Accessing and analysing online interactions: The case of ViCoDiLi

This article focuses on the traces of interactions between students and tutors during an online training. We examine both, the issues of access to these traces as well as their manipulation by the researcher. This reflection was guided by the need to access the data of an online course that became unavailable at some point. This challenge resulted in the development of a tool called Visualizing the Content of Online Interactions (ViCoDiLi) that enables both the access to the formatted traces of online interactions (forum, chat and email), and their examination with diverse display features. The project aimed at providing tools for the researcher's activities. The objective is to provide both a model of data access and tools to assist the data corpus analysis. This article highlights the theoretical, technical and methodological issues raised by the development of such a tool.