Concepciones, modelos y propuestas alternativas para la investigación del aprendizaje en red. Una aproximación desde la experiencia del proyecto REDES

Pedagogical practices are changing drammaticaly, through the development of both the Web and theories of learning (socio-constructivism, social constructionism, theory of networks, etc). This is leading to an increasing interest on interactions among teachers, students, and technology. Indeed, the analysis of such pedagogical practices claims for new methodological approaches in order to raise the complexity of communicational interactions (as base of learning and knowledge construction) in the new learning contexts on the Web. In this sense, there has been a shifting from quantitative to qualitative methodologies on the several models of analysis of interactions. Nevertheless, there is still lack of studies in online learning procesess, that is to be linked to the fact that interaction analysis studies have left behind the study of discursive manners in the real contexts of human activity, where people get involved and construct jointly their discurses. From the other hand, few attention has been paid to resourse other than text. Considering this background, this research group has started to work on an alternative proposal in order to develop an approach that will be able of integrate several analysis models, allowing hence to cover the complexities of communicational interactions in learning contexts. The authors of this article believe, in that sense, that the triangulation among interactions with resourses and participants on the net is tightly connected to the construction of the learning context (which implies the communication context) hic et nunc. Therefore, the aim of this article is to introduce a perspective about the methodological concern with regard to the shifting of pedagogical practices within changing social arena where the Web is having a crucial impact. The article is divided hence in three parts: 1) pedagogical practices shifting; 2) models of analysis of online communicational interactions in learning processes; 3) alternative proposals to the study of such phenomenon. An attempt of introduce a general picture is made, in order to allow more systematic and deep approaches to research in the field.