George Siemens
George Siemens is a Canadian expatriate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Arlington and professor and director of the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning at the University of South Australia. He is known for his theory of connectivism, which seeks to understand learning in the digital age. He played a role in the early development of massive online open courses.
Education
Siemens earned his PhD in psychology at the University of Aberdeen in 2011 under the supervision of Frank Rennie, Martin Weller, and Robin Mason. His thesis developed the Sensemaking Wayfinding Information Model to understand individual behavior in social networks.Career
Siemens joined the faculty and staff of The University of Texas at Arlington in December 2013 as the executive director of the Learning Innovation and Networked Knowledge Research Lab or LINK Lab, which opened in spring of 2014. Siemens commenced his role at the University of South Australia in 2017 as the Director of the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning. He was formerly a professor at the Center for Distance Education and a researcher and strategist with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada, where he now serves as an adjunct professor. At Athabasca, he worked with social networked technologies. Prior to Athabasca University, Siemens held a post as the Associate Director of Research and Development with the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba.Siemens has received honorary doctorates from the Universidad de San Martin de Porres and the University of the Fraser Valley.