The concept of Digital Scholarship (DS) defines new forms of professional academic practices linked to the changing cultural, social and working context of the digital age. In this chapter, the authors compare the international debate on the topic with the research trends that may be connected with DS in the Latin-American scenario. From the focus on DS as a changing professional field of practice, that of academics, and its specific transformation by digitality to other more evolved perspectives, i.e. the academic profession as a specialized research strand, the authors consider the different approaches, discourses and cases about academics' professional practices and development in Latin America and explore the trends and peculiarities that will determine the rise and development of digital scholarship as a field of research in the region.

Uno de los aspectos más críticos y actualmente menos explorados de los programas y actividades formativas en la Net es la evaluación del aprendizaje de los participantes de las comunidades virtuales –en cuanto comunidades de práctica (Mercer, 2000). Si bien la tecnología permite el registro y cuantificación de los eventos de manera casi exhaustiva, contribuciones en los foros, chats, correo electrónico y documentos de trabajo, todo esto no refleja adecuada y cualitativamente los procesos discursivos y los logros concretos de aprendizaje, tanto en relación al diseño didáctico como en cuanto a criterios externos de calidad del aprendizaje (Garrison & Anderson, 2003). En el caso de la evaluación de la participación de los alumnos por parte de los tutores, muchas veces ésta resulta reducida a aspectos meramente formales o cuantitativos por carencia de habilidades interpretativas del discurso electrónico. El propósito concreto de esta indagación, en base a un corpus de foros formativos con participantes latinoamericanos, está centrado en el desarrollo y propuesta de herramientas de análisis e interpretación cualitativa que permita a los planificadores y profesores/tutores online incorporarlas de manera parsimoniosa y efectiva en los diferentes diseños instructivos de formación en red.

Historically, Educational Technology (EdTech) and Teacher Education (TE) have shared a conflicted relationship, particularly where practicing teachers have not been trained in ET in a manner so that they are able to coherently and efficiently incorporate the new educational technology into their classrooms and schools. In Latin America’s diverse scenario, our analysis is focused on a scenario consisting of Argentina and Uruguay. In this scenario, we identify the social and cultural context where teacher education and teaching practice take place, the EdTech-related programs with the greatest impact, and the “barriers” hindering access to and the application of EdTech, as well as the “bridges” or “gates” that facilitate their effective incorporation to teaching and learning both at schools and in teacher education. Lastly, we propose some courses of action to reduce these barriers and widen the gates connecting EdTech and school settings.

El libro reune trabajos en los que se exponen resultados de investigaciones presentadas por investigadores de Argentina, Chile, Brasil, Espana, Italia y Alemania en el XII Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Linguistica (SAL), Bicentenario: la renovacion de la palabra, realizado en Mendoza, Argentina, entre el 6 y el 9 de abril de 2010. Las tematicas abordadas en los 167 capitulos muestran las grandes lineas de investigacion que se desarrollan fundamentalmente en nuestro pais, pero tambien en los otros paises mencionados arriba, y senalan ademas las areas que recien se inician, con poca tradicion en nuestro pais y que deberian fomentarse. Los trabajos aqui publicados se enmarcan dentro de las siguientes disciplinas y/o campos de investigacion: Fonologia, Sintaxis, Semantica y Pragmatica, Linguistica Cognitiva, Analisis del Discurso, Psicolinguistica, Adquisicion de la Lengua, Sociolinguistica y Dialectologia, Didactica de la lengua, Linguistica Aplicada, Linguistica Computacional, Historia de la Lengua y la Linguistica, Lenguas Aborigenes, Filosofia del Lenguaje, Lexicologia y Terminologia.

The developments of the Web have generated new modalities and contexts of learning, shaping what is nowadays called "Learning 2.0". Within this new phenomenon it arises a trend of moving out from the linearity of written word toward new multimedia complexities, that lead to a parallel semiotic complexity lying behind them. Understanding the above mentioned complexities implies to preserve and make explicit the collaboratory construction of knowledge through the identification of events, instruments, signs. This identification is in fact an analytic process, where the researcher divides the raw data into units of meaning making that must be read both in the specific contribution made by every mode (text, images, audio) as well as a whole. This is possible through an inverse process of analysis and interpretation that depends on specific instruments regarding the qualitative methodological approach. These last must be, in fact, appropriated to the new environments and phenomena. In this work the authors introduce several examples of educational research practice where categorization and triangulation were implemented on data collected from interactive processes in online learning environments, to further obtain recurrences and saturation of data. In second place, going a step further on the discussion of appropriated methods to Learning 2.0 analysis, the so called "multimedia triangulation" is presented, on the basis of analysis of data collected inside the same case study.

Electronic discourse in online educational contexts is assumed to be analogous to that of face-to-face instruction. Such an analogy, in and of itself, does not imply either transparency or equivalence. As a consequence, in this essay we discuss the features of electronic instructional discourse, especially with regard to the most frequent modes of online instruction: forums and chats rooms. Our theoretical-methodological approach comes from discourse analysis of a functional-pragmatic orientation. Forums differ significantly in terms of instructional structure, varying both among themselves and in relation to their face-to-face equivalents, fulfilling different instructional functions according to the discursive features described and illustrated in this paper. Linguistic and discourse analysis of chat-rooms shows the difficulty of maintaining an orderly dialogue and of establishing genuine and in-depth communicative exchanges within this medium. Unlike face-to-face communication, chats demand careful planning and the tutor’s ability to anticipate the participants’ texts.

The objective of this research was to prepare an initial characterization of situations of conflict that can occur in didactic/discursive interaction in forums, contextual conditioning, and the tutor’s actions to solve them. A review was made of 110 online didactic forums from various Latin American educational programs. The analyzed cases represent typical conflictive situations: real or assumed offenses, fights, excessive reactions, and concealment. These situations are generated primarily by disruptive or anomalous participation. Revealing communicative interplay in situations of conflict permits a consideration of the complexity of network interaction; the inference is that online tutors need professional preparation in avoiding such situations, maintaining them within acceptable limits, or solving them, thus minimizing the negative impact on individuals, groups, and didactic activity.

Resumen es: El objetivo de esta investigacion fue elaborar una primera caracterizacion de las situaciones de conflicto que pueden darse en la interaccion didactico-d...

The paper suggests crossing global e-learning models with specific ones so as to determine their possible correlation in order to infer online tutor competence profiles. These are found at the intersection of the pyramid, matrix and e-learning instructional design models. Hypothetical setups of the pyramid e-learning systems are discussed. The competence matrix is described in more detail as a complex and potentially useful instrument to guide OLT training and evaluation. It is concluded that the synergy resulting from the interplay among the competence matrix, e-learning instructional design models and e-learning environments will make it possible to assess instrument potential and conceptual schema appropriateness. It will also show their limitations, with a view to improving them.

Resumen Al discurso electrónico, en contextos de enseñanza on-line, se le entiende frecuentemente como análogo al discurso de la clase presencial. Tal analogía, sin embargo, no supone transparencia ni equivalencia, por lo que, en este ensayo, tratamos de señalar y discutir las características del discurso didáctico electrônico en las modalidades más frecüentes de los programas de enseñanza on-line: foros y chats. Para ese estudio, se hace en abordaje desde un enfoque metodológico del análisis del discurso de matriz funcional-pragmática: los foros muestran distintas estructuras didácticas, las cuales varían significativamente entre sí y respecto a sus posibles analogados presenciales, cumpliendo diferentes funciones didácticas, de acuerdo a rasgos discursivos diferenciales, que se describen y ejemplifican en el presente trabajo; respecto a chats, los análisis lingüístico-discursivos efectuados muestran la dificultad para mantener diálogos ordenados y en los que se realicen auténticos y profundos intercambios comunicativo-comprensivos. A diferencia de los diálogos de clase presencial, las chats requieren una cuidadosa planificación en la que el tutor debe ser capaz de anticipar los textos escritos por los participantes.