Observation de la construction d'une compétence interculturelle dans des groupes exolingues en ligne

Abstract

This article belongs to two research areas, distance education and the development of intercultural competence in online multicultural group exchanges. Recent publications proved the interest raised by such issues, and also the difficulties encountered. O'Dowd and Ritter found 10 criteria related to these difficulties. We discuss them and extract a particularly relevant one, the pedagogical scenario, which we study here. The Tridem06 experiment is described with its scenario designed by a multi-institutional team and based on Byram's model of intercultural competence. When analysing the multimodal contents of the interactions, extracted from synchronous and asynchronous environments used by participants, we establish a correspondence with the five savoirs of the intercultural competence model. We finally approach a discussion about the tutor's responsibility and awareness in multicultural group exchanges with an example of failed learning.

Keywords

• distance learning
• online exchanges
• intercultural competence