Developing a sense of belonging in a collaborative distance learning course: Breaking isolation in online learning

Abstract

The collaborative approach has been applied for years in a number of distance learning courses, but they are relatively few in foreign language learning. The context of this research is an online distance learning course of French for specific purposes, delivered through the platform UNIV-Rct (Strasbourg University). Based on the online collaborative learning perspective, we have carried out a study analyzing 25 students' opinions in context of a distance learning French language course. By analyzing the students' perceptions of the online collaborative course in which they took part, we have tried to understand the processes that guide the development of a sense of belonging to an online learning community and see to what extent it contributes to reducing the sense of isolation in an online learning environment.