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Working together online to enhance learner autonomy: Analysis of learners’ perceptions of their online learning experience*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

Jérôme Eneau  and
Christine Develotte
Jérôme Eneau*
Affiliation:
Université de Haute Bretagne, Place du Recteur Le Moal, 35000 Rennes, France (email: jerome.eneau@univ-rennes2.fr)
Christine Develotte*
Affiliation:
Institut National de Recherche Pédagogique, Allée de Fontenay, 69007 Lyon, France (email: christine.develotte@inrp.fr)
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Abstract

This study concerns the development of autonomy in adult learners working on an online learning platform as part of a professional master's degree programme in “French as a Foreign Language”. Our goal was to identify the influence of reflective and collaborative dimensions on the construction of autonomy for online learners in this programme. The material used was 27 self-analysis papers in response to an assignment which asked students to review their distance learning experience (reflective dimension) and to highlight the role of others, if any, in their learning (collaborative dimension). In addition to these two major points, the analysis by category of the body of results shows principally that in qualitative terms, the factors of autonomisation for online learning are interconnected and include: the difficulties related to distance learning and the strategies that learners develop to face those difficulties, the importance of interpersonal relationships in social and emotional terms in overcoming those difficulties, the specific modes of sociability developed for distance learning and the related development of a new type of autonomy that is both individual and collective. The discussion examines the creation, over the course of time, of a new “distance learning culture” that is nonetheless never easy to create and share.

Keywords

Learner autonomyself-directed learningonline collaborationreflective analysis
Type
Research Article
Information
ReCALL , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , 04 January 2012 , pp. 3 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning 2012

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