Collaborative Work and Interactions in a Closed Discussion Forums. Case of the Tunisian Engineering Students

Abstract

E-Learning uses unconventional and new pedagogies that emanate from its own structure. Structure where teachers and students are not grouped in a classroom and where the virtual "replace" the real. This new mode of teaching includes the need to take into account interactions between different actors in the system and provides the "chat", the "mail" and "discussion forums" as alternatives that could "replace" interactions in a classic classroom. But what is it really? And how to make these tools efficient and guarantying good leanings ? The empirical research that we will present and which affected 52 students called to set up a working group drawn from a discussion forum that we followed. The results shows that interactions between learners are responsible for sharing , collaboration and co-construction of knowledge.