Complex learning communities

A new breed of learning community which is driven by the need to generate learning, creativity and economic capacity is emerging as a result of the demands of the Information Society. Radical heterogeneity and multiple drivers make these learning communities significantly different from previously identified learning communities such as corporate Communities of Practice or Virtual Learning Communities. If full benefit is to be realised from such Complex Learning Communities (CLCs), then better understanding of their complex behaviour and methods of maximising their effectiveness are required. This short paper presents an overview of CLCs and reports on the development of a research agenda designed to address the identified gaps in knowledge

Emergent characteristics of complex learning communities

In response to the rapidly changing demands of the Information Society, learning has undergone radical change, becoming a true lifelong activity with emphasis on situated, communal learning and flexible delivery designed to meet individual learning styles and increasingly underpinned by technology

Developing a conceptual model for exploring emergence

Emergence is a fundamental property of complex systems and can be thought of as a new property or behaviour which appears due to non-linear interactions within the system; emergence may be considered to be the 'product' or by-product of the system. For example, within social systems, social capital, the World Wide Web, law and indeed civilization in general may be considered emergent, although all within different time scales. As our world becomes increasingly more interconnected, understanding how emergence arises and how to design for and manage specific types of emergence is ever more important. To date, the concept of emergence has been mainly used as an explanatory framework (as used by Johnson 2001), to inform the logic of action research (Mitleton-Kelly 2004) or as a means of exploring the range of emergent potential of simulation of real complex systems (Axelrod 2003). If we are to improve our ability to manage and control emergence, we need first to directly study the phenomenon of emergence, its causes and consequences across real complex systems

A methodology for exploring emergence in learning communities

Learning communities are becoming increasingly complex in nature, often being used to drive multiple agendas. For example, there is an increasing move to develop learning cities which seek to draw on synergies to both improve citizen learning and skills as well as economic regeneration. Such synergy-driven learning communities, of which the learning cities are but one example, seek to utilise interaction to develop 'emergent products', be it at the individual level or the system-wide level, which could not be produced in isolation. Successfully enabling emergence is critical to their success. Designing for specific types of emergence is however difficult given the intrinsic unpredictability of complex systems. Insight into the intrinsic characteristics of these synergy-driven learning communities and how their interaction leads to emergence over time is required. This paper reports on the methodology developed to explore these highly complex learning communities. The approach adopted was to combine exploratory case studies which established the intrinsic characteristics of the learning communities with an exploration of emergence guided by a meta-level conceptual framework of emergence. This was augmented by secondary data to aid triangulation and provide rigour. As well as discussing the rationale for the adopted approach, implementation issues and the rich information set obtained are discussed using specific case examples. Findings from the investigations led to recommendations regarding future development of appropriate methods for seeding and managing such complex learning communities. The meta level framework means the approach may be readily adapted to other complex social system

A study into advertising on JANET

Electronic marketing is just one facet of the many revenue-raising opportunities traditionally used by Colleges and Universities. While offering new potential, it may also open up new areas of problems. This study was commissioned by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to investigate the wider implications surrounding the introduction of electronic marketing (advertising) on JANET. The primary purpose of the study was to focus on the issues surrounding the introduction of electronic marketing on JISC Services

Community space in complex learning communities : lessons learnt

Highly complex learning communities where diverse participants collaborate to achieve multiple aims through synergy have the potential to be highly creative and productive. However the diversity and multiple aims can also mean the advantages of a community - share understand, trust and direction - are difficult to achieve, resulting in few if any of the aims being realised. We review two case studies, where the learning community is trying to achieve multiple aims, in order to explore how virtual and physical space are employed to support collaborative learning and enhance synergistic potential. The analysis shows that high levels of diversity have influenced these spaces and trends towards differentiation and holistically designed hybrid, virtual and physical, collaboration space. The characteristics of theses cases are sufficiently general to lead us to draw insights for the building of collaborative space in multi-purpose complex learning communities. These are equably applicable to learning communities which share features such as heterogeneity, multiple locations or a mixture of spaces

Source regions for Antarctic MLT non-migrating semidiurnal tides

Source regions for the westward propagating zonal wavenumber one and three components of the semidiurnal tide observed in the summer mesosphere and lower thermosphere over Antarctica are identified by correlating local tidal variations with global planetary wave one activity in the stratosphere and lower mesosphere. The advantages of using zonal wavenumber resolved tidal amplitudes for such a study are described. The results support the prediction of a source region in the northern hemisphere