Transfer through learning flexibility and hypertextuality

Abstract

The rise of flexible, independent learning has created a dilemma for institutionalised, accredited teaching. Concurrently, there is student non-conformity to most top-down classroom practices, which has been induced by nonlinear, or hypertextual, processing as a result of immersed usage of, among others, social software and electronic gaming. Exploration of the full change needed to match teaching practices with the mutated procedural schemas of cyber-natives is still under way, but there are indications that the very nature of the change has brought about a potential new route to transfer of learning, so elusive within rigid curricular face-to-face and online teaching environments. The diffusion and multifocusing that are at the base of hypertextual processing, and the personalisation, diversification, and acquisition of general knowledge that infuse independent, flexible learning can create an amenable setting for the generalisation and abstraction needed for effective transfer. This chapter explores the connection between processing change brought about by immersed new-media usage and new potentials for transfer of learning.