Professional discourse: nature and change in online learning environments

Professionals demand courses that should enable them to manage situations in professional practice. In this sense, professional teaching and learning processes have specific demands; not only academic ones. Our objective is to analyze the nature and change in professional discourse in the framework of online learning environments. Analyzing the nature of professional discourse primarily helps us understand the characteristics that make it special and that relate to managing situations in professional practice, and secondly, it lets us know which factors are involved in building professional discourse which finally results in being able to adjust online learning environments accordingly. This paper describes teaching and learning processes of 32 participants in improved courses in Law and Educational Consulting. The main characteristic of professional discourse is that it is made up of a very small fraction of professional topics. Another important result is that professional discourse is mainly affects by the type of learning activity (tacit or explicit). Regarding adjusting online learning environments, students expressed topic tensions and interacted as a structured professional community to solve those tensions so platforms and other educational tools must be adjusted accordingly.