Complex Learning:

a New Approach for the Age of Knowledge

Eleonora Guglielman
guglielman@learningcom.it
Laura Vettraino
vettraino@learningcom.it

Abstract
Complex learning represents the hybridisation among environments, languages and interactions
ways in a learning community composed by the whole world wide web. Its characters make it an
effective answer to the 21th Century knowledge society challenge and to the need to find
educational frameworks that can guarantee personalisation of learning paths and valorisation of
informal and non formal learning.

The age of knowledge

The changes that are taking place in our social and economical system give evidence that we are by
now in the age of knowledge, and that knowledge represents the asset and the intellectual resource
for the professional growth of individual to build an active citizenship. We are called to face the
challenge of the obsolescence of the knowledge and to manage innovation through ICT
(Information and Communication Technologies), in a Lifelong Learning perspective (European
Commission, 2000).
Learning is no more defined as transmission or accumulation of contents: subjects must become
fully protagonists of the change, making education the strategic lever for their growth and making
innovation the key for process of transformation. A lifelong education requires the ability of
integrating different open and flexible didactic methodologies from a reticular and
multidimensional point of view, for a meaningful learning where the subject is active and
responsible for the structuring of his knowledge, know-how and existential competence,
autonomously choosing his educational path (Calvani, 2001).
The linchpin shifts from instructional agent to learner, which assumes a stronger control of the
process to carry out choice, programming, resource finding and building, self-assessment: in brief, a
customized learning process. E-learning often replicates a controllable learning pattern and a close
educational model. Setting free from this model means to acquire and enhance the open character of
the net through customized paths (Guspini, 2004) upsetting traditional schemes we usually
implement when we begin a learning task. The acknowledgement of a different learning model can
help us to discover the various and new opportunities offered by the net in an educational
experience (Ferri, 2005).

Complexity as a strategy
The coming of new technologies has brought new “distributed learning” opportunities measured on
the users’ specific needs. ICT are the catalysers of innovation and social change in educational field

1
and e-learning is becoming established as an approach that enters full capacity in all educational
areas. From the European Lifelong Learning politics point of view, it is evident how the learning
environment is to be interpreted as a flexible space made by a plurality of parts (communication
media and tools, codes, materials and resources) in an interactive and complementary relation a
social and cultural space where the learner moves, explores, draws on the opportunities around him
to build his own experience, adapting the knowledge he acquires to his representations.

In this perspective e-learning has developed, from the first behaviourist distance learning models, to
the e-learning 2.0, becoming a part of everyday experience by the valorisation of informal and non
formal learning dimension (CEDEFOP, 2004) and a fluidification of teacher, learner and tutor’s
roles. The concept of platform seems to be old fashioned too: the web itself, as a whole, constitutes
the personal learning environment where learners organise personal spaces and establish social
relationships (Bonaiuti, 2006). Expanding this perspective to include the spaces of presence, we are
in front of an approach that goes beyond blended learning – considered as the sum of virtual and
presence dimension – and that represents the more up-to-date model, that is complex learning, with
its multiplicity of actors, resources, patterns and communication media, where the result is bigger
than the sum of its components (McDonald, 2006).
The term “complex” explains the complexity of the dynamics that happen thanks to the added
value, integrated to presence and distance, represented by the re-configuration among the different
typologies of e-learning models, new links and new hierarchies among media, new languages and
new interaction way, therefore “remediation” (Bolter, Grusin, 2002).
In complex learning the objects look no more closed and self-referential, but they bring the sign,
chronological too, of the transformations they sustain by virtue of the interaction with and among
the subjects who change and build them, not only enjoy them.
The role of subjects changes, it’s not fixed once and for all: everyone can express his competence
and his tutorship in relation to the field he has an expertise. The presence of different kind of
participants to this process (all people who take part in learner’s dialogue space) leads to a
multiplicity of actors that goes beyond the course enclosure, putting it in a multiplicity of concrete
and virtual places, inhabited places, that become real places.
In a composite and multi-dimensional environment like this it is possible a learning distinguished
by the acquisition of open, collaborative, process oriented competencies; the development of
metacognitive, monitoring, managing, self-assessment abilities; the link among disciplinary
knowledge, practical applications and scientific research; the knowledge sharing among participants
(Seufert, Lechner, Stanoevska, 2002).
The complex learning community deals with problems of knowledge reflecting the complexity of
real world and the social relations that take place in it: multiple interactions among people,
environments where they move and act, technologies, purposes (McDonald, 2005). Inside these
communities it is possible to implement a meaningful learning, intended as situated learning; the
category of complexity is regarded as a crucial element to represent the world and the structure of
its cognitive fields (Spiro, 1991; Van Merriënboer, 1999).
For these reasons complex learning is especially appropriated to the process of vocational training
of professional communities composed of adult practitioners who share common problems or
purposes.

“It’s all around you”: spaces, tools and hybridisation

A complex learning community is defined, as well as by spaces of hybridisation, by the multiplicity
of actors, the digital interaction of different communicative codes (images, texts, hypertexts, audio
2
and video, etc.) and by the opening to the creation of new creative ideas, synergies and
opportunities toward the building of a shared knowledge base and the achievement of a
“learnativity”: an action learning, authentic and vital, founded on collaboration, emulation and good
competition, that gives place to a spiral process of knowledge transformation (Ferri, op. cit). The
integration among different educational procedures, communication tools and technologies
contributes to develop, enable and improve the knowledge/learning of organisations in the age of
knowledge, generating value and competitiveness.
We are in front of a deep change in the way of conceiving educational technologies: communication
objects and tools in a complex scenario are no more conceived and produced to accomplish an
educational task on the e-learning platform, but they are the objects and tools we daily use to search
for information, talking, listening to the music, writing, having fun. Borrowing a recent advertising
slogan “it’s all around you”: these tools are already available, they surround us, each one of us uses
them, frequently without thinking about their potential.
Technologies we are talking about are already existing: objects (laptop computers, PDAs, cellular
phones, web cams, MP3 players, etc.) and communication tools (forum, e-mail, chat, wiki, blog,
podcast, etc.) are normal for us and have a high circulation. It all consists of converging
technologies to build a customised environment where everyone can chose the channels and the
ways he wants to learn and make use of the available resources.
Similarly, didactic methodologies are well known: frontal lessons, collaborative groups, sharing in
learning communities, active labs represent usual activity in a constructivist approach. Again, it is a
question of mixing, in a synergic way, the different educative ways and communication codes to
create an action learning. The pervasiveness of these technologies and the overtaking of the concept
of e-learning platform as enclosed place enlarge the opportunities to build sustainable complex
learning: if the didactic technologies are sophisticated from the point of view of design, it isn’t
necessary to have infrastructural complicated and expensive technologies.
The platform gives place to a personal environment where the user can assemble the
communication tools he needs and he can freely download from the net: all oh them are available as
Free Software or Open Source Software or are totally online (let’s thin, for example, to the office
applications we can use by connecting to a website with no need to buy them, like Google’s ones).
The opportunity to create a customised environment deeply changes our learning process: the
structure of a learning environment, in fact, directs the student to certain learning schemes, fostering
from time to time dynamics linked to the space design and its features (Goodyear, 2001). Active
involvement of the student in designing and building his space represent an innovation compared to
models that offer prearranged learning environments.

The experimentation
In 2006 and 2007 Learning Community Srl conceived a complex learning model based on the
assumption and the remarks we explained in this paper. The experimentation has carried out within
project Comunet (Equal European Initiative), aimed to create an active and participative net among
Non Profit subjects, by the activation of learning dynamics in a complex learning community. The
learning space had the characteristics of heterogeneous web environment, with a deep hybridisation
whose the strong point was represented by the openness to any resource the students wanted to use.
The tools for the self-directed learning and the frontal meetings were the integration elements that
have hallowed students to acquire the basis of a common language, to familiarise with technologies
tools, to carry out group activities characterised by collaborative and cooperative work.
Community, with the forum as his elective asynchronous discussion place, has integrated a
multiplicity of actors, channels and communicative codes to construct a shared knowledge base
3
starting from experience. In the experimentation two continuing education courses have been
enabled: the first one for teachers, aimed to develop and enhance the necessary competencies to
perform the role of moderator in the complex learning community, that is complex tutor; the second
one for non profit operators, aimed to create professional roles of developers of Open Source
solutions for their field of work.
In both instances virtual space of interaction was constituted by the project community, with its
participants – partnership, experts, stakeholders: therefore, not a closed space but an open dialogue
space reflecting the complexity of professional communities, as the specialists and Open Source
software exerts ones. The learning process has configured as an open exchange, not relegated in a
platform, making clear the characteristics o f complex approach, that advantages socialising and
sharing of doubts, ideas and solutions in situated authentic context. Students were encouraged to
interact outside their group and to consider the whole web as a learning and communication space
to socially construct new meanings and making a direct experience of the acquired approaches,
instruments and methodologies. In this frame incidental learning too gain centrality and
effectiveness, so learning acquire a contextual form, meaningful and open to the valorisation of
informal and non formal dimension (Guspini, 2007).
The application of complex learning model requires the reversal of traditional learning patterns. The
first students’ reaction has been of wrongfooting, defence and rejection, caused by the habit to live
the educative process as relegated in a close and “protected” place like the platform, to move in a
structured environment with preconceived contents, to think knowledge as an individual instead a
collective asset. This wrongfooting is to be read as the expression of a cognitive dissonance and it
represents a precious moment and a first indicator of the beginning of change process for the
learner. The coming apart among environments and the heterogeneity of cognitive dimensions is
part of the complexity the model attempts to interpret: this complexity is not to considered as an
obstacle but as a richness of places, spaces and resources.
The key to overcome these criticalities consisted in the acquisition and the improvement of the net
competencies by the students, through support and scaffolding actions of the community
moderators. The removal of classes and groups boundaries in institutional learning environment,
thanks to a communication model “many-to-many”, allows the building of an authentic enlarged
virtual learning and practice community, both on a level of project (interaction among students,
tutors, staff) and on a level of the web (interaction among community members, interaction with
other communities and Internet users).
On a theoretical plan the approach has shown in the choose of an eclectic point of view, or rather a
plurality of points of view to assume a paradigm capable of understand its richness. Net learning, in
fact, is restricted to repropose in a simulation key the mechanisms of the presence teaching and
learning (Maragliano, 2004). E-learning, in other words, would be a “practice searching for
theories”, that uses theories peculiar of presence education to explain new didactic practices: a
“new domain” that, however, still hasn’t its own epistemological statute. We have therefore
preferred to maintain a point of view comprehensive and open, disposed to accept the commitment
of a theoretical reflection that attempt to identify and highlight the authentic and innovative
dimension of complex learning.

Guaranteeing complex learning efficacy

The experimentation of this model has highlighted some criticalities that, as we have seen before,
can be related to the difficulty in coming off traditional educative models based on a formal
transmissive teaching method. On the strength of the experience we made, we have drawn some

4
conclusion about three critical problems that look decisive to assure the model efficacy: tutor role,
assessment and technological managing.
Tutor role. It seems to be fundamental the role of complex tutor, who has the job of “cultivate” the
community keeping track of its development process through assiduous and continuous
interactions, offering scaffolding and well-timed feedback to the students and motivating them
through the construction of an encouraging space with welcome actions. In complex learning, in
fact, a “classical” e-tutor role would be unsatisfactory, because in e-learning courses there isn’t the
habit to blend different environments, tools and actors of the process toward an extreme integration
with the whole web community. So it is fundamental a custom-made training that schedules the
development of valuable competencies, particularly about social support: emotional, affective and
motivational scaffolding, safeguard of a reciprocal trust climate, stimulating collaborative activities,
analysis of interpersonal relations, conflict resolution.
Assessment. The model’s peculiarity and the difficulty to track the path when the student can live
in different spaces and use any accessible resource make traditional assessment obsolete, leading it
to the analysis of students participation and involvement, that is their ability to “be a net”.
Assessment forms must be therefore oriented to the analysis of collective learning process, as well
as the individual one, and to the specification of participation to the learning process indicators. So,
the object of the assessment is the communication ability, the self-reflection and the acquisition of
consciousness of the knowledge construction shared process. The indicators of these kind of
learning are the number of interactions among the students, the ability to move with confidence in
the various environments, the number of the proposals, ideas, shared doubts, founded solutions.
Technological management. Complex learning model requires the ability to integrate
heterogeneous environments characteristics, preserving the usability and the communication
readiness, without be overcome by the technological tools. A simple online forum can constitute a
basis for the interactions and can be the first “social zone” of a place the student build around
himself, adding to it the useful resources. On a technological point of view the managing staff
should make available to the student a modular space that he can manage and implement in a simple
way and that allows the use of functions and tools like forum, dynamic knowledge repositories,
messages, etc., in respect of accessibility and interoperability standards.

December 2007 - Eleonora Guglielman, Laura Vettraino

Learning Community Srl, www.learningcom.it

References

Bolter J.D., Grusin R. (2002), Remediation. Competizione e integrazione tra media vecchi e
nuovi, Milano, Guerini e Associati.
Bonaiuti G. (2006), E-learning 2.0. Il futuro dell’apprendimento in rete, tra formale e informale,
Trento, Erickson.
Calvani A. (2001), Educazione, comunicazione e nuovi media. Sfide pedagogiche e cyberspazio,
Torino, Utet.
CEDEFOP (2004), Common european principles for validation of non-formal and informal
learning. Final proposal from “Working Group H”, Brussels, 3 March.
European Commission (2000), A Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, Bruxelles.
Ferri P. (2005), E-learning. Didattica, comunicazione e tecnologie digitali, Firenze, Le Monnier.
5
 Goodyear P (2001), Effective networked learning in higher education: notes and guidelines,
Networked Learning in Higher Education Project (JCALT), January 31, Deliverable 9.
Guspini M., eds., (2007), Dai modelli formativi e-learning al modello Comunet, Roma,
Tiellemedia.
Guspini M., eds., (2004), La personalizzazione degli apprendimenti nell’educazione degli adulti.
Lo stato dell’arte, Servizio Informazione Anicia, 1, monografico.
Maragliano R. (2004), Nuovo manuale di didattica multimediale, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
McDonald D. (2005), Complex Learning Communities, http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/research/
publications/papers/strath_cis_publication_995.pdf (veryfied december 28, 2007).
Seufert S., Lechner U., Stanoevska K. (2002), A reference model for online learning
communities, International Journal on E-learning, January-March, 43-55.
Spiro R.J. et alii (1991), Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism and Hypertext: Random Access
Instruction for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition in Hill-structured Domains, Educational
Technology, 31, 5, 24-35.
Van Merriënboer J.J.G. (1999), Cognition and Multimedia Design for Complex Learning, Open
University of the Netherlands.

Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0