Talk:Connectivism/Archive 1

3rd opinion

The article badly lacks independent evaluation of the theory. Please provide references from independent reliable sources. Please keep in mind that blogs, message boards, etc. are not valid references in wikipedia. `'Míkka 23:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I added several sources which should get things headed in the right direction. The criticisms of the theory weren't in any published journals that I could find, although I believe I could link to Bill Kerr's presentation from conference proceedings instead of his blog summary if you would view that as more reliable.

I'd like to include some of Stephen Downes' contributions on the subject as well, but I wasn't able to find any non-blog sources. I know Downes is generally philosophically opposed to the entire peer review process, but does anyone know of a source for his thoughts outside of his site and blog? WeisheitSuchen 04:13, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Although the article may not be substantiated with a sufficient number of "independent" sources, I do not think deleting it is the right solution. Just wait and let it expand, like all knowledge expands over time. Thiemehennis (talk) 17:23, 28 November 2007 (UTC) ________________

Agreed. Keep it. I'll tidy it and add references over the Xmas holiday. I'm writing a paper on "e-pedagogy" and found the limited information on this page useful.

Bobby (talk) 08:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Cultural and Learning theory usage

This is just a starter for discussion on how to best divide/combine the term in both usages. I have no opinion about which way, this is just a starter to point other editors towards. -Optigan13 (talk) 00:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems that the two uses of connectivism are totally unrelated, so I think they should be kept as separate articles. However, I'm not sure that the literary usage is most common in English. I suspect that English-speaking users of Wikipedia who search for "connectivism" are more likely to be looking for the learning theory rather than the literary movement. For example, searching Google in English for "connectivism" doesn't return any hits on the literary movement in the first two pages. The article doesn't yet include any English references.

What about using a disambiguation page as the landing page for Connectivism? Then both the learning theory and the literary usage would get equal footing. WeisheitSuchen (talk) 01:02, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

External Links

Ryan Tracey, the author of this blog post added a link to his own blog in external links, saying it was "reviewed by George Siemens." I deleted it as self-promoting linkspam. Since then, the link has been added 3 more times, each from a different IP address from the same service provider. Since in [one of those edits] he admitted that he was the author adding his own link, it seems to be a reasonable assumption that all of these edits are by the same person.

However, even without the conflict of interest, I don't think this blog post meets WP:EL. Under Links normally to be avoided, point #11 seems most applicable here: "Links to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority (this exception is meant to be very limited; as a minimum standard, recognized authorities always meet Wikipedia's notability criteria for biographies)." Ryan Tracey is not a recognized authority and does not meet the notability criteria for biographies.

Blog posts by notable authorities in education or related fields would be fine in the external links. However, there are literally thousands of blog posts about this subject, especially after the CCK08 course last year. George Siemens and Stephen Downes commented on many of them; that can't be sufficient to warrant inclusion here.

Full disclosure: I participated in the CCK08 course and have myself written several blog posts on this topic, including several that have been commented on and/or linked to by Downes and Siemens. I'm a C-list blogger at best and not notable, so I don't think any of my writing belongs here or in any other article. WeisheitSuchen (talk) 14:14, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree with you, but I don't have the time nor the energy to engage in an edit war. Ryanwiki (talk) 06:44, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I think at this point we can consider the discussion closed, as you haven't provided any reasons for disagreeing and the link has been removed. It's not an edit war or anything personal; it's just the external link policy.WeisheitSuchen (talk) 13:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)