Distance Learning Systems, Platforms and Digital Environments: Where Do We Stand Today?

Expanding since the second half of the 20th century, open and distance learning (ODL) has emerged to meet the needs of specific audiences—whether “constrained” (due to disability, geographic isolation, etc.) or voluntary learners (those who prefer distance education). In France, it is available as early as primary school (mainly via the National Centre for Distance Education – CNED) and can continue through to the doctoral level, particularly in universities, as well as in continuing and lifelong education. Its deployment has been both politically driven and accelerated by the recent pandemic and related lockdowns. Initially developed as correspondence education, it now fully integrates digital technologies.

This has led to the creation of socio-technical systems—spaces of mediation that facilitate access to online courses, assignment submission, learning progression, and more broadly, interaction, learning strategies, and learner agency. These are genuine platforms (Bullich, 2021), or even “platform-based systems” (Jeanneret, 2005), when considering both their material dimensions and their symbolic and info-communicational aspects. Investigating these platforms and systems also means examining their uses, practices, and mediations, without neglecting their functional, structural, normative, and symbolic underpinnings. It also raises questions about formal, non-formal, and informal learning in a context where high levels of autonomy are required to navigate one's educational path. Learners may supplement institutional resources with their own, adopt unique information-seeking practices, and engage in greater self-regulation—presumably more so than in face-to-face contexts.

This symposium aims to take stock of the most recent research on distance learning systems and platforms, from both the learner’s perspective (uses and practices—informational, pedagogical, strategic...) and that of system design and experience (by comparing prescribed, perceived, planned and/or lived experiences [Paquelin, 2004], and examining their ergonomics and instructional design). Recognizing that such a complex object must be studied through multi- or even interdisciplinary approaches, the symposium welcomes contributions that address these systems and platforms from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (information and communication sciences, education, sociology, cognitive science, ergonomics, computer science...), focusing on material and symbolic dimensions, actors and interactions, including critical perspectives.

The pedagogical transformation brought about by distance learning challenges learning practices, instructional models, learner persistence, and also the relationships between actors, their relationship to knowledge, forms of mediation and transition, as well as informational and learning practices. It also revives key questions around inclusion, academic success, accessibility, and innovation—particularly as ODL systems increasingly align with logics of massification, individualized pathways, rationalization, and sometimes humanization and resilience—or, conversely, dehumanization.

Several thematic strands are proposed, without claiming to be exhaustive:

Track 1 – Systems, Platforms, and Uses
This track explores the concepts of "system" and "platform" through their material, symbolic, and info-communicational definitions and characteristics. Contributions will analyze governance models, design processes, and interaction mechanisms in ODL, drawing on varied theoretical frameworks (e.g., Foucault, 1977; Paquelin, 2004; Massou, 2010). They will examine the digital practices of teachers and learners, particularly pedagogical and informational uses, and assess the impact of instructional design on these practices. Submissions may also consider how user representations influence the implementation and socio-pedagogical interactions within these systems.

Track 2 – Shaping and Supporting Distance Learning Timespaces
This track focuses on documentary, pedagogical, and symbolic mediations within ODL platforms. Contributions will examine how these mediations structure interactions, learning, and relationships to knowledge, as well as how learners organize formal and informal resources. It will address the temporalities, spatialities, and rhythms specific to ODL, and explore how actors adapt to the freedoms and constraints of digital learning. Instructional design and pedagogical engineering models—sometimes described as industrialized (Moeglin, 2010)—will be analyzed for their impact on learning experience and human relationships.

Track 3 – Engagement, Persistence, and Success in Distance Learning
This track addresses learner engagement and persistence in mediated contexts often marked by isolation—or even solitude—and the absence, or rather proximity, instead of distance (Paquelin, 2011). Contributions may explore self-regulation strategies and broader learning practices, as well as the conditions that foster academic success. They will analyze pedagogical communication dynamics, relationships between actors, and the tensions between learner autonomy and institutional scaffolding—as supports for engagement and persistence (Dussarps et al., 2025), or as mechanisms for supporting autonomy in environments often defined by absence.

Track 4 – A Critical Perspective
This track adopts a critical stance on the transformations induced by ODL. Contributions will examine the evolution of knowledge—its production, circulation, and appropriation—within increasingly industrialized systems (Moeglin, 2010) aiming at economies of scale. They will consider the risks of diminished relationships to knowledge, loss of attention, or critical thinking (Citton, 2014), alongside the emergence of new forms of mediation (Sognos et al., 2021). Submissions may also address ethical issues surrounding data circulation in platforms—such as algorithmic bias, data protection, and surveillance practices within data-driven management—and explore agency through experience design, storytelling, and orality. Finally, they will question the impact of technologies, especially artificial intelligence, on the humanization or dehumanization of education.

Submission Guidelines

A proposal of no more than 6,000 characters including spaces, accompanied by a short bibliography, should be submitted in French or English by September 30, 2025.

A publication of the proceedings is planned (further information to follow).