Detection of learning needs by means of a social network and video in a class of french as a foreign language

Abstract

Social networking sites currently offer a whole host of possibilities in the classroom. The teaching social network gives students the chance to try out a great amount of groundbreaking and varied learning experiences. Along these lines, the use of video as a classroom tool can arm teachers with new methods for boosting motivation and improving the learning experience, bringing into the classroom resources used by students in their daily lives. The following account presents the results of a study that set out to analyze the learning needs of a group of French-language students on the basis of use of a social network combined with video in the classroom. To do so, a virtual space was created in an open-source social network used to knit together and centralize the activities of the group during the four-month academic term under study.