Rhizomatic Learning - The community is the curriculum

One of the two MOOCs I have reg for and started now in the beginning of 2014 is

Rhizomatic Learning - The community is the curriculum,  P2P University. 

Course leader is Dave Cormier, who also coined the word MOOC.

I realy love this course and its title. Rhizomatic Learning- the  community is teh curriculum
and as  Dave says: "Doing this course I've put together a blog post to give you a sense of 'where' the course is happening and what you might like to do as part of it."  In the info about the course it starts with "Your unguided tour of Rhizo14". I really just live the approach.
Rhizomatic learning is a story of how we can learn in a world of abundance – abundance of perspective, of information and of connection. A paper/location based learning model forces us to make decisions, in advance, about what it is important for students to learn. This was a practical reality – if we were going to have content available for a course, it needed to be prepared in advance. In order to prepare the content in advance, we needed to prepare the objectives in advance. And, given that we know what everyone is supposed to learn, we might as well check and see if they all did and compare them against each other.
What happens if we let that go? What happens when we approach a learning experience and we don’t know what we are going to learn? Where each student can learn something a little bit different – together? If we decide that important learning is more like being a parent, or being a cook, and less like knowing all the counties in England in 1450? What if we decided to trust the idea that people can come together to learn given the availability of an abundance of perspective, of information and of connection?


I  really love and I am really dedicated to the rhizome way of thinking and learníng, In my dissertation on Benchmarking in higher edcuation- lessons learned from interantional projects, I argued for a rhizome model of quality enhancement, actually I have the rhizome theory as a frame of reference in my research.

 the work by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari use the term "rhizome" and "rhizomatic" to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. In A Thousand Plateaus, they oppose it to an arborescent conception of knowledge, which works with dualist categories and binary choices. A rhizome works with planar and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.

As a model for culture, the rhizome resists the organizational structure of the root-tree system which charts causality along chronological lines and looks for the original source of 'things' and looks towards the pinnacle or conclusion of those 'things.' A rhizome, on the other hand, is characterized by 'ceaselessly established connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles.' Rather than narrativize history and culture, the rhizome presents history and culture as a map or wide array of attractions and influences with no specific origin or genesis, for a 'rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.' The planar movement of the rhizome resists chronology and organization, instead favoring a nomadic system of growth and propagation.
"In this model, culture spreads like the surface of a body of water, spreading towards available spaces or trickling downwards towards new spaces through fissures and gaps, eroding what is in its way. The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space.


Deleuze and Guattari introduce six principles:

• 1 and 2: Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other, and must be
• 3. Principle of multiplicity: only when the multiple is effectively treated as a substantive, "multiplicity" that it ceases to have any relation to the One
• 4. Principle of asignifying rupture: a rhizome may be broken, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines
• 5 and 6: Principle of cartography and decalcomania: a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model; it is a "map and not a tracing"

 

The very first task in this course is to reflect on

Use cheating as a weapon. How can you use the idea of cheating as a tool to take apart the structures that you work in? What does it say about learning? About power? About how you see teaching?

This is  really a challenge as such. Knowledge has always build on what others are doing of course one has  to give recognition to teh one/s who create thíng, but is it always easy to know who was teh firsst one, A lot of knowledge is so called common knowledge, and as such always has benn known.  By cheating you can learn a lot as well, you just have to know how  you can use it and what it means.  It is strange there as alway been some strange opinion that knowledge ahs to do with power. Some know more than others, and as such have "higher" status.
It would be nice, if an assignment in HE should say to students , cheat as much as you can, and tehn discuss waht we can learn about it. ONe thing for sure, is how to deal with Creative Commons, Copyright,  referrie rules, acknoledgement etc . Could be a nice starting point

I think with a rhizome mindset, sharing is caring, and caring is sharing. Together we gain knowledge and experiences and learn to network

 #rhizo14

@EbbaOssian