Good practices and innovation in foreign language didactics research – a comparative case study : benchmarking, a research strategy in educational management

At the threshold of the 21st century, the use of new IT systems enhances the educational and socio-professional environment, in order to increase the effectiveness of the pedagogical act. Under this aspect, it would be interesting to focus on the good practices to be adopted in the teaching of modern languages (DDL) by setting up innovative research methodologies. In that case, the comparative-benchmarking case study is considered as a research strategy, which leads to better management of the teaching process enabling to evaluate computer and multimedia teaching tools. Thus, the comparative benchmarking analysis invented by Robert Camp is conceived as a powerful method of guaranteeing superiority in making comparisons among institutes or similar products in order to adopt adaptable best practices in specific contexts in order to achieve excellence. Benchmarking is a collaborative strategy that encourages awareness but also trust and commitment of partners to deepen further the functions and processes of an organization and to improve the products offered. More specifically, we will be interested in a comparative study – benchmarking of mobile applications with a pedagogical aim. On the one hand, making comparisons with other mobile applications enhances research in exploring more sophisticated new products. On the other hand, we realize the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the use of these software to go in searching other innovative functions. Finally, the approach of the benchmarking research strategy will lead to the collection of data by the elaboration of a comparative evaluation grid, in order to propose a process of measurement of the digital interfaces used in the Didactics of foreign languages.