Advances in E-learning-Experiences and Methodologies

A Heideggerian View on E-Learning
remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and
you were astonished.
The question is then how to train to become
an expert. First, we believe that an expert cannot
be trained only in a classroom. To become an
expert one must have a significant professional
experience, where one has been coping with many
different situations, in particular situations leading
to breakdowns. In addition to that, one must have
an impressive record of cases in one’s profession
(other people practices). Also, it is necessary to
study with a master in order to imitate his/her
actions and to “steal” part of his/her knowledge
(Brown & Duguid, 1996). In order to do this, the
best way is to be (again) thrown in daily work
situations where one can work side by side with
a master—a good manager, a chief engineer, an
experienced technician, a senior scientist, a well
known artist, and so forth—and look at the master
way of doing.
What the classroom can do for learning expertise
is (a) to provide an important collection of
external practices in order to enrich the expert’s
repertoire of situations (a repertoire of cases allow
people to make situational discriminations
while being in action), and (b) a place to reflect
on practice with peers. In corporate learning,
communities of practice are the best candidates
to provide the above (Wenger, 1998; Wenger,
McDermott, & Snyder, 2002).
When a learner moves from “competence”
to “expertise” the learner is also moving from
“learning to do...” to “learning to be...”. I think
that in order to “learn to be...” one must go beyond
teaching. The works of Jean Lave and Etienne
Wenger (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and John Seely
Brown and Paul Duguid (Brown & Duguid, 1991,
2002), have clearly shown that learning is a social
process. Moreover, this kind of learning takes
place in a situated action (in space and time).
The above authors make a breakthrough in the
theory of learning by shifting the focus from the
individual as learner to learning as participation
in the social world, from a cognitive process to
a social practice.
All of this means that nobody can master a
job and become an expert outside of a community
of practitioners. If one wants to learn the
job of a doctor (i.e., to learn to be a doctor), one
must practice inside a community of doctors; if
one wants to become an entrepreneur, one must
practice entrepreneurship inside of a community
of entrepreneurs.
Lave and Wenger (1991) created the concept
of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) to
draw attention to the point that learners inevitably
participate (more or less) in communities of
practitioners and that the mastery of knowledge
requires newcomers to move toward full participation
in the socio-cultural practices of a community.
Therefore, they stress the point that, in order to
facilitate learning, one must create an environment
that facilitates LPP, facilitates access to practice,
access to ongoing work activities, and access to
practical expertise.
Building on situated learning, Etienne Wenger
(1998) developed the concept of communities of
practice, which are informal structures that gather
people linked through a common practice, which
is also recurrent and stable in time. Communities
of practice always develop around what matters to
its members; therefore, if one wants to facilitate
LPP and to “learn to be,” a community of practice
is a good candidate.
Following this logic, la Caixa has started to
cultivate some emergent communities of practice,
for instance communities of branch managers.
There is a big online community where branch
managers have discussions on their ongoing
problems at work, thus sharing their practical
knowledge. And there are some local communities
of practice where branch managers meet online
and face-to-face.
Participation in communities of practice will
certainly allow for being thrown in the specific
situations and context of the professional practice
one wants to master. Also, it will give access to a