Both readings this week were extremely interesting, and turn the concept of traditional learning on its head. As the articles elaborate on, the development of technology has allowed for new methods of learning to surface (this applies to all industries, not just school-based education). Prior to the current day, learning almost HAD to be instructor-centered, as there were few other sources of trusted academic education that a student could rely on. Learners all had to be in one spot, with one person teaching what they know to the students. This naturally cultivates a more instructor-centered learning environment, as it hands them all the teaching ‘authority’, for lack of a better word.

Now with the development of internet and technology,  not only do learners have access to a near limitless supply of knowledge and education from trusted sources, but they have 24/7 access to each other’s brains as well. I found the section that talked about courses that ‘have had success with creating voting systems that allow learners to post questions in the discussion forums and then allow other learners to “upvote” the ones that are most important’ (Crosslin, 2018). This seems particularly similar to platforms like reddit, where people upvote posts that are either liked or deemed to be relevant/truthful. It’s interesting to see a platform like that applied to education, allowing students to vote for content/questions that they deem to be relevant. This is an easy way to integrate a whole group into a learning experience, as opposed to the traditional one-way information flow from the instructor.

I also agree that the goal of any course ‘should be to push learners into a place of learning how to learn about the course topic, so they can become self-directed learners’ (Crosslin, 2018). I briefly learned about this concept in another course, which focused on how learning experiences should be tailored to the individual’s pace and learning preferences as opposed to giving all unique students a pre-packaged learning experience. This is another idea that has gained prominence and viability with the development of technology, and tackles the traditional notion of almost all classroom learning being a mere regurgitation of facts. Now, if you can teach a student how to learn instead purely just what to learn, they can go out and absorb the world of knowledge that is now literally at their fingertips.

Technology has also allowed asynchronous learning to become a tool in the construction of a class. Touching on what I mentioned earlier, in the past classes HAD to be taught in person, whereas now, instruction doesn’t have to be delivered in person or even at a certain time. We can now receive education that is as good (or possibly even better for some individuals) as that which you can receive in a classroom. In the Crosslin reading, he mentions ‘On campus courses can have online asynchronous components added for after class work. Online courses can have synchronous video chat sessions or live lectures mixed in with asynchronous discussion boards’ (Crosslin, 2018). This is interesting purely because of the idea that a class doesn’t have to be 100% synchronous, and it doesn’t have to be 100% asynchronous – the instructor can find a blend that works best for the structure of the course and his/her goals and objectives for the course. I’ve taken an online course before where the learning was all asynchronous, but the quizzes and tests were taken as a group with other students in an online collaboration tool used by the school. The instructor had deemed this particular way to be the best method of  delivering the content and achieving their goals for the course, but there are tons of different potential combinations for how this can be done.

A combination of these newer concepts (student-centered learning and asynchronous learning) enable connectivism to thrive as a viable learning style. When the task of ‘learning how to learn’ is placed in the hands of the students as opposed to being taught solely by the instructor, one’s community of peers becomes vital. Now that we are always connected (whether through our laptops, or our phones), knowledge gain through both online and offline social interactions becomes an intriguing way of taking on information. The Siemens reading offers an interesting quote, “Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge.” (Siemens, 2008). This makes total sense – we obviously cannot experience everything, and neither can our peers. But when this knowledge is combined together, everybody becomes a source of education, not just one person. Even if two people ‘know’ the same thing, their differing perspectives of that thing can be a learning experience for one another.

All in all, I am very intrigued to see how these concepts come to be used (or even built upon), not only in a classroom environment, but any environment where one has the ability and to learn something. The combination of the concepts in these readings (as well as ones not mentioned, like personalized learning) could very well change not only how future generations learn, but benefit their overall capacity for information.