INTERACCIONES ENTRE ALUMNOS EN ENTORNOS MEDIADOS POR TIC. UN ANÁLISIS DE LA DIMENSIÓN SOCIAL DE LOS INTERCAMBIOS

This article aims to analyze peer interactions in virtual environments, focusing on the social and affective dimensions of communication. We worked with 34 graduate students and 42 students who were taking a postgraduate degree. The latter were comprised of 17 workgroups who worked on solving a proposed activity in a discussion forum. For data collection purposes, the online exchanges for each of the 17 foruma in the study were recorded. Finally, the social indicators were analyzed using the category system proposed by Garrison et al. (2000). Our results show differences in terms of the social presence among the groups of students:graduate and postgraduate. For the latter group, the social dimension had a stronger presence.