European credit and collaborative learning: the use of the forums of discussion of the Virtual Campus in subjects of norm and use of Spanish Language and Spanish Syntax

In this communication a partial aspect of a set of educational experiences appears born in the university context that leads to the implantation of the new curricula and the system of European credit. The European Higher Education Area aims at a change in the educational methodology and causes a reframing of the general missions and particular of the university formation. Having as main target the improvement in the acquisition and the assimilation of the contents on the part of the students, the educational aspects that are wanted to improve have to do, at a first moment, with the contents in one double line: the one of its programming and, particularly, the one of its teaching. In this sense, in accordance with the new European context, we understand that the learning demands a diversification of the educational methods more, so that the weight of the traditional methodology is reduced based on the master lesson and, better than adopting new systems –since not always it is something novel–, strategies are revalued that harness active and collaborative learning, work in which the tools that ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) offer and, among them, the resources that Internet at the present time allows, lend a great aid. These elements affect to the way in which the contents are distributed and, when integrating themselves in the chapter of the methodology, comprise of the programming of any subject. The incorporation of these tools and resources to the educational practice has been wanted to do in the best possible way; therefore, in search of its optimization, they have served the general interests of renewed programmings. In each one of the subjects of the area of knowledge of Spanish Language including in the experience such aspects have been improved, although in a not completely uniform way, in a high degree. To this question several factors have contributed: in the first case –the programming of the contents–, the fact that the subjects are going distributed within the framework of pilot experiences of implantation of the European credit, and, in the second –the teaching of the contents–, the abilities acquired in the use of the ICT and the virtualization of subjects, for which one had counted with a virtual platform that in period 2003-05 was Web-CT and from course 2005-06 to the present date is Moodle. The virtualization allows, in a context of blended education, to have a tool as the discussion forum, that is revealed very useful to cause, by means of the collaborative learning, the collective construction of the knowledge. The debate forum is offered as transmission channel written in a communication situation that participates in characteristics of the orality. In this sense, it is channel of particular discursive sort. It has favored the exchange of information and doubts on the subjects which have been debated, it has fomented particular initiatives, it has fed the critical attitude in the students and has harnessed their formation in the communicative skills. This social tool of communication has served so that their participants become, partly, in protagonists of its own learning, from the negotiation with its companions and the teacher. Without a doubt, this resource has been helpful to the students, as they themselves emphasize in the surveys