With a view towards pedagogy for computer-based environments relating to distance learning, and focusing on higher education, this study had the aim of bringing to light the effects of meanings implied in the act of interpretation that has idealized a synchronous and asynchronous communication tool called ForChat. For discursive analysis, verbal formulations were taken from the corpus studied. These provided the themes for the sustaining principles within the dimensions of their purposes, formats and uses in virtual classrooms set up as learning communities. The results from the analysis highlight the uncloaking of the illusion of oneness, from the participants' immersion in the flow of the interaction, supported by another, non-capitalistic, space-time dimension for interactive exchanges. This dimension recognizes the subjects' heterogeneities and the meanings produced in the discursive order of the telematic writings.
Educational technology; Distance education; Higher education; Learning computer based environments and interaction; Forchat