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Connectivism

Is a twenty first century learning approach which argue that in a heavily connected world such as ours, people's faculty to access knowledge is more important than their ability to accumulate it. Nowadays knowledge can be holded by hard drives and servers as well as people, books and other traditional medias. There are already much more informations available on the internet than anyone could ever learn, plus, it is accessible from almost everywhere on the planet.
Therefore connectivists tend to emphasize the importance of learning how to learn, access diverse sources, organising knowledge, connecting disciplines and identify trends.
1
2
3
Richard
The most knowledgeable one
He knows 1, 2, 3
1
Jean-Michel
The least knowledgeable one
He knows 1
Now let's consider each other's network of knowledge on the subject.
4
7
3
2
1
Richard
He potentially knows 1, 2, 3, 4, 7
1
3
5
2
8
1
9
6
4
7
Jean-Michel
He potentially knows 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
If Jean-Michel is able to access his network to the fullest (learning how to learn) he will become the most knowledgeable of the two.
Connectivism is also very interesting to approach how group of people, organizations or companies handle knowledge and learning. If they allow for a fluid transmission of knowledge within themselve then one could consider that the whole group knows the sum of what its every member knows (plus eventual new connections). 
For example, in a given situation the decision-makers of a company need to know "9" in order to take the right decision. Someone in the company actually knows "9". If informations goes through the network (goes up the chain of command) of the company's employes, we could say that the whole company knows "9" and especially the decision makers who need it.
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Nevertheless conditions are rarely perfect and many interferences can occur while exploring networks, inability to communicate ideas efficiently, not knowing that someone might hold the information, not knowing that someone else need the information we possess, fear, ego etc.
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implementation examples 

To me a course that would prefer to connect its students to different types of sources (articles and books to read, youtube channels to watch, people to interview) and encourage them to explore it as they wish instead of following a strict curricululm, is already connectivist in some way. If in addition, students are given a platform to share, ask, and work collaboratively, in sum to make the best of their network, then there is no doubt about it.
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We have seen its influence on games too, people share informations about them all the time on the internet now, secrets are revealed to everyone days after a release, there are youtube videos giving tips and strategies, it has become the norm for people to watch others playing games, or to learn about a them from articles and even books. People make a living from producing such content. Sometimes it is just entertainment but most often people discover exciting or efficient ways to play that maybe they could have never discovered alone.
This is especially true for competitive games, professional players attract the attention of milions of people across the world. Players want to improve and they are willing to take time to observe how others proceed, comment and share their approach. It has become so trendy that these games are now equiped with platforms to access such content directly. Games do not have to teach people about themselves as much anymore, they just need to connect players to the rest of the community that does some of the work for them.
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further reading & references :

© 2020 by Robin Peixoto.

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