The techniques used in distance learning or hybrid education are increasingly complex because of technical innovations and technologies that have been harnessed. At the same time, the analyses undertaken by researchers to examine the uses, practices, conclusions, implications and unexpected features of these techniques have become even more complex [BAR 13]. Research into the effectiveness of a technological approach to teaching and learning has demonstrated limitations [CHA 03]. Researchers who have focused on the digital are now researching the way in which these techniques can have meaning for different actors (learners, teachers, creators, decision-makers, etc.). It is within this comprehensive and heuristic research effort that the contributors to this work are situated.

The development of computing and communication technologies for teaching, training and learning contributes to the adjustment of the markers that enable the easy classification of the types of instructional system: on the one hand, in the classroom, and on the other hand, remotely. Thus, from the origins of distance education, which we can date back to Viviane Glickman, beginning with the invention of the postage stamp in Great Britain [GLI 02], through the 1980s, the distance learner is situated in a space and time that are completely different from that of the educator. With the first techniques for synchronous online exchanges such as chat, the distance learner remains in a different location from the educator, but they share the learning environment in cyberspace simultaneously. The notions of presence and absence must therefore be re-examined, which Geneviève Jacquinot has notably undertaken [JAC 93]. These investigations should be continued for virtual classroom tools or telepresence robots, because they make it possible for educators and learners to share the same time and space, most often in groups. The diverse forms of telepresence in education, distance learning and the support of students, notably in the formulation of their research essays, in the use of personal learning environments, etc., are developing rapidly. They provide the opportunity to reformulate the investigations and give rise to serious questions. For example, how should we think about the hierarchy of presence and absence in these techniques [JAC 93] in order to make possible “the presence of the absent” [PER 14]? What effects do forms of telepresence have on the process of mediation? What effects do they have on group learning dynamics? How does it transform collaborative work? What effect does telepresence have on the perception of the body? What new forms of education, teaching and research work can now occur?

This book follows a symposium that brought together researchers, primarily in education sciences, during a meeting of the Réseau international de recherche en éducation et formation (RÉF) in July 2017 at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) in Paris. It was the first time that a symposium was dedicated to the theme of telepresence in the RÉF framework. Hailing from five different countries, the contributors presented their analyses of the techniques they studied and of the practices of students and teachers from diverse theoretical frameworks on which they conducted their recent or current research. This work therefore aims to highlight telepresence in training. The challenge of combining analyses substantiated by different theoretical foundations can lead to a risk of diffusion; on the contrary, we think that it is through this cross-disciplinary approach that the complexity of learning environments can be approached. Furthermore, the authors of the texts presented here are not all situated at the same distance from their objects of investigation. In an interview for the journal Distances et médiation des savoirs, I indicated that we have to shed light on the relationship of the proximity we have to the objects of research, ranging from complete engagement to absolute exteriority [RIN 16]. This book brings together texts written by educators, practitioners implicated in the techniques they present and analyze, and researchers who have greater degrees of distance from the objects they study. Nevertheless, our aim here is not to underestimate the contribution of practitioners to this work of analyzing telepresence, but rather to indicate from where these different authors express themselves in order to make it possible to understand how they construct their understanding of the situations they are investigating.

The work is composed of three parts. The first part brings together three chapters concerning telepresence and student support.

In Chapter 1, Brigitte Denis begins with the assumption that one of the stakes for distance learning in adult education is to establish techniques that respond to the needs of learners, to respect andragogical principles and to provide a quality pedagogical and ergonomic environment. Moreover, guidance is an essential factor in the implementation of such techniques. By achieving a feeling of presence [JAC 02] and providing socio-emotional, cognitive, organizational and meta-cognitive support to the learner that may encourage the perception of different kinds of proximities, it influences perseverance and the achievement of its objectives. Brigitte Denis addresses mediation between e-tutors and learners in a hybrid learning system. The five e-tutors in this system were asked about their perceptions of the features that develop the feeling of telepresence in learners during their interactions with the latter. The analysis of the results demonstrates and puts into perspective certain factors that are likely to foster these feelings.

In Chapter 2, Gustavo Angulo and Cathia Papi, researchers at Teluq (an open university at the University of Québec), provide a literature review of collective work in the training of researchers. When knowledge is increasingly considered to be the foundation of modern economies, the training of researchers takes on first-order importance in order to galvanize social development. However, this initiation into the research profession, which often begins with the production of a thesis during graduate school, is long and difficult for students on campus as well as at a distance [IRA 14, RIT 12]. Digital possibilities allow for the consideration of new forms of support. Among them, collective work in virtual learning spaces that is considered as communities is often planned to foster a feeling of presence and to stimulate the development of knowledge and competence [CRO 08, PIC 11, SIN 11]. But what are the unique characteristics of these communities for educating researchers? Based on a systematic analysis of studies published during the last 10 years, Angulo and Papi examine forms of telepresence and their influence on these collective dynamics.

In Chapter 3, Ann-Louise Davidson and Nadia Naffi, researchers at Concordia University in Montreal, aim to present a reflexive analysis of their experiences in supporting students enrolled in an online undergraduate education degree program and the systems they designed to support the learning process in a problem-based approach. After the presentation of the context, the authors provide a brief overview of the literature concerning theoretical concepts that underlie their support within a problem-based learning approach to online courses. They mention the challenges of codesign, co-production and co-teaching of university courses that are entirely online concerning social media. Taking into account the implications of online courses, they address the challenge of problem-based learning from a pedagogical perspective based on socio-constructivism. To support students through authentic and meaningful learning experiences, they have involved them in social media. It is from these authentic experiences that they engaged in a co-reflection about their practices, in view of the elements that activate them and those that act as levers in the learning process.

The second part brings together two chapters about telepresence in teacher education, written respectively by two educators from high-level professional schools in Switzerland, Romaine Carrupt (Chapter 4) and Stéphanie Boéchat-Heer (Chapter 5).

Chapter 4 presents exploratory research that aims to better understand the contributions and limits of telepresence collaboration, via virtual classes, using a professional training system for hybrid teaching. From this perspective, Romaine Carrupt compares the discourses produced by teachers during initial education, during a mutual analysis in a virtual classroom, and in person, in order to understand the degree to which the reference to different kinds of knowledge is differentiated according to the context that may or may not be relayed by the virtual class. What emerges from this analysis is that interactions in the virtual classroom are primarily oriented towards scientific knowledge, while the experiential dimension takes precedence during in-person sessions.

In Chapter 5, Stéphanie Boéchat-Heer presents the results of a study devoted to the evaluation of the place occupied by telepresence in teacher education, in support activities and in collaborative work. More precisely, she evaluates the general perception and the feeling of self-effectiveness of teachers in this practice, as well as the strategies of self-regulation that have been implemented. This study follows a comprehensive approach and relies on the analysis of a corpus of data collected via a questionnaire and semidirected interviews. The self-regulatory strategies of teachers allow for an understanding of the dimensions in play in the attitude of support for telepresence work and for the ability to reply more fully to the educational needs of teachers and to support them in this process. These results engender reflection about the very technique of support for telepresence work, and open the discussion about the contributions and limits of such a practice.

The final part brings together four contributions from researchers who study a technique using telepresence robots in education at an engineering school, at a university or even in a doctoral seminar.

In Chapter 6, Françoise Poyet provides exploratory research that relies on a digital university initiative in the Rhône-Alpes region (UNR-RA 2015). During 2015–2017, experiments that made it possible to test telepresence robots in pedagogical situations were conducted with students whose physical handicaps prevented them from easily moving around on their university campuses. The data collected via an interview with about 10 users allowed for the exposure of the existence of a new ontophany [VIA 13] induced by the telepresence robot. This research offers the opportunity to analyze the relationship that is established between users and the robot and to reflect on the emergence of an authentic symbiotic interaction between them [BRA 09]. Specifically, Françoise Poyet considers the particular incarnation of a remote student’s body via the robot based on the hypothesis that the proprioceptive appropriation of the robot by the student directly impacts the perception of his real body and, beyond that, his own physical schema. She then discusses the notions of expanded, prolonged and fixed corporality.

In Chapter 7, Dorothée Furnon proposes an expansion on the preceding chapter, beginning with the idea that the development of the use of telepresence robots in teaching leads to a rethinking of the way in which the action is co-constructed in an environment whose mediation is human, digital, technical and technological. Her study attempts to understand the way in which students and teachers develop new spaces of meaning during interactions mediated by a telepresence robot in an educational context. She analyzes two pedagogical situations in which actors find themselves confronted with the necessity of reconfiguring common spaces of intelligibility by transforming digital objects into instruments of perception to attain mutual intelligibility.

In Chapter 8, in an analysis based on an approach to psychoanalytical orientation, I propose a text in which I study the reality of the psyche, in the Freudian sense, experienced by students who benefit from the telepresence system to overcome their inability, which is temporary but lasting for several weeks, to get to class. Here I pinpoint experiences that are suitable for subjectification and others favoring unlink in the psyche.

Finally, in Chapter 9, Christine Develotte proposes to explain the implementation of a technique specifically designed to provide research data about telepresence in a doctoral seminar. She first presents the context of this reflexive research, which proposes researchers and apprentice-researchers as objects of study. She briefly describes the background, the participants, and the in-person and remote communication modalities. She then deals with the technical environment for the collection of data and the sessions that were selected to be filmed. She lingers more specifically on the complexity of the multimodal communication that can take place between different participants depending on the tools used. She then specifies the theoretical framework from which three research angles emerged, and the technico-methodological decisions made to recover different kinds of data (videos, interviews, written texts). This is followed by a discussion of the scientific stakes of this kind of system, as well as the questions that it could raise, particularly in the area of educational science.

Finally, we cannot conclude this introduction without specifically thanking Jacques Wallet, who agreed to write the postface.