RESOURCE: In Connectivism, No One Can Hear You Scream: a Guide to Understanding the MOOC Novice | Open Education | HYBRID PEDAGOGY

I’m not a Constructivist, Behaviourist, Cognitivist, or Connectivist. This is not a call for a return to an older theory. I’m a pragmatist, like many educators. I flirt outrageously with every theory that will have me. I’m ideologically promiscuous. I go with what works, and I am ruthless in weeding out what doesn’t. I do this because there is no “one size fits all” theory. Because there is no “one size fits all” student. And because students, participants, and learners are the final metric that measures any theory, and experience is the proving ground for theory. Faith to a theory, ideological monogamy, gets in the way of the evidence.

This is the beginning of a conversation with myself and others about where my online practice should go, rather than the end of one.  I want to focus on the novice experience in cMOOCs, and how the theory may badly serve some of its participants.

What we think about who we are, and where we are, tells us how much we are likely to learn. This is key to the gap in Connectivist thought. Central to that gap, at the core of what I think Connectivism might be missing is this idea:
Motivation is the engine of effort, and the sense of self is the ticking heart of motivation. Our sense of self is formed by the experiences we have, the environments we have them in, and the people who design those environments. And that negotiated sense of self can engineer the success or failure of the educational experience. It can also shape our sense of ourselves long after the experience is over.

via In Connectivism, No One Can Hear You Scream: a Guide to Understanding the MOOC Novice | Open Education | HYBRID PEDAGOGY.