Online Connectivism Conference

Hi Virginia, nice to see that you are still fighting the good fight .

I don't doubt that connectivism can be tiered. My concern is that networks - and thereby connectivism - tier differently than traditional structures. I suggested a taxonomy a year or two ago - but a taxonomy is too reflective of a hierarchical mindset...To evaluate networks requires an emphasis on network effectiveness - i.e. what does the network do? What is it intended to do? So even our metric of tiering connectivism is one that includes partial acknowledgement of the context in which the networks themselves occur. When context changes, the tiered structure changes. As with complex systems, the outcome is unknown at initiation. Similarly, I think pre-defined or templated categorization (which I admit aid in enabling comparing and contrasting - the demarcation of elements that is so important in cognition) fails to fully account for the myriad shapes and patterns the situation and thereby accompanying connections generate. The rule-based models that work well in more static environments need to give way to sense/probe/evaluate models that first account for context and network at time of consideration, and then enable comparisons of suitable effectiveness or valid distinctions between different elements or forms.

In my eyes, communities are essentially network forming spaces...or networks with established, transparent, and solidified relationships. We join community for numerous reasons - emotional (sense of belonging), cognitive (to learn from and with others), functional (to connect with others in order to advance our careers), and so on. The prevalence of connections and networks - from webs of diseases, to transport systems, to citations, to sexual contacts, to social contacts, to political connections, to corporate board governance - blinds us to their power. The primary basis of meaningful interaction and value is a connection. Nodes and connections are the DNA of our society - but we have looked at their impact in our research, theories, and philosophies, and largely ignored their foundational presence. In a learning sense, those who adhere to constructive views of knowledge must first acknowledge a connection of some sort - between the individual constructing and the information used in the construction...or between the learner and the one fostering the constructive space (i.e. the teacher). Extended, the socialization of knowledge is a similar node/connection relationship - influenced and augmented by the rich interplay of dialogue, perspective, and context. I think we miss seeing the complexity of networks because their basic components are so simple.

In terms of networks falling apart when nodes leave - the internet refutes that assertion. The internet (not web) was created as a network so no single node could bring down the entire structure. The distributed architecture allows it to scale in complexity, and be largely failure resistant (though recent concerns of 13 rootname servers as being a weak point in the web - simply because control is too centralized - more nodes are needed to ensure survivability of a significant attack).

I'm a bit unclear in your use of systems. I've described ecologies as the spaces in which networks occur. In an organization, the ecology present determines how easy it is for networks to form. Consider the world of academic publishing - our current ecology/climate of closed access to publicly funded research inhibits the formation of networks between researches and ideas. The ecology of knowledge is influenced by many factors - government, corporate, patents, lawsuits, DRM, copyright, etc. If this is what you mean with system, I would suggest that the system itself is not an aspect of connectivism...but that the system/ecology determines the health and ease of connection formation available to all nodes within the ecology (from the individual to the wider corporate representation).