Emergence of favorable environment for learning and the relationship between educational project in virtual environment and distance courses: an complex approach

This paper analyzes an online graduate course for teachers of English. The study is geared towards the theory of complexity. It focuses more on the relationships between various elements and the inter-agents in this process, and less on the results. In as far as the pedagogical design of this contextualized course, one of the challenges that were identified in the studies involved seeking a better understanding of the factors that facilitated the creation of an environment that was conducive to the learning of the course components. For this study, we adopted as a guiding principle some notions from chaos theory/complexity, which form the epistemological basis of the analyses and the discussions of this research. In addition, we researched the properties of complex systems such as emergence, attraction principles, self-organization, adaptability and sensitivity to initial conditions, as well as external factors that occurred during a complex system. To this end, the analysis focused on the relationship between the pedagogical aspects of the course (the project), and its instructional design, as well as online interactions and other factors and elements that could positively or negatively influence the creation of a favorable learning environment. The relationship between the educational project and the virtual environment led to other social dimensions such as reciprocity, collaboration (or lack thereof), learning strategies and learning environment. We conclude that the increased understanding of the characteristics, the functioning and the implementation of standards in distance education courses for teachers aids discussions about collaborative virtual environment practices in this field