Designing learning environments improving social interactions: essential variables for a virtual training space

AbstractGrowing development of advanced technologies demands, continuously, designing new educational strategies and instructional mechanisms to improve teaching and learning processes. Attempting to provide a new perspective to consider, we present the results of a recent research in which we investigated around the spatial character of technologies, which are integrated in virtual learning environments.Nowadays, Internet enables social interactions and, therefore, personal development by presenting different orders of space. There is a significant dimension generated under the interrelationship between the subject and the virtual learning space, mainly based on spatial variables. This complex relationship it is manifested throughout perceptual, emotional and socio-cognitive aspects evidenced by individuals when they are interacting with those virtual environments.After exposing a group of university students from an Educational Technology Master's degree to the interaction with different spaces (chat, forum, social environment and e-learning platform), we have analyzed their perceptions.Results evidenced that using and transforming virtual spaces involves converting technologies into new spaces of socialization. We noticed a number of characteristics of these spaces that generate a sense of place, and they are principally based on sociability matters; which should be taken into account when designing a virtual training space.Thus, we shall change to see the virtual spaces like a mere technological artefacts, to see them as contexts or environments of coexistence, interaction, as well a guide for personality development and construction of identities; spaces where the act of learning is part and product of the context and the social activity