RETURN TO VIRTUAL FORUMS AS SOCIODISCURSIVE CONTEXT FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC WRITING

Although Information and Communication Technologies are rapidly evolving, these tools have limited capacity in teaching academic communication. In addition, they can hinder learning processes by the continued use of neural translators, writing aids and, recently, tools related to Artificial Intelligence. Plagiarism and other writing fraud are becoming increasingly difficult to detect. In view of these circumstances, the learning potential of virtual forums to teach university writing has been analysed. The use of this tool was reduced by the expansion of social networks. However, some of its characteristics are linked to the scaffolding of the writing process, analyzed through this research: a specific socio discursive context, short texts that reduce the risk of copy pasting, a social area for academic communication among students (under teacher supervision), and easy access to peer review and feedback. The study has been carried out in the context of the Development of communicative competence I course of the Primary Education degree. This subject is taught in the first year, and it is aimed at the integrated treatment of two languages (Spanish and Basque), as students are bilingual, and their L1/L2 varies between both languages. This research has been developed in two phases: in the first phase, in which 567 students from eight groups participated, the most significant tasks were identified based on their correlation with learning outcomes. Thus, those tasks that showed a lower impact were eliminated from evaluation processes, to avoid unnecessary effort for students and teachers. Peer feedback was also analysed. In this phase, several ICT tools were compared to gain a deeper understanding of its learning value. In the second phase, in which 141 students from three groups participated, the research focused on the impact of rapid and personalized teacher-learner feedback from academic production written in virtual forums. In addition, peer review and peer learning group activities were included. As a result, an empirically contrasted selection of communicative tasks was defined, which includes peer feedback. This selection reduces students and teacher's workload by eliminating those tasks that are not very significant. Among the conclusions, it is emphasized that virtual forums can offer a suitable socio discursive context for the development of university academic writing. Virtual forums are useful to promote peer learning and diverse feedback. Specifically, peer feedback activities offer good results in relation to suggestive feedback and the lesser impact of corrective feedback. However, when the teacher gives individualized corrective feedback, combined with group corrective activities, this has resulted in significant improvements in the handling of bibliographic references and in a more fluid academic writing.