The lack of comparative literature reviews in Connectivism papers complicate evaluating how Connectivism relates to prior theories, such as socially distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995), which explored how connectionist ideas could be applied to social systems. Classical theories of cognition such as activity theory (Vygotsky, Leont'ev, Luria, and others starting in the 1920s) proposed that people are embedded actors, with learning considered via three features – a subject (the learner), an object (the task or activity) and tool or mediating artifacts. Social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1962) claimed that people learn by watching others. Social learning theory (Miller and Dollard) elaborated this notion. Situated cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Greeno & Moore, 1993) alleged that knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts; knowledge and learning that requires thinking on the fly rather than the storage and retrieval of conceptual knowledge. Community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) asserted that the process of sharing information and experiences with the group enables members to learn from each other. Collective intelligence (Lévy, 1994) described a shared or group intelligence that emerges from collaboration and competition.
