# Presentation: Viewing Open Education from the Perspectives of Knowledge Building and Connectivism


I wrote
[earlier](http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/04/19/open-scholars-and-divergence-convergence/)
about preparing to give a guest lecture in a class called KMD 1002:
Knowledge Communities: Patterns and Practices, where I assigned three
resources for class preparation: a [CIDER](http://cider.athabascau.ca/)
talk by [Terry Anderson](http://terrya.edublogs.org/about/) about [Three
Generations of Distance Education
Pedagogy](http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSessions/). I also ended up
assigning a paper by Marlene Scardamalia: [Collective Cognitive
Responsibility for the Advancement of
Knowledge](http://ikit.org/fulltext/2002CollectiveCog.pdf) and one by
George Siemens: [Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital
age](http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm).

I struggled quite a bit when preparing the actual talk. A nice feature
was that I was given access to the class discussion forum and wiki,
which they had used to summarize talks and discussions from previous
classes, so I read through that, and thought about my material could
integrate with what they had already been discussing, and the questions
they had been asking.

I have been thinking a lot about the two learning theories connectivism
and knowledge building. Both offer a possible model for online social
learning, but they are very different. I made a first attempt at sketch
out some of the strengths and weaknesses I saw in each of them, and
listing some of the issues that I think are worth discussing, and which
I am hoping to explore further in the future (and certainly during my
PhD).

The material in this presentation is quite raw, but I would love any
feedback and comments. I've embedded the 37 minute long presentation
below, but you can also download just the [PDF of the
slides](http://reganmian.net/files/KMDI%201002%20May%2027%202010.pdf),
or the [MP3 of the
audio](http://reganmian.net/files/KMDI%201002%20May%2027.mp3). The
[original video](http://hosting.epresence.tv/KMDI/1/watch/736.aspx)
(with no slides) also contains the Q&A session at the end (which I have
not included below).

Stian