HOLY COWS. THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF CONNECTIVISM ON THE DESIGN OF A STUDENT CENTRED AND OUTPUT ORIENTED LEARNING ACTIVITY, USING THE EXAMPLE OF AN EXERCISE FOR UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS STUDENTS IN AUSTRIA AND INDIA

Based on the principles of connectivism the paper at hand demonstrates how a student centred, output oriented learning activity can be developed, using an example of an exercise designed for two MOOCs (Massive open online courses) and their application and modification used at undergraduate level for two intercultural management classes in Graz, Austria and in New-Delhi India. In total, more than 300 students participated on undergraduate levels in the developed learning activities in the years 2015 and 2016.

The learning activity uses advertisements of different companies, which can be easily found on YouTube as learning material. Participating students in Austria and India are supposed to make their own choice of advertisements and to analyse them according to the following questions:
a) How does your group understand the advertisement and how does it work for you?
b) How do you think will the other side understand the same advertisements, will there be any difference to your own understanding?

This analysis is done in written form. As a second step, the students now get the opportunity to ask the other side for their opinion using self-developed questions. Finally, the students analyse the difference between their own opinion, their expectations and the answers of the other side.

The paper clearly relates the learning experience from this exercise to Connectivism, trying to demonstrate how it can be used for a modern teaching environment. It shows that learning is a process of connecting information sources (or nodes) and that decision making and the analysis of the connected processes is a very relevant learning process. Choosing the advertisement to use and the questions and differences to address is a central element in this exercise. The students learn to understand, that an answer to a specific question might correspond to their expectations now for one specific contact group but might be different tomorrow or for someone else. In this student based activity, the students design most of their own learning experience which enables them the perceive the similarities and differences between their views, their expectations and the reaction of the other side on a very personal level. They learn that as stated by Stephen Covey, we see the world, not as it is, but as we are or, as we are conditioned to see it. The output orientation can be clearly seen in the process of grading, as the grade is not based on any repetition of input from the professor but on the analysis of the differences between the own opinion, the expectations and the real reaction of the other side. The paper concludes with suggestions of how to use the demonstrated principles for other fields of study and other student groups.