Knowledge ecologies in fragile online learning environments

This article gives an account of an inquiry into two different postgraduate student groups' ways of engaging with a virtual learning environment. Using a variety of data sources, including learning artefacts, interview data, open-ended qualitative questionnaires and online discussion postings, the inquiry captured processes of engagement of the two groups, finding some similarities but also noteworthy differences by way of discourse analysis. Applying the notion of "information ecology" as described by Nardi and O'Day (1999) in the processes of interpretation and with a theoretical framework of sociocultural theory and activity theory, the findings of the inquiry indicate that rudimentary learning and knowledge ecologies evolved from the online learning environment for students that function in what we have come to describe as fragile learning environments(1) (the first group). Contrastingly, the other group, although they communicated amply and were more advanced in using computer technology, showed individual learning trajectories in a functionalist discourse.