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