Abstract:

Currently, educational trends schemes are aimed to students and academic networks focused on learning and collegial work with major demands of communication and effective access to information resources. This finds expression in the educational model that should underpin education online and which implies a substantial change in traditional paradigms, a restatement of the curriculum and a reorganization of the roles of the educational actors. It should also promote a flexible, relevant and better coverage educational offering, based on the student to develop academic skills for work and life and at the same time allow the achievement of significant learning incorporating an intelligent use of Information Communications Technology.

Creating a virtual environment is not just to move the physical classroom teaching to a virtual one, or change the chalk and blackboard for an electronic resource, or focus the content of a subject into texts redden in the computer monitor. It requires that all those involved in the design of these environments be aware of all available technological resources (infrastructure, resources, information resources, etc.), as well as the advantages and limitations of these to relate them to objectives, content, strategies and learning activities and evaluation.

The lack of socialization that exists in the Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) has been often questioned. However, it is obvious that in VLE there is the communication process. We see the interaction of actors (dialogical action), as well as interactivity through the diversity of languages used in educational materials for the VLE.

Innovative educational models should encourage interactive learning environments, synchronous and asynchronous, where the teacher is committed with student’s learning and plays a role as advisor and facilitator/instructor; students will become actors of change with skills and new ways of working in which they can use innovative cutting edge technologies, educational materials, information resources and digital content.

Not to say that these virtual environments have the same opportunities that face communication. Undoubtedly, we can’t deny the richness of communication that exists in an environment where you can feel, smell, see, touch, hear and even more, to obtain information from non-verbal communication (absent, to some extent in virtual environments). In this paper we propose to consider both environments as different forms and alternatives for people seeking formal education.

We also propose to reflect on the communication that exists in a VLE, using an "Intermedia Communication Model" which considers the different levels of interaction that make up the communication process in a VLE. Resources and materials integrated into a VLE are messages that present through different communication languages, all natural human languages, but in a VLE they require a treatment that emphasizes them due the lack of kinesthetic language, so that the materials contain the necessary interactivity and in addition with an appropriate interaction, enabling teachers and students feel a real innovative learning environment.

Keywords:

Innovative, communication process, virtual environment, interactivity, interaction.