Purpose: With the growth of digital education, students increasingly interact in a variety of ways. The potential effects of these interactions on their learning process are not fully understood and the outcomes may depend on the tool used. This study explores the communication patterns and learning effectiveness developed by students using two…

This study presents the main advances made in recent years by an innovative teaching group at the University of Almeria, who are attempting to incorporate alternative spaces for teaching--learning interaction. This group is developing a new line of study to obtain the main vectors for creating an accessible 3D virtual campus on the Second Life…

The present study examines the role that multimodality and translanguaging play in scaffolding oral interactions during language-related episodes (LREs) involving meaning negotiation. The oral tasks carried out using synchronous video-based computer-mediated communication were part of a tandem virtual exchange (Spain, Canada). The participants, 18…

"Social Europe Days" is a collaborative four-day international seminar held yearly near Brussels, Belgium, by a network of ten European universities from eight different countries. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the seminar had to be offered virtually and redesigned. The final design included synchronous and asynchronous activities,…

Global Software Development (GSD) is currently a strong industry trend. This means that if computer science engineers are to be trained to deal with this model, it is very important to include the topic in software engineering courses, attempting to ensure that students learn about GSD and become familiar with its advantages and challenges.…

This article attempts to shed some light on the possible learning benefits for language acquisition and intercultural development of authentic social interaction with expert peers through computer mediated communication (CMC) tools. The environments used in this study are video communication and the 3D virtual world "Second Life." For…

This paper presents a new methodology to develop remote laboratories for systems engineering and automation control courses, based on the combined use of TwinCAT, a laboratory Java server application, and Easy Java Simulations (EJS). The TwinCAT system is used to close the control loop for the selected plants by means of programmable logic…

This study focuses on the computer-aided analysis of interlanguage errors made by the participants in the telematic simulation IDEELS (Intercultural Dynamics in European Education through on-Line Simulation). The synchronous and asynchronous communication analysed was part of the MiLC Corpus, a multilingual learner corpus of texts written by…

The best way to learn is by having a good teacher and the best language learning takes place when the learner is immersed in an environment where the language is natively spoken. 3D multi-user virtual worlds have been claimed to be useful for learning, and the field of exploiting them for education is becoming more and more active thanks to the…

Learner-centred approaches follow the prevailing tendency in modern University reforms which are primarily concerned about "how people learn". The methodologies can be learner-centred in the sense of placing the student as the main actor of the teaching-learning process by increasing his interactivity and participation, but also…