Abstract:

Conceptual maps are often used as metacognitive tools for meaningful learning. Yet, this study employs concept maps as a schematic and semantic tool in order to represent data collected from three sources in sight of designing a questionnaire on the quality of the interactions in distance learning.

The general issue was to identify students’ point of view: what are the criteria for quality in distance learning interactions: indicators, characteristics of the devices, means offered by the devices, needs and expectations of these students. Actually, the assessment of the quality (or non-quality) flag would be greater students’ intersubjectivity.

Conceptual maps were used to analyze and interpret 229 extracts of interviews with students from three levels teaching, 4 courses, and a hundred written statements review content. Statements from 3 sources have been reformulated in "quality items" through a process of anasynthèse (Landry-Auger, 2003) to be depicted graphically. The univocity and the level of generality were controlled by the semantic conceptual mapping while completeness has been verified by the exercise of integration indicators from three sources.

Five poles of interactions emerged from anasynthèse process (Landry-Auger, 2003). 117 items will be finally retained in order to build the on-line questionnaire on quality in distance learning interactions. 1737 people responded. The most important poles, according to the student respondents, can be amazing…

Keywords:

Distance learning, quality, semantic conceptual maps, interactions poles.