Modeling of Next Generation Digital Learning Environments

Complex Systems Theory

Marc Trestini

• Editore: Wiley-ISTE
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119563570
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Mathematics
• Categoria: Mathematical Analysis

The emergence of social networks, OpenCourseWare, Massive Open Online Courses, informal remote learning and connectivist approaches to learning has made the analysis and evaluation of Digital Learning Environments more complex. Modeling these complex systems makes it possible to transcribe the phenomena observed and facilitates the study of these processes with the aid of specific tools. Once this essential step is taken, it then becomes possible to develop plausible scenarios from the observation of emerging phenomena and dominant trends. This book highlights the contribution of complex systems theory in the study of next generation Digital Learning Environments. It describes a realistic approach and proposes a range of effective management tools to achieve it.

1
A Virtual Learning Environment seen as a System of Instrumented Activities

1.1. From school radios to MOOCs: a retrospective glance at the evolution of instrumented activities in education

“Education has always used a variety of devices, media, tools and processes to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to learners” [BAR 11, p. 109]. Of all these instruments, traditional blackboards or overhead projectors are the most well-known. More recently, the computer, the video projector, the digital tablet, the interactive whiteboard (IWB) or distance learning devices (which MOOCs belong to) have been added to the list of frequently used instruments in education. Often referred to as “teaching aids” or “mediation tools”, both aim to publicize¹ [PER 05] or mediate [FAB 13] relationships between the learner, the teacher and knowledge as it appears, for example, in Houssaye’s Pedagogical Triangle [HOU 88]. These instruments also mediate other relationships, such as those between the learners themselves, when they are led to work together. This is particularly the case for distance education platforms such as Moodle, Claroline, Sakaï, Acolad or Dokeos, which are designed to promote activities labeled “collaborative” or “cooperative”. In this type of environment, the platform and its related artifacts mediate the relationship between the different learners (the subjects) and the relationship between the learners and their learning group (their community), relationships that are also formalized in Engeström’s activity model [ENG 87, p. 78].

In fact, so-called educational technologies, which mainly represent this group of means, can be included, as research objects, in the paradigm of human activity which considers activity as organized and spread by using instruments. According to this theory:

“The actions are always inserted in a social matrix composed of individuals and artifacts [...]. Thus, as the mind works through artifacts, its work cannot be bound unconditionally and exclusively to the brain or to the individual himself; it should be perceived as distributed in related artifacts. These said artifacts link individuals and actions in a permeable, changing, and eventful manner” [DUC 05].

It is also for this reason that we consider these virtual learning environments (from computer-assisted learning to MOOCs) as systems of instrumented activities falling under both the system theory and the activity theory.

Their integration into the French education system began in the 1960s, and they were thus involved in the revival of schools, with the emergence of school radio and educational television programs. From 1971, the computer was then introduced into high schools to meet the requirements of computer introduction programs. This overwhelmingly established the computer in school spaces in the 1980s with the IPT² program of 1985. This date also marks the use of the first computer networks in education (nanoarrays)³. The first exchanges of digital documents between pupils and teachers (pages of texts, images, programs, etc.) via servers have been at the source of profound changes in teaching practices. Which teacher does not use networks today to share documents with pupils? Later, the arrival of the Internet in 1971 and Web 1.0 in 1990 once again led to the discovery of new uses in education. The first information research on the Internet illustrates this renewal in the class activity. However, it was specifically due to Web 2.0 in 2002, also called the dynamic web or social web, that the “Internet” revolution was particularly marked in education. The first long-distance learning devices and the platforms upon which they rely are based on this technology and could not have developed without it. It is also that today this same Web 2.0 (with only a few evolutions) can offer the possibility of training via networks and in particular with MOOCs to anyone in the world. The latter also introduce themselves into education with their array of novelties. Since the first George Siemens and Stephen Downes’ MOOC Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course (CCK08) was launched in Canada in 2008, MOOCs have grown on an impressive scale all over the world and have become established in the educational arena, including schools and universities by supporting original pedagogical approaches. However, they have also rekindled some teaching methods such as “the flipped classroom” or the “enriched classroom”. Between 2002 and today, many other instruments have appeared in educational environments. Without being too exhaustive, it is worth mentioning the panoply of emerging technologies like the cloud (which hints at the beginning of Web 3.0), tablets, tablet PCs, smartphones, geolocation processes, augmented reality, etc. The principle of augmented reality now allows the superposition of a virtual 3D model that “floats” over a real object, a bit like a hologram, but through digital screens, for smartphones and tablets in particular. This concept, which is still emerging, is already appearing in schools. For examples, there are applications⁴ that make it possible to transform children’s drawings (more generally, “triggers” or “markers”) into a 3D virtual image (an “Aura”). With a simple click, the image is superimposed on the drawing by hovering the mouse over it. Azuma [AZU 97], quoted by Domingues, is one of the first researchers to define augmented reality:

“Augmented Reality (AR) is a variant of Virtual Reality (VR). While virtual reality plunges an individual into a virtual environment where he/she cannot see the real world, RA allows the user to see the real world where virtual objects are superimposed on it. An augmented reality system must combine real objects with virtual objects, all in real time” [DOM 10, p. 10].

In education, many augmented reality applications for educational purposes are currently being developed. They pave the way for futuristic visions of new uses in education: in a classroom, a museum, a zoo and a library. They also concern all disciplines: language learning, geometry, science, reading and the arts [KAD 16].

Thus, the more or less explicit idea that the use of technologies in a school context brings progress and educational effectiveness has progressively developed in popular culture by reinforcing an already highly idealized collective representation of these technologies in education.

However, thanks to the many research studies that have been conducted in this area, we now know that learners’ performances are not necessarily better when these technologies are used [END 12, p. 1]. In the wake of what Russell [RUS 01] called the No Significant Difference Phenomenon, many people have been, and still are, critical of research carried out, deeming it inadequate for providing “proof” of the impact of technology on learning: we can recall the famous debate of 1990 between Clark [CLA 83, CLA 94, CLA 09] and Kozma [KOZ 91, KOZ 94] on the influence of media on learning. Clark did not see the media as influencing student success as the truck that delivers our food influences our diet. Kozma, for his part, recognized that technologies had so far had little influence, but that they should play a greater role in educational processes [TRE 10b].

Since this controversy, the debate continues and the questions it raises remain more relevant than ever. Philippe Dessus and Pascal Marquet [DES 09, pp. 7–10] have returned to this question in an interview with Clark himself for Distances et Savoirs magazine. While they both agree that the Clark and Kozma debate has shifted to new objects, they wonder if the fundamental questions that this debate raises have been definitively settled or if they are still being empirically tested [DES 09, pp. 7–10].

More recently, just as a vast digital educational plan for schools⁵ has just been announced in France, the results from the first study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), published on 14th September 2015 on pupil’s digital skills, show that it is not enough to extensively equip students and teachers with digital tools in order to improve their performance⁶. For Scardigli [SCA 89] and Musso et al. [MUS 07], “Digital innovations initially generate expectations that are as excessive as they are ideological, which are typical of the technological determinism that prevails in digital discourses in education”.

Taking into account the pros and cons, what does it really take to think of these virtual learning environments? Do they really help us to learn better? Are they learning tools or simply tools for learning? What is their real cognitive effectiveness? Do they effectively fulfill this role of mediation that we want them to? Do they really change the learner’s way of learning?

In fact, we o...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 A Virtual Learning Environment seen as a System of Instrumented Activities
• 2 Modeling Instrumented Activity at the Heart of the Virtual Environment
• 3 Models of Instrumented Activity Challenged by Technopedagogical Innovations
• 4 The Digital Learning Environment in the Paradigm of Systemic Complexity Modeling
• 5 Modeling a DLE Perceived as a Complex System
• 6 Modeling and Simulation of an MOOC: Practical Point
• Appendices
• Conclusion
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement