The Future of Education

This project examined students’ participation in a teacher-training program with in-class and online students. Specifically, some students take the course in the classroom with the teacher, while others attend simultaneously remotely through a distance-learning platform. This method of teaching brings forth two difficulties: including the online students while still dealing with the classroom students. Indeed, from the pedagogical point of view, teachers must adapt their usual teaching practices so that they simultaneously meet both the requirements of the in-class students and those of the distance students. In this context, one of the objectives of this project was to better understand the perception of the online students of their participation in the traditional classroom course.

Conceptually, we use the concept of academic and social integration of Tinto (1993). On the methodological level, we have chosen a mixed method. Our data was collected over the course of two academic years with the help of an online questionnaire and group interviews in two different universities. The online videos of the classes were also analyzed. Results show that online students are left behind for three reasons: technological (often the result of difficulties with equipment), interactional (between the teacher and students but also between students) and relational (lack of time to build relationships). Conclusions will present pedagogical options to address this situation.