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“Don’t make political theater – but make theater politically!” was the claim of post-dramatic theater rejecting the traditional rules of drama as anachronistic and founding a new, performative esthetic A theater would be political if it reflects its own prerequisites. Post-dramatic theater brought up spectacular new forms: It made its subjects political by invitingreality into the theater, blasting dichotomous opposites (like stage-audience, actor-observer and so on), activating spectators, and rediscovering the public sphere. Today it is esthetically established. But the reality post-dramatic theater had stood against has changed radicallysince then. Today “social networks” have incorporated the actively participating, spontaneously creative “spectator” for their purposes:We are “living” in a cross-linked mode, encouraged by all kinds of online-structures and services to perpetually communicate, declare ourselves, without consciousness of being interlaced in economic policies. “Activation of the spectator” – following Brecht – proves to be a system- and economy-conformist attitude in a society where all of public and political life has become a spectacle of all for all. So what is the end of post-dramatic reflection today when reality as its prerequisite isn’t available anymore? In an epoch when the convention of pseudodemocratic all round-participation turns out to be the social and esthetic rule, a“post-spectacular theater” – as the theorist André Eiermann puts it – which wants to be called political must dare and attack its own form and break of its own esthetic limitations, i.e. attack the spectacle itself.

In this paper, we compare peer interactions in two collaborative contexts (synchronous textual communication and face-to-face communication) involving either 14-year-old students or students, who had to build a concept map with an educational software (ModellingSpace). The first study involved 22 pairs of students ; half of them communicated face-to-face and the other group used computer-supported communication. The distant communication condition has been experimented in the second study, with 16 pairs of secondary school students. The structure and content of verbal interactions were the focus of analysis. Results show that the mode of communication has an impact on the structure of the interactions, but not on the content and on the quality of the concept maps. The adults and teenagers’ exchanges present the same structure but differ in their content. These results are discussed in relation with the issue of the assessment of educational software., Cette recherche compare les échanges entre pairs dans différentes situations de collaboration (en face à face ou à distance) impliquant des collégiens, ou des étudiants confrontés à une tâche de construction d’une carte conceptuelle à l’aide du logiciel ModellingSpace. La première étude a impliqué 11 dyades d’étudiants ; la moitié des dyades communique en face à face, et l’autre moitié à distance. Dans la seconde étude, la modalité de communication à distance a été répliquée auprès d’élèves d’une classe de 4 e (âgés de 14 ans en moyenne), 8 dyades au total. Les analyses concernent la structure et le contenu des échanges. Il s’avère que, chez les étudiants, le mode de communication a un impact sur les échanges enregistrés du point de vue de la structure des échanges, mais pas de leur contenu, sans incidence sur la qualité des productions. Les échanges des adultes et des adolescents communiquant à distance présentent le même type de structure mais les contenus des échanges sont différents. Ces résultats font l’objet d’une discussion en relation avec des préoccupations liées à l’évaluation des logiciels éducatifs., Lainé Aurélie, Ortiz Wallner Alexandra, Weil-Barais Annick. Évaluation d’un logiciel éducatif dans deux contextes de communication : face à face et synchrone à distance. In: Sciences et Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication pour l'Éducation et la Formation, volume 13, 2006. Forum de Discussion en Education. pp. 97-128.