Nadia Sansone

Dialogical Positions as a Method of Understanding Identity Trajectories in a Collaborative Blended University Course.

Recent learning sciences literature proposes to conceive learning as changes in the learner’s identity trajectory. In this paper, we use the analysis of dialogical positioning as a method to track down and understand shifts in identity trajectories. The Bakhtinian concepts of “polyphony” and “chronotopes” are considered as dialogical indicators of the identity positions, and are the basis of our method. A qualitative/quantitative nature is featured in this method, which is composed of three steps: a) reading of the data; b) definition of a tailored list of dialogical indicators; c) quantitative analysis. A highly collaborative, blended university course, drawing on socio-constructivist principles, was used as the context to test the method. Indeed, we believe such a course would foster dialogical identity development. All the notes posted online during the course by two selected students were used as the corpus of data. The students were selected because of their diversity in terms of level of participation and initial technology propensity. The application of the method revealed the uniqueness of the trajectories, the correlations between indicators, and their sensitiveness to the activities of the course and to the students’ personal circumstances.

Role-taking for Knowledge Building in a Blended Learning course

This paper focuses on role-taking effectiveness during blended learning activities. Two roles have been studied: the tutor, acting during forum-discussions, and the editor, in charge of supervising a collaborative writing task. A quantitative analysis was conducted to verify the impact of the two roles in terms of: a) participation to online activities, b) students’ preference for one of the roles and c) students’perception about the relevance of roles in acquiring academic skills. 48 in-service teachers attending a blended course responded to a 9-items semi-structured questionnaire. Their participation was measured bycounting their reading and writing activities. Results show that the highest participation is obtained when participants could play both roles. Participants prefer one or the other role based on specifc motivations reported on the questionnaire. The motivations were categorized by using four theoretical metaphors: behaviorist, cognitive, constructivist, and socio-constructivist motivations. Lower participants report more behaviorist motivations whereas higher participants have socio-constructivist argumentations. Both roles are perceived as useful to foster participation and improve communication and collaboration skills. Nevertheless, the role of the editor is perceived as more useful than that of the tutor in promoting both online and offine participation and individual learning.

AAALooking for the future: career counseling with Social Networks

Career counseling for high school students through discussions and collaborative activities carried out using Social Networks .