Motivations, expectations and satisfaction in a university collaborative VLE

The presented paper aims to evaluate some psychosocial aspects involved in the use of web environments for university didactics in a collaborative learning model, applied to small working team, engaged in formulation of educational designs. The adopted evaluation model, that integrates previous analysis about the various editions of the same laboratory (Pillera, 2015), draws inspiration from an analogue experience - carried out several years ago, at the University of Catania as well (Di Nuovo, 2005) - and it is oriented to detect some emotional and motivational characteristics of this distance learning experience and the level of the affective, cognitive and technical support, both expected and got by tutors and other students. The data was collected during the last of the six editions of the laboratory (academic year 2014-15), that is activated on the first year curriculum of the 2nd Degree Course in Scienze pedagogiche e progettazione educativa (University of Catania), involving 41 students and using two questionnaires (ex ante and ex post), including items with multiple, dichotomic (yes/no) and Likert scale answers, in addition to an open section for comments, critics, suggestions, proposals. The analysis is focused on a better understanding of the relationships among digital media habits and competences, emotions experienced in the use of computers and during the laboratory, motivations, expectations and satisfaction, in order to introduce every possible teaching-tutoring, organizational and technical improvement in the next editions.