigation:

Guide

Connectivist approaches

Part of

Archived
This content was archived in May 2020

About this guide

  • Published: 20 January 2016
  • Updated: 20 January 2016

View full guide as a single page

Contents

Curriculum design and support for online learning
  • Design and pedagogic models
  • Specific models and theories
    • Behaviourist approaches
    • Constructivist approaches
    • Situated approaches
    • Collaborative approaches
    • Connectivist approaches
  • Gamification and game-based learning
  • Open courses and approaches
  • Considerations for redesigning the curriculum
    • Delivering assessment and feedback
    • Managing and developing content
    • Work-based learning
  • Supporting online students
    • Identifying support needs
    • Supporting learners with different needs
    • Pastoral support
    • Technical support
    • Careers support
  • Developing partnerships with students
  • Staff roles and skills
    • Developing new working practices
    • Skills frameworks
    • Identifying new roles
    • Supporting professional development
  • Summary

Connected learning takes advantage of social networking technologies to focus on learning as a connected activity. Connectivism, or ‘connected learning’, merges several approaches and models but is fundamentally led by core values of equity, participation and social connection.

Openness is another core value that is generally incorporated in connectivist approaches. 

Before the development of xMOOCs, which tend to adopt a behaviourist approach, connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) provided opportunities for educational practitioners to engage in open conversations and collaborations with peers on the kinds of pedagogic approaches that are relevant for an online networked world.

Examples

An early example is the Change MOOCs led by Dave Cormier, George Siemens and Stephen Downes. More recently, Connected Courses and Teaching with WordPress continue this approach.

These provide useful courses for staff who want to explore connectivism and experience being an open online student.

Connectivist approaches encourage participation and support learners to develop connections that may last beyond the life of the course. This can be valuable if your institution wants to help students develop a professional network as they study.

Rhizomatic learning

A newer concept, rhizomatic learning, takes its name from plants with continuously growing roots that develop new shoots going off in different directions. Rhizomatic learning acknowledges that learners have their own individual contexts and need different things.

Dave Cormier, University of Prince Edward Island says:

“Organising a conversation, a course, a meeting or anything else to be rhizomatic involves creating a context, maybe some boundaries, within which a conversation can grow.” 

Book Navigation

  • ‹ Collaborative approaches
  • up
  • Gamification and game-based learning ›
Explore more on this topic
Online learning

You are in:

  • Advice
  • Guides
  • Curriculum design and support for online learning
  • Connectivist approaches

Areas

  • Connectivity
  • Cyber security
  • Cloud
  • Data analytics
  • Libraries, learning resources and research
  • Student experience
  • Trust and identity
  • Advice and guidance

Explore

  • Guides
  • Training
  • Consultancy
  • Events
  • Innovation

Useful

  • About
  • Membership
  • Get involved
  • News
  • Jobs

Get in touch

  • Contact us
  • Sign up to our newsletter
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
  • Cookies
  • Privacy
  • Modern slavery
  • Carbon reduction plan
  • Accessibility