RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

DIGITAL IDENTITIES AND VIRTUAL, EDUCATIONAL, PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di BARI - PSICOLOGIA - ()

Research Unit Leader

Maria Beatrice Ligorio

Description

Literature analysis suggests that in a blended learning model identity, community, and artifacts related factors could interact and be interdependent as nodes in a flexible net. Therefore, we assume that specific net configurations could affect on effective learning. How these assumptions could influence educational practices is the research question leading this group research.

Objectives
The general aim of this research unit is to construct and test a pedagogical model based on blended learning, where psychosocial aspects related to the development of identity, community, and cultural artifacts would be used to achieve an effective learning. The research will be situated in university educational contexts. Such contexts in fact are considered as in a need to rediscovering the psychosocial dimension of learning, because of isolation caused by high number of students (Ligorio, Cacciamani, Cesareni, 2006).
Specifically, we intend to achieve following specific aims:
• to operationalize of systemic relationships between identity positioning, participation and community development, and production and transformation of artifacts in on-line and off-line learning contexts;
• to design and test a blended pedagogical model where university students will able to participate to a systemic learning process.

Research Phases
To achieve these objectives, research unit will perform some tasks planned in 4 phases:
1. Analysis of students interactions within university blended courses(8 months). In this phase, the research group will be involved in collecting data and in analyzing them to obtain evidence of distributed construction of the self, community and cultural artifacts. The aim of this phase is to have an operazionalized description of these systems and of net of interactions. To do this, we will create ad hoc methodologies able to take in account quality and quantity of interactions as well as processual aspects.
2. Design blended pedagogical model (6 months). In the second phase, research unit will use results from the first phase to model learning activities where identity, community, and artifacts development will support on-line and off-line effective learning (e.g. role-playing, participation feedback, collaborative and individual tasks where students produce cultural artifacts as texts, hypertexts, maps, etc.).
3. Testing blended pedagogical model (4 months). In this phase, the blended courses designed based on phase 2 will be activated and the research group will monitor the development and students performance.
4. Data collection and analysis (6 months). The data produced during the phase three will organized, clustered, and analyzed with the aim of verifying the effectiveness of the courses and of the blended pedagogical model in terms of valuable learning.


Data analysis
The methodology we will use for data analysis following Peirce, Dewey, and James’s pragmatism (cit. in Creswell, 2003), that suggest the researcher should be free to alternatively look at different aspects of its object of study. This implies variety of analysis procedures and techniques can be used at same time. In this way the traditional diatribe that separate quantitative and qualitative methods is overcome and the researcher can select the procedures based on what is useful instead of what is dogmatically accepted.
The selection of data, instruments, and methods for analysis will be thus leaded by the complexity of the specific objects of our study (interactional processes that involve individuals, community and artifacts) and by the high contextual value impossible to be highlighted through a laboratory research design.
Participants will be university students attending courses that will occur partially off-line and partially by using on-line platform (blended course). Therefore the data collected will be of different types in order to keep the complexity of research objectives:
• video recording of off-line activities;
• note posted on on-line forums;
• products and artifacts constructed on-line and off-line;
• students’ interviews and focus groups.
Tools for the data analysis will be selected according to the object of study, as each time a tool could be chosen from a “toolbox” (Dal Lago and De Biasi, 2002). Qualitative techniques, such as discourse and text analysis, will be combined with quantitative methods as content analysis and social Network Analysis. Starting form a socio-constructivist approach and considering language as the main artifact mediating between thought, action, inter-action, and culture (Vygotskij, 1934; 1956; 1983), in this research we will underline discourse analysis and verbal interactions analysis as basic elements to observe learning activities and intersubjective meaning related to them. An innovative use of Social Network Analysis will enable us to have evidence not only of participants’ interactions but also of contents inter-actions. In this way, we should be able to study the systemic relationships among the various phenomena studied.

Discourse analysis reliabilty will be provided by auditing technique, that is the procedure and data interpretation control by one or more expert researchers who will be extern to research group. Content Analysis reliability will be obtained by calculating an inter-coders agreement. Social Network Analysis results, being them quantitative, will be able to validate by the traditional Error Theory.
Therefore, livelong research will be submitted to:
- a cultural-scientific validation based on a continuous trade off with a research community, who is expert in the specific topic, through national and international scientific publications and congress contributions;
- a validation as applicability and sustainibility of systemic-based BL pedagogical models, through designing and putting on practice the obtained BL model in everyday reaserch group members’ university lectures


Expected results
We expect to achieve results impacting both theoretical developments about psychosocial dynamics related to learning, and educational practices innovation:
• Theoretical results. Starting from a critical review of the state of art of using e-learning at university level and from results of phase 1, we expect to build a theoretical model that operazionalizes the processes involved in a distributed construction of self, community, and knowledge. Furthermore, at the end of phase 4, we expect to elaborate a theoretical model of learning where these processes are considered in relation with the processes of developing identity and community.
• Practical results. We expect to elaborate a blended pedagogical model where systemic processes involved in learning are valued. We will elaborate practical guidelines for educators about how to structure learning activities, contexts, and effective blended tasks.