Complex Learning
A way for rethinking Pedagogies and Processes in Technology-Enhanced learning and Education
Laura Vettraino (Author)
Learning Community srl
Rome, Italy
e-mail: vettraino@learningcom.it
Marco Guspini (Author)
educommunity Educational Community
Rome, Italy
info@educommunity.it
Abstract Rethinking Pedagogy and learning processes: that
is necessary since WEB 2.0 modifies the learning
environments, make educational experiences more complex
and enrich learning strategies. Nevertheless pedagogic theories
and didactic approaches, inherited by the consolidated face to
face" teaching, continue to be applied to the net-learning, still
using conceptual categories like: virtual classrooms, e-books, e-
tutor, e-contents, learning objects, interactive blackboards,
evaluation tests. That is, probably, the reason why web 2.0 and
e-learning 2.0 often do not work and are ineffective even if they
represent the vanguard of web mediated learning. The present
paper proposes Complex Learning as a possible theoretical key
of analysis fit with the changed scenarios, able to show a way to
meet the challenge of rethinking Pedagogies and learning
processes.
Rethinking Pedagogies and Porcesses in technology
enhanced Learning;Technology enhanced Science Education;
Social Computing for Learning and Knowledge Sharing.
I. INTRODUCTION
Rethinking Pedagogy and learning processes: that is
necessary since WEB 2.0, e-learning 2.0 and social
networking modify the learning environments, make
educational experiences more complex and enrich learning
strategies. Nevertheless pedagogic theories and didactic
approaches, inherited by the consolidated face to face"
teaching, continue to be applied to the net-learning, using
conceptual categories like, for example: virtual classrooms,
e-books, learning units, e-tutor, e-contents, learning objects,
interactive blackboards, evaluation tests. That is, probably,
the reason why web 2.0 and e-learning 2.0 often do not work
and are ineffective even if they represent the vanguard of
web mediated learning.
The paradigms of "face to face" teaching, widely applied
to the web, can only limitedly explicate the web mediated
learning process and, consequently, they allow only in part to
support and animate them satisfactorily.
Some courage and an open attitude, oriented to change,
are necessary in order to take advantage from the technology
Eleonora Guglielman (Author)
Learning Community srl
Rome, Italy
e-mail: guglielman@learningcom.it
Valentina Castello (Author)
Universit degli studi dellAquila
LAquila, Italy
valecastello@yahoo.com
enhanced learning environments. Indeed in the web mediated
learning environments there is something that cannot be
reduced to the "face to face" learning spaces and
experiences.
If we really want to rethink Pedagogy and identify a new
possible interpretative key of complex technology enhanced
learning experiences, it is necessary to identify and focus on
the specificity of web mediated learning processes.
Consequently, it will be possible to find effective
approaches.
II. WHAT COMPLEX LEARNING IS NOT
In order to understand the efficacy of Complex Learning,
as a rethought Pedagogy, it is necessary to understand how
learning processes are rethought too.
The main way, in order to understand this required
cultural and practical change, is to explain what is not
Complex Learning. Complex Learning is not a structured
course with predefined trainers, learning classrooms,
contents, modules, units, evaluation sessions; it is not the
negation of known and usual teaching and learning
processes; it is not a group work, a cooperative work, a
project work; it is not an individual experience of learning; it
is not a spontaneous process.
III. WHAT COMPLEX LEARNING IS
Complex Learning [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] is a new pedagogical
domain [6].
The term complex explains the complexity of the
dynamics that happen thanks to the added value represented
by the re-configuration among the different typologies of
learning models, new links and new hierarchies among
media, new languages and new interaction way, therefore
remediation [7].
In Complex Learning the objects look no more closed
and self-referential, but they bring the sign of the
transformations they sustain by virtue of the interaction with
and among the subjects who change and build them and no
more only enjoy them.
 The subjects role changes, its not fixed once and for all:
everyone can express his competence and his tutorship in
relation to the field he/she has an expertise. The participation
to this process by all people taking part in the dialogue space
leads to go beyond the course enclosure, putting the learning
experience in a multiplicity of concrete and virtual places,
inhabited places, that become real places.
A Complex Learning Community grows in this multi-
dimensional environment, where the learning process reflects
the complexity of real world and the social relations that take
place in it: multiple interactions among people, technologies,
purposes, environments where they move and act [8].
To better understand what Complex Learning means it is
necessary to answer a key question: "how learning
approaches change when plunged in the web?" or better
"how learning approaches change when plunged in the
network of, human and technologic, formal and informal,
real and virtual interconnections empowered by the web?"
Four case studies offered a practical way in order to answer
these questions:
TRAMPI - National Training Centre of MIUR a
web community aimed to train at a distance 11.000
people in charge for the accounting in the public
school (2001)[9];
COMUNET - Community network of Third Sector's
operators (2006) [10];
INDIRE PuntoEdu a national Community of public
school teachers aimed to improve the development
and implementation of technological didactic
solutions (2008) 11];
DEEPER Community an European web community
of operators dealing with refugees and asylum
seekers (2011) [12].
Learning behaviors have been analyzed through a general
observation, in two of the cited experiences, and in the others
two they have been analyzed through a systematic
observation, supported by the collection of quantitative data
and statistical analysis.
A large sample of messages (at least 4.000 messages)
was analyzed; interactions have been observed for a period
of at least one year to three years; data have been extracted
from databases of asynchronous learning network
interactions and have been recorded so that whenever they
can be checked and revised.
In order to check the increasing of learning, the
interactions have been categorized as verbal behaviors;
sequential analysis [13] [14] was the adopted technique;
conditional and transitional probability were calculated in
order to find eventual operative connections among specific
interactions in particular conditions and circumstances.
The analysis of the collected data shows some key items:
a) general attitudes of participants;
b) verbal behaviors generating learning interactions;
c) steps of development of the learning community's
interactions.
A. General attitudes of participants
In the analyzed interactions, learners tend to apply to
web-mediated learning the learning routines consolidated in
face to face learning experiences.
They tend to: reply a "one to one" pattern of
communication instead of "many to many", addressing a
message to a specific interlocutor; answer only questions
directly addressed; state a point of view, in a single episode,
without really searching interaction or coming into dialog.
A second and indicative behavior is the tendency to
accept to actively interact when a synchronous virtual
meeting is planned at a specific time and date with a specific
invitation, instead of taking advantage of asynchronous
opportunities of interaction.
The third tendency is to assume a passive position of
lurking more then taking initiative, or when they take
initiative, they search the interaction with the Tutor.
Finally, the expectation of ordinate and pre-ordinate
learning contents, units, objects, can be highlighted among
indicative general attitudes of participants.
This is normally the starting point. People usually adopt
what is familiar and known in order to afford change: web-
mediated learning environments and experiences indeed
require a change. At this previous stage, verbal behaviors are
static, generic and do not really add any knowledge to the
interaction.
B. Verbal behaviors generating learning interactions;
Already at this starting stage, also meaningful verbal
behaviors, indicative of learning interactions, have been
identified.
These behaviors are: participants ask questions connected
with daily work activities; a colleague gives an answer to a
question connected with daily work activities; a personal
experience is proposed as example of a possible solution; a
participant asks for a clarification; a participant integrates the
answer given by a colleague; participants share tools of
work, participants identify experts "de facto" to refer to.
It is also possible to identify learning process in these
verbal behaviors, if we intend learning as: the application of
a knowledge to a different context, the creation of
connections between contents or situations apparently
divergent, the integration and completion of contents, the
finding of practical solutions, the formulation of an
hypothesis of work, the flexibility in assuming different
points of view about the same problem, the adaptation of an
existing tool or solution to a new problematic situation.
These particular verbal behaviors, then, can represent the
master key for the activation of a collective productive
dialog, generative of learning.
The initial general attitudes, previously described,
actually tend to evolve from a sort of "collective monologue"
towards an effective networking learning interaction.
C. Steps of development of the learning communitys
interactions
Actually, the studied cases show roughly a common
development scheme [15]. This development is at the same
time sequential and reticular: the lifecycle of the learning
group, during the line of the time, is sequential and follows
progressive phases; yet the development of the relationship
among the members of the Community is a reticular and not
linear process.
One year is the basic time required in order to observe the
beginning of typical dynamics:
decreasing of oppositions and mistrust;
consolidation of the sense of belonging and
membership;
happening of cognitive dissonance[16];
establishing of a logic of reciprocity;
growing of the disposability to share experiences and
knowledge;
development of peer to peer support dynamics.
Within two or three years the Community tends to
consolidate these processes and to start up new dynamics
such as:
identification of experts "de facto";
improvement of the autonomy of the community in
the problem finding, problem setting, problem
solving;
developing of a dynamic leadership at a variable
asset;
growing of the networking with other (virtual or
real) communities having similar interests and aims;
flexible and integrated use of a rich mix of
communication devices.
The first group of steps describes the development of a
web community; the second group of steps describes more
specifically the dynamics of a Complex Learning
Community.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The key question is how to support and encourage the
development of the described steps. The implementation of a
productive dialog, generative of learning, indeed, is not a
spontaneous process; as well the culture of sharing, required
by the "web" and "network" logic, is a result more than a
starting point.
The animator of the Complex Learning Community
represents a key for the start up of this process and for the
success of the Complex Learning Model. If he/she acts
effectively the Complex Learning Community acquires more
awareness and sense of belonging, become more
autonomous and able to choice new aims, to manage the
work organization, also through the identification of experts
de facto. Then, the duration of the lifecycle of the
Complex Learning Community is connected to the existence
or the capacity to find new aims to be reached and common
problems to be solved.
Nevertheless, to grant the success of Complex Learning
Model, first of all it is necessary to change a consolidated
mental attitudes about learning and about teaching, taking in
mind the complexity of new hybrid, ubiquitous and liquid,
learning scenarios [17] [18] [19]. In these changed scenarios,
Complex Learning represents a possible theoretical key of
analysis and a Pedagogic paradigm fit with this complexity
and able to show how to meet this challenge.
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