On the Three or Four Problems of Connectivism

Extensa respuesta de Stephen Downes, en su blog Half an Hour, al artículo On the Three or Four Problems of Connectivism, en el que Marc Clarà y Elena Barberà plantean algunas críticas al conectivismo.

In this post I would like to respond to the substantive criticisms, of which there are four:

• connectivist ideas have been widely and rapidly disseminated, but without the academic control procedures which the development of a learning theory needs to ensure rigour and systematicity in its postulates
• the 'learning paradox.' This paradox, first posed by Socrates (Plato, 2002), can be applied to connectivism as follows: How do you recognize a pattern if you do not already know that a specific configuration of connections is a pattern?
• connectivism underconceptualizes interaction and dialogue, by understanding it as a learner’s connection to a human node in the network.
• connectivism is unable to explain concept development... if a concept consists of a specific pattern of associations, how can it be explained that the concept develops but the pattern of associations remains the same?