Learner's access to an immersive, platform-like digital universe would be seen as an invitation to exist in a different way through a process of routine communication with a mentor (tutor) who enables him or her to break out of anonymity and express himself or herself using tools built into the hosting platform. The characteristics and purposes for using a MOODLE-like platform are obviously different from those of 3D virtual worlds. By fostering relational dynamics that encourage students to revalue their personal and academic identities by reviving their digital identities, the authors show how far the hybrid course can counteract the negative effects of massification. Defining the conceptual and theoretical frameworks, as well as a postulate and a problematic, will be done first in order to provide an account of this recent experience. Before presenting and discussing the findings, they first go over the methodology used to gather and analyze the information from students, both in-person (via the placement test) and virtually (via activity reports and satisfaction surveys).
TopIntroduction
Information and Communication Technologies for Education (ICTE) have an important impact on the learning process. Since the beginning of the 21ste century, the teaching/learning process has been benefited from the technological revolution, the relevance of which was massively recognized during the COVID19 crisis. As new mindset focused on improving training provision, E-learning” has emerged in the education world, taking advantage of the development of digital tools and pedagogical engineering.
At the level of cross-disciplinary learning modules, particularly in French and communication, there were alarming signals about the low level of language skills among Moroccan students (Chami, 1987; Lamrany-Alaoui, 1998; Amargui, 2006; Chafiq, 2011). These findings are certain about the origins of the language deficiencies that handicap many students who will study most of the academic programs in French. In fact, between the political (the Arabization of education), the societal (the dominant collectivist culture), the conjuncture (the knowledge based economy) and the pedagogical (teacher support) background, teachers have always had different conceptual positions, but they were aware of the need to “embody a technical-pedagogical profile that is constantly being updated” (H. Jirari, 2018) to accommodate, on the one hand, a XXIe century full of innovations and, on the other, episodes of complex reform abounding in nomenclatures. Today, the rise of digital platforms and social networks favors the diversification of resources, services, multimedia devices and modalities presiding over teaching-learning paradigms. Under this perspective, was created The Faculté des Sciences et Techniques de Mohammedia (FSTM) in 1994, open to only students with high GPA. Aiming to certify accomplished young citizens both academically and professionally, it has seven disciplinary departments and one interdisciplinary department known as the “Département des Techniques d'Expression et de Communication”. The department faculty members was aligned very early on with the practice-research-practice triptych, capitalizing on almost thirty years of professional practice whose key words are: introspection, reflexivity and innovation. We will therefore attempt to analyze the transformation of the restrictive teaching conditions (spatial, referential, human) following an engineering approach through which it was possible to plan a hybrid device (face-to-face, distance learning) within the FSTM and on the MOODLE platform for the spring 2023 session. It was necessary to initiate a change and make it an adjuvant factor to the effectiveness of language and communication teaching for a massive number of students, to meet several needs: organizational (managing amphitheaters), didactic (questioning practices), cognitive (systematization of the vehicular language in specialty courses), pedagogical (knowledge construction), psycho-sociological (inferences from digital identity), etc. This chapter will therefore attempt to show how university pedagogy, as practiced at FSTM, monitor the test implementing the metaverse. Massification is the root of the discomfort that skews the learning process; the metaverse, according to its author Neal Stephenson, represents “a 3D virtual world inhabited by avatars” in a fictional work, Snow Crash, published in 1992. Technically speaking today, the metaverse refers to “immersive digital universes that integrate numerous processes and elements such as communications, decentralized finance, video games (P2E), personal profiles, NFTs, etc.” (K. Jobin and P. Nadeau, 2022). We assume that the teaching-learning process would result in psycho-cognitive discomfort which would condition the learner's engagement in their own training, especially if it is not compatible with the training space (amphitheater). Consequently, access to an immersive digital platform would be an alternative to exist in a different way, through a process of regular interaction with a guide (tutor) who enables the learner to emerge from anonymity and express him/herself through resources integrated into the hosting platform. Of course, a MOODLE-type platform doesn't have the same properties as 3D virtual worlds, nor the same motivations for using them. However, we will try to test two postulates:
Assumption 1: Hybrid training would be a highly suitable teaching method for LANSAD students in a context of massification.