Multiple online environments as complex systems: Toward an orchestration of environments

Abstract

Distance learning, telecollaboration, and virtual exchange rely more and more on multiple online environments. Research on how teachers and learners deal with this is rare. The present study considers future teachers designing online tasks for actual learners in a telecollaborative project deployed across three online platforms. Framed by dynamic and complex systems theory, our study draws on computer-mediated discourse analysis, multimodal conversation analysis, and content analysis to understand through which affordances pedagogical actions such as instruction giving and providing feedback are accomplished throughout the three environments. Analysis highlights different strategies for each pedagogical regulation. Our main finding is that the presence of different environments emerges as an affordance for teachers to distribute pedagogical actions across the system of environments, which we call orchestration of environments. We discuss the implications of this finding for models of teacher competence and for teacher education.