La dimension sociale dans un master post-universitaire à distance : outils, animation et analyse des interactions

Abstract

The use of ICTs in the field of education can promote the adoption of "social constructivist" approaches to learning. In these contexts of education (computer-supported collaborative learning, CSCL), a particular attention is paid to the creation of the "learning community" and to the relationships the members of the community establish among them.The post-graduate course in legal translation of the University of Genoa – carried out within the F@rum project – is underpinned by these same theories. To foster at its maximum the development of social presence among the learners, a socio-professional simulation game (Debyser, 1996 ; Rossi, 2002) is usually offered by the course staff within the learning platform.In this study, we will describe the initiatives carried out within the course, which are able, in our opinion, to promote social presence. We will discuss on whether and to what extent such initiatives have influenced the participants' social presence, whether they have stimulated the creation of the learning community and, finally, whether they have contributed to achieve the cognitive goals of the course.This contribution is based, in particular, on the analysis of learners' interactions revealing social presence (Garrison et al., 1999). The analysis of the forum messages relies on a "mixed" (i.e. both quantitative and qualitative) five-dimensional model of evaluation (Pozzi et al., 2007) which was in turn inspired by that of the "communities of inquiry" (Garrison & Anderson, 2003).

Keywords

• CSCL
• interaction
• simulation
• social dimension
• language learning