Using technology in an e-learning training course: the role of the student's personal environment

This article explores the strong interrelatedness of a distance learning training course and its information system with the student's personal environment. Two questions are raised: first, on a general level, about the influence of the student's personal environment on his or her academic achievements; and second, on a specific level, about the student's strategic use of the various pedagogical resources at his or her disposal or in his or her personal environment. The methodology used is a 'soft systems methodology'. First, the roles of the personal environment are defined and qualified as structuring, supportive or didactic. Second, a typology of the learning behaviours highlights such phenomena as complementarity, substitution and neutrality between the internal and external didactic resources of the training programme.