Social media platforms in translator training: Socialising or separating?

This article reports on an international online course on multimodality organised for a group of 28 postgraduate students of translation studies in 2016. The course was taught by 13 lecturers from eight different European universities. Lecturers and students joined a closed social media platform, where the students were required to complete translation-specific activities in virtual teams. This article aims to identify ways in which students interact with each other in e-learning environments. The data used for this article has been obtained from the students’ discussion in the online platform, their peer grading submissions, as well as the final course evaluation forms filled in by the students. The results suggest that working together in an online environment was the source of both learning challenges and opportunities. Some students reported feeling somewhat distanced by these e-learning environments. Further, many highlighted the difficulties posed by the peer assessment tasks. The article discusses the overall potential of social media platforms in translator training and reflects on how online courses can be designed so that the pedagogical benefits of e-learning tools are duly exploited.