Abstract:

In France, students who have interrupted their schooling before obtaining their baccalaureate diploma can obtain the Diplôme d'Accès aux Études Universitaires (DAEU), an equivalent certification that gives access to university studies. The requirements are that the person must be over 20 and have worked for 2 years, or have reached the age of 24.

This work presents our approach to supporting these students as they resume their studies, using a platform to help them brush up their French language skills. The learners have just one day of lessons a week, with the aim of completing the diploma in one year, which means they need to be highly efficient in order to acquire the skills they need to continue their university studies (Arrêté du 3 août 1994 relatif au diplôme d'accès aux études universitaires). This has led us to improve the system by combining classroom training with a learning platform to enhance training and develop student autonomy. This is part of a more global scheme to enhance knowledge and enable the acquisition of a certification with university and professional recognition, as part of the Voltaire project.

We wanted to enrich interactions through mediated communication, with the use of pedagogical tools or pods in this socio-technical device. This info-communicative approach allows learners to better afford the platform, and respond to their demands and expectations to validate the required knowledge base, but also to learn skills and certify part of them in order to strengthen their professional integration. We have taken all these factors into account in setting up this new pedagogical approach. However, this need must be matched by appropriate scripting to fully meet the training's pedagogical objectives, in particular improved performance in terms of results.

With this approach, we believe we can provide a solution for content appropriation, thanks to these new forms of information and communication, and the use of a diversity of new digital practices to enhance learning. We also offer specialized training paths adapted to each student, so that they can find the path that suits them best.

However, assessment has a normative purpose, since it is based on compliance with French language standards, which can impact production and regulate it in written communications and their modes of enunciation. The self-reflexivity of one's own productions, subject to a critical gaze framed by the normativity of language, can necessitate a need for constant readjustment, which some may try to avoid by using messaging channels to limit themselves to a formal posture in their exchanges on the platform. So, despite the desire to motivate students, we may well wonder about their empowerment and how to facilitate engagement on this type of platform to reinforce the desire for a community arrangement under a learning direction. But this also raises the question of freeing up creativity and exchanges around learning, leaving behind the formal aspect of exchanges that can be linked to the rigor of content organization and scripting.

Keywords:

Affordance, multifaceted device, tutoring, adult education, andragogy, learning platform.