Free Learning and Control Learning

Stephen Downes delivers a stirring rebuttal to the politically-charged, reactionary attack on informal and connectivist learning contained in Kirschner, Sweller and Clark’s paper Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching. SURF Education Days, Utrecht, Netherlands, November 13.

My oversimplification of the issues: The paper argues that people learn best when you tell them what to do. Stephen counters that people learn best when they observe and participate. Without question, Stephen won the debate (especially since the other guys are hiding in a walled garden somewhere.)

If you enjoy seeing a superbly structured academic argument, watch the video. It’s 50 minutes long but quite worthwhile. The video will make a lot more sense to you than my notes.

How connections form in the brain…and in networks in general

Simple (Hebbian) assocation: (neurons that fire together, wire together)
Accidental association (by proximity)
Back propagation: feedback
Boltzmann learning: stable configuration

Connectivism learning is by participation in an authentic community of practice; you learn physics by doing physics

Teacher’s role is to practice one’s work in an open and transparent manner, to model and demonstrate

Learner’s role is to place themselves into a community of practice, to observe practitioners, to practice, and to reflect on what’s seen. Web 2.0 makes this possible

The other approach is instructionism (control learning), learning by telling. The LMS.

Traditional on-line learning. Online mimics real world. Content must be explicitly instructional. Three loci of control: content-packaging, federated search (only from authoritative sources), and learning design (a mechanism for stepping you through the presentation of material).

The authors charge that “minimally guided instruction” has no grounding in research or how the mind works. Their conclusion is not plausible. We know that people learn without guidance because we see it all the time. People discovered the internet without being taught. Indian children learn computers without being told to learn anything.

Learning is doing. Inquiry-based or problem-based learning is not minimally guided.

The authors set up a straw-man situation. There are shades of gray. Guidance doesn’t presuppose instruction. They contend that it’s a mistake to say that instruction should be application.

They deal with short-term memory and long-term memory. Long-term memory is a massive knowledge base, they say. Minds don’t look like databases. Their theory of knowledge is the more the better. They say the aim of instruction is to alter long-term memory. They totally overlook perceptual memory.

Polanyi. Knowledge is ineffable.

Kirschner, Sweller and Clark are against progress. They argue that people should learn by yesterday’s rules. Stephen says learning involves innovation, perception, and connections. He advocates giving people the freedom to learn as they wish.