Collaborative school interaction: between homework and jokes

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic during 2020 and 2021 and the subsequent virtualization of all educational levels focus the importance of virtual communication in educational spaces. In this paper, I analyze a WhatsApp group (pre-pandemic) among high school students in Buenos Aires to understand the functions of this digital space and how is participation in it. It implies to investigate the uses made by the students, the dynamics of intervention and the elements and messages they exchange. Through the methodological strategy of the participant observer in virtual groups (Vela Delfa and Cantamutto, 2016), which could be framed within digital ethnography (Hine, 2000, 2015), I analyze the interactional functions and characteristics of digital discourse in this WhatsApp group (Yus, 2010, 2014; Barton and Lee, 2013; Tannen, 2013; Giammatteo, 2014; Magadán, 2018, 2020; Cantamutto and Vela Delfa, 2019). I observe that the students use different multimodal and linguistic elements typical of digital discourses, and that they use the WhatsApp group for three main functions (a) to obtain help in carrying out school tasks; (b) to consult information related to the course, the assignments and the tests; and (c) to joke around, build and reinforce social ties. Likewise, we observe that these functions are relevant for the selection of resources that students make from the discursive and multimodal repertoires availables.