Siemens' Connectivism vs. Kolb's Experiential Learning
Background about this post
George Siemens tells us “Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same.” David Kolb tells us that "the emphasis on the process of learning as opposed to the behavioral outcomes distinguishes experiential learning from the idealist approaches of traditional education and from the behavioral theories of learning created by Watson, Hull, Skinner, and others. The theory of experiential learning rests on a different philosophical and epistemological base from behavioral theories of learning and idealistic approaches."
How do these two theories complement each other, or do you think they are conflicting? How does technology make either of these theories possible in practice?
My first impression about these two articles were that it was hard to fully comprehend all the central tenets and relate them to real world implications even though I have heard of, learned about, and even experienced with these learning theories in my own learning. I would admit that I was stuck and it took a couple days to read and re-read these two articles until I had some good enough understanding of these two theories to analyse them and below is what I have come up.
The two theories have some similarities and differences, yet in overall I think they complement rather than conflict each other. Basically, both theories considered learning as a continuous process, not an outcome, in which learners actively participate and interact with the environment to make learning happen. However, while the experiential theory emphasized the central role of individual’s experiences in constructing and transforming knowledge (Kolb, 1984), connectivism, on the other hand, posited that learning was no longer an internal, individualistic activity and not entirely under control of the individual since it could reside outside of oneself, in organizations, institutions, or even non-human appliances (Siemens, 2005).
Another key difference between two theories is the notion of knowledge. Experiential learning theory asserted that knowledge is neither fixed and immutable element of thought nor an independent unit to be acquired and transmitted (Kolb, 1984). Instead, it was a transformation process, being persistently constructed and reconstructed through one’s own experience. Nevertheless, connectivism postulated that “personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual” and this cycle of knowledge development enabled learners to stay updated in the field through their existing connections with other experts and practitioners (Siemens, 2005). From this statement, we can infer that knowledge is flowing through connections and transferred from one node to the others within the network and an individual needs to distinguish important and unimportant information and choose what to learn and create meaning of incoming information through an internal decision making process which according to Siemens (2005), was itself a learning process.
As connections play a crucial role in knowledge transfer and development, it is critical to preserve and flourish connections and for learning to be successful, learners need to have one core skill which was ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts (Siemens, 2005). In contrast, with regards to experiential learning, the learners would need four different kinds of abilities - concrete experience abilities, reflective observation abilities, abstract conceptualization abilities, and active experimentation abilities to form knowledge (Kolb, 1984). It is worth pointing out that these four types of abilities are corresponding to four stages of the Lewinian Experiential Learning Model and I think this model showed us that the experiential learning cycle looks very different from the abovementioned Siemens’ cycle of knowledge development.
Kolb's experiential learning theory is typically represented by a four-stage learning cycle. Source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html
Regardless of the differences, these two theories totally complement each other in the sense that they value the crucial role of personal experience in developing new knowledge and encourage continual life-long learning which I think very important for us to live in the digital age where existing knowledge becomes obsolete very quickly and at the same time new information and knowledge grow exponentially every second. It is essential for us to continuously reflect and review what we have already known, reach out to people in our network to acquire and expand our knowledge regularly, experiment new thoughts and ideas, and use our experience to revise and reshape our understanding and knowledge.
I do not think that technology is necessarily required to implement these learning theories as experience and connection can always be developed naturally among humans in our society without the intervention of technology. However, technology would definitely foster and signify the outcomes of experiential and connectivist learning. Indeed, it is needless to say that there is a plethora of experiences that we as a human simply cannot participate due to physical or geographical constrains for example. With the support of realities technology, these experiences can be simulated vividly so that we can enjoy safely and comfortably right where we are. When it comes to building our learning network, thanks to digital social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, just to name a few, we can access and connect to hundreds of thousands of people regardless of geographical, cultural, and temporal distance to exchange ideas and learn from each others.
