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Editorial

Daniel Peraya, Éric Bruillard et Pierre Mœglin
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Éditorial [fr]

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1This issue 49 is a varia, a collection of articles submitted by colleagues to the journal in response to our permanent call for contributions1. It goes without saying that these spontaneous submissions (re)constitute the reserve and the richness of the journal. Last year, three themed issues were devoted to the international and bilingual conference “Distance Education: a brave new world?”, organized jointly by the CNED, EIFAD, the Open University and DMS on 21 and 22 October 2022. So this year has been a year of relative respite, during which we have been able to “rebuild our stock”. For DMS, the lessons are very clear. Firstly, making the most of such an event opens up the journal to many new colleagues from different currents, professional backgrounds, institutions and countries, some of whom we hope will continue to collaborate with DMS. Secondly, a colloquium or any other scientific event on the scale of a colloquium gives the journal a boost. So it’s important to persevere in this direction. And we’re already working on it. Having said that, it’s worth reminding everyone that it’s also the spontaneous contributions that keep the journal alive: scientific articles based on empirical analyses, as well as points of view and perspectives, accounts of experience, reading notes and thematic dossiers.

2By definition, the varia issue is not put together according to any prior thematic logic. However, the succession and contiguity of the texts creates a certain retroactive coherence. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an effect of reading or an affinity between the texts, the writing constructs and reinforces this intertextuality. As we shall see, the three scientific articles deal with methodological difficulties, either the relevance and validity of traditional indicators for evaluating the performance of Moocs (M. Cisel) or the difficulty of gathering data on young people’s digital practices (V. Faillet and R. M. Bortolotti). In addition to these three scientific articles, we are publishing an account of an experience (V. Marescot, F. Bougenies and S. Leleu-Merviel) which highlights this type of difficulty and the possible discrepancy between the methodology adopted and the case studied. Finally, this issue includes two reading notes (N. Jeune and R. Challah) and the “Debate discussion” section (L. Massou).

How to evaluate performance in a Mooc?

3Mooc and Learning Analytics have been the subject of several publications in DMS, notably those by Mathieu Cisel (DMS 8, 20 and 37)2, and now in this issue. The issue of learning analytics has also been widely discussed in the “Debate and discussion” section throughout 2019 (DMS 25, 26, 27 and 28)3. In 2014, M. Cisel questioned the conditions for the success of Mooc courses, pointing out how difficult it was to assess learning within these systems. He quoted Justin Reich: “We have Terabytes of data about what people click, and very little understanding about what changed in people’s heads.” (DMS 8, § 2). He was already clearly raising the issue of the traces left by users on the platforms and how they are processed, as well as the nature of learner behavior, for which they are considered to be indicators. In 2022, he continued his reflection on the validity of indicators and metrics. In particular, he showed the importance of certain indicators, such as the number of learners involved in a course or in a platform for scientific journals, in the decision-making of certain scientific publishers:

When conducting an analysis of traces on platforms bringing together tens or hundreds of thousands of learners, the simple quantitative leap may be enough in itself to rule out any criticism that reviewers might make about the scope of the case study. (§ 4)

4In the same way, the number of registrations is often used to legitimize Mooc projects developed by public or semi-public players, and thus justify the often considerable sums invested. It therefore seems essential to question the validity of such indicators.

5In the introduction to the article he publishes in this issue, “Analyse de traces d’interaction et reconceptualisation des indicateurs de performance de Mooc : une revue de littérature”, he reaffirms his credo: “The unbridled use of indicators to measure the performance of online courses is potentially detrimental to our understanding of the phenomena they purport to measure”. He presents a non-exhaustive literature review of research that has taken a critical look at existing metrics and/or proposed alternative metrics. Among the research that makes up his corpus, he identifies three axes corresponding to three particular approaches, which he points out are classic and existed before the appearance of these online courses.

  • 4 A student generally receives a correction of their assessment tests. A double registration, one und (...)

6The first area covers research aimed at better characterizing the indicators used to evaluate the attendance of participants at Moocs and the success of the various courses. It highlights terminological inconsistencies (number of students, enrollments, completion and success rates) that skew the evaluation of Moocs. In fact, we cannot evaluate MOOCs using the same performance indicators as those used to evaluate traditional face-to-face courses and programs, or formal training courses, without running the risk of introducing numerous biases, as there are too many characteristics that distinguish them. Also, the indicators used in the latter case do not cover identical uses or practices. There are examples with which we are familiar and have been for a long time: the difference between the number of “students in the strict sense” and the number of those who actually follow the course, especially as the fact that it is free can increase this gap. Talking about students rather than enrollments gives a distorted picture of Mooc attendance. The fraud procedures4 that skew the certification rate seem to be better mastered by those taking the courses than by the course designers themselves. The author is also interested in the work of DeBoer et al. (2014) who contrast the processes of recontextualisation of a variable—‘an uncovering of its operational definition leaving its conventional interpretations and uses intact’—and of reconceptualization of the latter—‘a redefinition of the uses and interpretations that are suitable for the new educational context’. It is this second avenue that we need to follow.

  • 5 Les auteurs cités dans les articles ne sont pas repris dans la bibliographie de cet éditorial.

7The other two lines of research identified by M. Cisel propose alternative indicators—altmetrics in English (Haustein, 2016)5—which take into account the agentivity of Mooc participants and their appropriation of the platforms. The main aim is to determine categories of Mooc users according to their behavior in terms of browsing and consulting resources: several taxonomies have been developed close to the seminal one, according to M. Cisel, of Kizilcec et al. (2013): free listeners, and those who practice sampling, the latter corresponding to those referred to by P. Plantard as foragers (2014). The second axis takes as its object self-reported data intended to segment the population according to certain criteria whose validity can be established, from our point of view, inter alia by the literature. This involves comparing users according to different indicators such as motivation and intention to complete. We also know that:

Analyses can be conducted around a triptych of certification/participation/intention, i.e. in the links between obtaining a certificate, the activities carried out and the intention prior to training. We refer readers to a detailed analysis of the authors and their work, as described above. (Gilliot and Bruillard, 2017)

8From our point of view, the interest of this article therefore lies in its methodological scope. On the one hand, M. Cisel warns researchers in the Mooc community of the biases to which they are exposing themselves if they fail to guard against ill-considered generalizations of indicators, terms and concepts. On the other hand, and more generally, this article urges us to define our indicators, but more broadly our objects and concepts, and to be wary of the commonplaces that ordinary language offers us. Even if it is the only one available to us for constructing our theoretical frameworks and our research objects.

How can we study pupils’ school practices outside the lycée?

9In his article, “Schoolwork outside the classroom and practices of secondary school pupils: towards a digital ecosystem at the crossroads of school and youth cultures,” Vincent Faillet takes us into the field of formal education, that of secondary school pupils, and their personal digital ecosystem mobilized outside the classroom to accomplish their schoolwork. Who better to talk to us about the “out of class” space than the secondary school teacher and acknowledged innovator that is V. Faillet. His article, based on his recent thesis (2023), will interest our readers as much for its problematic and methodology as for its results, which include a mapping of the spaces and territories that make up this digital “out-of-class.”

10Attempting to discover and explore young people’s social and digital practices in relation to their schoolwork outside the classroom immediately seems a paradoxical and difficult task insofar as these private practices, by definition, escape all control: that of the institution as well as that of research. To alleviate this obstacle, the author has taken an original methodological approach, conducting his research in three stages.

11The first seeks to make visible “the great invisibility of juvenile digital uses and practices” (quoting Cordier, 2020, p. 30). This involves looking for traces of secondary school activities in digital archives extracted from the Web:

we explore the Web by entering keywords in a search engine in search of school questions asked by secondary school pupils. Moreover, we are limiting our study to questions relating only to the life and earth sciences (L&E) discipline that we teach, and for which we are in a better position to interpret fragmentary data. (Faillet, 2020)

12The queries were initially carried out on the basis of six fairly general keywords linked to the life and earth sciences discipline (life and earth sciences question, life and earth sciences exercise, life and earth sciences explanation, life and earth sciences advice, life and earth sciences DM and life and earth sciences). Ten other keywords were extracted from this first corpus, representing recurring phrases (for example, SOS SVT, urgent SVT, aidez-moi SVT, QCM SVT). In the end, sixteen keywords were searched in Google, resulting in sixty-two sites, some of which were found several times. On the basis of a thematic analysis of the discussion threads, the author distinguishes nine discussion areas, each devoted to a particular field: secondary studies, higher education and science, on the one hand, and IT, teenagers, YouTube, video games, a general area and a passion area, on the other. He then brings together the first three spaces, to which he adds the institutional space, the institutional ENT, which will constitute the school cultural territory of his cartography. V. Faillet uses the model of elective activities developed by A. Barrère’s model of elective activities (2011) to define the juvenile elective space, which brings together the five other spaces and is opposed to the spaces of school culture. This is presented as a space for socialization and “illustrates the porosity between the recreational and academic nature of digital practices”.

13In the second phase of her research, V. Faillet gathered testimonies from young people through group interviews: eleven groups of three to six students from the same class (SVT course) at a general and technical secondary school in Paris. The results of the analysis of this data enabled two new spaces to be added to the pupils’ elective space: the digital applications used for school work between peers and the Google search/response engine. In the third phase, the author proposes to reflect on the link between the juvenile and school cultures of secondary school pupils, highlighting a process of hybridization of recreational and school practices. This final section focuses more specifically on the issue of the percolation of uses between the different spheres of personal, professional and educational activity, an issue that emerged in the 2010s and was echoed in our review (DMS 1)6.

14What can we learn from this article? First and foremost, its patient and deliberate approach, and the thread that runs through it: the identification of resource areas for pupils’ work outside the classroom on the basis of traces collected on the Web, a better understanding of juvenile uses thanks to interviews with pupils, and finally the articulation of juvenile and school cultural territories in the form of a cartographic representation.

15In the opening paragraphs of his article, the author refers to the notion of the personal learning environment (PLE), which he no longer refers to in the rest of his text, no doubt because he feels that the notion is not sufficiently consensual. And yet, this mapping, which places the learner at the center of the ecosystem, seems to correspond to a relevant model of one of the aspects of the overall personal learning environment of students: the personal environment, as opposed to the school and digital environment, as opposed to the material and physical environment. Let’s also look at the process of hybridization of juvenile practices that V. Faillet identifies in her interviews. This process seems more convincing than the process of percolation mentioned above. Indeed, the notion of percolation suggests that uses are transferred as they are, without modification, from one social sphere to another. However, the situation is more complex, and this could be reflected in the “ecotone”, a term borrowed by the author from the ecological sciences and used to designate the transitional space between two ecosystems, in the article, between the two “territories” of school and youth. The learner is at the center of the ecotone. Placing the learner at the center of the ecotone underlines the central role he or she plays in the appropriation of resources and devices, and consequently in the hybridization process. In this respect, the author cites examples of the mobilization of elective space for educational purposes. Among these, Lou and Janis look for resources in their elective space, but “the modus operandi they declare is very academic and consists of taking notes of the videos: ‘I write the video down on a sheet of paper’”. This undoubtedly shows the influence of a methodological framework for interpreting and understanding resources collected in a “non-academic” space. But there is nothing to say that these resources escape a conventional media form. One of the strengths of the school form is probably that it has “pedagogised” (DMS 21) other types of texts, other forms of discourse and other social practices. Two more comments. Firstly, the graphic representations are always partial and only visualize certain aspects of the phenomenon, of the object studied: cartography represents the structure of territories, spaces and the flow of resources, but it cannot account for the hybridization of practices revealed by the interviews. Finally, the reader knows nothing about the appropriation of the institutional ENT outside the classroom. Yet C. Fluckiger (2011)7 suggests that a digital device, by changing its social sphere of use, evolves and transforms under the effects of its users. If the instrumentation and instrumentalization processes vary, the device itself can no longer be considered identical to what it was in another sphere: it is no longer the same device.

How to report on youth digital practices? Dare to take an ethnographic approach?

16Rosa Maria Bortolotti is the winner of the 2024 edition of the thesis prize from the Scientific Interest Group for Innovation, Interdisciplinarity, and Training (GIS 2if). The publication of her article, “Conducting an Ethnographic Survey Remotely and in Person: Building a Methodology,” is the result of the partnership between the journal DMS and the GIS 2if, which provides that the author of the thesis recognized by the jury will be able to publish an article on their thesis in DMS. R. M. Bortolotti is thus the second winner to be hosted by DMS. We congratulate her and are delighted. It should be noted that this contribution fits perfectly into this miscellaneous issue. Indeed, it is not unrelated to V. Faillet’s text. First, these two articles originate from recent doctoral research. The two authors then examine, albeit in different contexts, youth digital practices through social networks. And both are confronted with methodological difficulties: how to account for them? How then to analyze the links and articulation between practices and interactions in the digital world—that of applications and social networks—on the one hand and in the physical, face-to-face world on the other.

17R. M. Bortolotti has decided not to present the results of her thesis in this contribution since they are the subject of an imminent publication (to be published, 2025). She therefore focuses on her methodological approach and how she gradually moved away from a qualitative analysis of representational data (questionnaires, interviews, etc.) classical in human sciences to adopt, to “dare” an ethnographic approach. V. Faillet, to testify to the “invisibility” of youth digital practices, opted for the extraction of web archives in a first phase and for group interviews in the second phase of her research. R. M. Bortolotti, for her part, takes a different path: she decides to adopt an online ethnography approach, a “virtual ethnography” which

applies the methods of classical ethnography (van Zanten, 1998) to digital spaces by seeking to analyze the interactions between individuals who play out there, by focusing on the specific conventions that develop there, and also by studying the interferences with physical social relationships.

18She therefore decides to immerse herself in the digital spaces in which the young people whose practices she studies evolve, to conduct participant observation after having defined with them a shared ethical framework and a strong relationship of trust built in particular on her personal commitment and on face-to-face contacts in the physical world:

Seeking to analyze the sociability practices of young people, I inserted myself into their worlds by studying the codes and languages they use on digital social networks, the different types of publications. At the same time, it seemed to me wise to cross-reference these analyses with lifestyles and physical interactions, while setting aside the usual stigmas against working-class youth.

19This is a real change in epistemological paradigms.

20Such an approach involved the redeployment of the survey protocol. At the beginning of the research, the first corpus of data, collected in the traditional manner through interviews, was to constitute the center of the research. However, the researcher quickly realized that part of this corpus remained opaque to her, because she was unaware of the vocabulary, rules, and social codes of communication and sociability used in these digital worlds of interaction. From then on, the status of this corpus changed radically: it allowed for the production of an initial exploratory outline of the questions. The essential part of the protocol and methods then remained to be invented based on the theoretical framework of virtual ethnography and the few available studies. When R. M. Bortolotti “dared” to use online ethnography, she had to break away from her own habits as well as from traditional qualitative analysis methods, just as she had to free herself from preconceived notions and preconceived ideas, often negative about young people and their digital practices. Like Mr. Cisel, in a quest for relevance and validity, she questions postures, methods and their indicators, in search of alternatives more suited to her own research objectives.

How to analyze student experience in short courses?

21Methodological issues also appear central in a feedback contribution entitled “Collecting Student Experience in a Hybrid Training Program: Between Self-Declaration and Learning Analytics” by Marescot, Bougenies, and Leleu-Merviel. According to the authors, the aim is to better understand engagement in a hybrid training program. The latter consists of two in-person sessions and an online course on the digital platform of Laval University in Quebec. It is designed using a project-based learning approach: students are given an assignment in the form of a video, for which they must consult resources made available to them in an online course.

22The authors’ theory is broadly and clearly developed. The analytical framework chosen is very comprehensive and well-presented, and can suggest to readers potentially productive analytical modalities. However, for the case presented, the framework is not entirely appropriate. First, it is a peripheral course, in the sense that its subject matter is not central to the students’ professional goals. It is a simple module of relatively limited duration. Success in the module, demonstrated by video production, can be achieved without accessing the online course if the tasks have been divided and the pair has taken charge of this more theoretical part. This concerns a small group (22 students, 13 of whom responded), and their “experience” is only imperfectly captured in responses to an online questionnaire. The discussion on learning analytics is interesting, but not appropriate for the case presented since, according to the authors, the Laval platform report only provided the first and last accesses as well as the number of visits per student. There are only a few behavioral elements, but nothing that reflects a learning process.

23It is difficult to capture the students’ experience, particularly in terms of how course contributions are structured with the progress of individual and group work. Is the support offered by the course platform well-suited to the intended purpose of creating a video? What students express as a disappointment in their feedback may stem from the course’s implementation, which is ill-suited to a module assessed by production. To summarize, a well-written article and an interesting theorization demonstrate the gap between the way many current training programs operate and the failure to take into account what research can offer to improve their design. Finally, this issue includes its usual features: reading notes and the “Debate Discussion” section.

Reading Notes: Transforming Practices and Building Analytical Frameworks

24The first reading note, written by Nathanael Jeune, presents the book co-edited by T. Coppe, A. Baye, and B. Galand. In this collective work, Transforming Practices in Education: What Research for What Contributions (2024), the contributors seek to answer these two questions: “On what basis and how can we transform practices in education? Can educational research be a source of inspiration for improving educational practices?” The scope of this question—based on the field of evidence-based education—certainly extends far beyond the scope of fully or partially distance learning. It is nevertheless essential for our field because it addresses the relationships between teachers on the one hand and researchers on the other, and between academic research and educational practices. We recognize the essential nature of this articulation, which confronts both teachers and educational engineers, whose role and importance have continued to grow since the COVID crisis.

25The second review, proposed by Rana Challah, focuses on the collective work by J. Guérin, S. Simonian, and J. Thievenaz, Towards an Ecological Approach to Human Action in Education and Training (2023). This work, the result of the work of a collective of teacher-researchers, offers, “by adopting an ecological approach to human action in education and training, a multi-referenced analysis of the interrelationships between subjects and their environments, drawing on a variety of surveys from diverse professional backgrounds.” The aim is to construct an analytical framework that goes beyond the simple articulation of theoretical frameworks and methodological practices to produce multidisciplinary conceptualizations of the interrelationships between subjects and their training and/or work environments, as well as their transformations in diverse and varied ecosystems. Two aspects are particularly noteworthy. First, the book highlights the fact that understanding human action requires identifying the conditions and interactive dynamics that enable the strengthening of one’s agency. Second, it highlights and accounts for the complexity of evolving interactive dynamics between subjects and their environments, as well as the tensions and obstacles that all actors involved in transformation processes may face.

Debate and Discussion: The Evolution of Hybrid Learning Environments

26Finally, the “Debate and Discussion” section, which Luc Massou is coordinating this year, focuses on the hybridization of training programs in higher education in the post-pandemic context. For the second year, the section adopts its new format: the discussion and debate take as their starting point a text published in the journal. L. Massou draws on the article by Bernadette Charlier and Claire Peltier (DMS 45). This text is in fact a theoretical proposal, accompanied by methodological indications, submitted to the scientific and academic community and intended to guide future research. It can therefore be considered as a good starting point to answer the two general questions that will be at the center of the debate:

  1. how to define hybrid systems today and understand what the notion of hybridization covers;

  2. what is the long-term impact of the numerous experiments carried out during and after the lockdown.

27It will involve rereading the main benchmarks of the evolution of concepts and practices since the publication in Distances et savoirs of one of the first definitions (DS 48) and carrying out an “update” through the prism of the numerous research works published since then, but also of initiatives at the national level, in France, since the pandemic crisis of 2020 but also upstream, and in which the hybridization of training is either a central element or a key dimension of a more global system. Finally, the discussion will draw on work conducted as part of the ANR Hypes project (2024–2027). The team includes several researchers who participated in the Hy-Sup project, and one of the objectives of the Hypes project is precisely to update the typology of hybrid devices resulting from the Hy-Sup project.

28The above comments only partially capture the richness of this issue. All the more reason to delve, without further ado, into the details of each of its contributions…

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Bibliographie

Bortolotti, R. M. (forthcoming may 2025) Jeunesses populaires en ligne. Une enquête sociologique sur les sociabilités numériques des jeunes de quartiers urbains de banlieue, Paris, Éditions du Cygne.

Faillet, V. (2023). Le travail scolaire lycéen hors de la classe : une analyse de pratiques au croisement des cultures scolaires et juvéniles. Université Paris Cité (Laboratoire Éducation, Discours, Apprentissage). https://theses.hal.science/tel-04684832 (accessed March 21, 2025).

Fluckiger, C. (2011). De l’émergence des nouvelles formes de distances. Les conséquences des nouvelles pratiques de communication ordinaire sur la FAD dans le supérieur. Distances et savoirs, 9(3), 397-417. https://shs.cairn.info/revue-distances-et-savoirs-2011-3-page-397?lang=fr (accessed March 21, 2025).

Gilliot, J.-M. et Bruillard, E. (2017). Éditorial, STICEF, 24 (Numéro spécial, Recherches actuelles sur les MOOC). http://www.atief.fr/STICEF-archives/num/vol2017/24.2.0.edito/24.2.0.edito.htm#Heading42 (accessed March 21, 2025).

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Daniel Peraya, Éric Bruillard et Pierre Mœglin, « Editorial »Distances et médiations des savoirs [En ligne], 49 | 2025, mis en ligne le 21 mars 2025, consulté le 12 mai 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/dms/10950 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13jzw

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