Bénédicte Talon

Developing Competence in Interactive Systems: The GRASP Tool for the Design or Redesign of Pedagogical ICT Devices

Training professionals to design and produce interactive systems requires the use of well thought-out training scenarios. Indeed, it is essential to consider pedagogical forms whose objective is providing learners with field experience. It is also necessary to motivate learners to learn about subjects that sometimes seem distant from their immediate concerns and to renew their interest in these subjects. This article presents a tool, called GRASP, that helps design pedagogical devices. This tool was first evaluated through three educational initiatives implemented in two universities in the north of France. These initiatives were analyzed to enhance the tool. Then, a second evaluation was conducted to validate the tool more widely. The first part of this article presents the scientific context. Then the design tool, the evaluation protocol, and the three devices built using this tool and their evaluation are introduced. Some of the lessons learned during the initiatives are described. Next, the second evaluation, conducted with more teachers, is presented. Finally, the conclusion highlights the perspectives opened by these initiatives.

Learning Software Testing Using a Collaborative Activities Oriented Platform

This publication describes a teaching initiative of software testing that makes use of a collaborative environment. Learning software testing is in fact a domain which needs practice in order to develop the necessary know-how. We led a project-based experiment with a collaborative environment of a new kind. We wanted to verify its ability to serve our particular learning context. In this article, after a quick definition of software testing, we discuss the problem of teaching software testing. We then present a project-based organization to teach skills dedicated to software testing. We describe the generic collaborative working platform we have used in our pedagogical context. We conclude with some results of an experiment.

An Online Laboratory in a Context of Project-Based Pedagogy

The object of this article is to propose a contribution to the development of remote laboratories for carrying on online practical activities in computer science by using virtualization technologies. After an introduction to the general concept of online laboratories, a description of virtualization technologies is done to show how their use is possible in the implementation of an online laboratory. This online laboratory is viewed as a pedagogical resource, which is used by the learners to realize pedagogical activities according to a project-based pedagogy named MAETIC. Our approach aims to provide an answer to the problematic of supervision and monitoring of students engaged in online practical activities and the evaluation of the skills acquisition.

Inspiring the Instructional Design Process Through Online Experience Sharing

A lot of pedagogical resources are available thorough the Web. Paradoxically, it is hard for instructional designers to discover and decide which ones will best fulfill their needs. End-users’ experience has been identified as a major source of information in the resource selection process. However, no solution totally fulfills the needs and end-users’ experience can hardly be browsed while being dispersed over the web. Our research prototype called EVOXEL can help instructional designers by completing current web solutions. Built upon ontological mechanisms, EVOXEL provides teachers a mean to share experience they have developed during their instructional activities. This experience is crystallized in the educational resources assemblages they have built. This experience can then be browsed, inviting others to be inspired from it.

A Fruitful Meeting of a Pedagogical Method and a Collaborative Platform

This publication describes the work done to allow the instrumentation of a pedagogical method named MAETIC on a collaborative tailorable platform named CooLDA. MAETIC facilitates the apprenticeship of professional skills in universities thanks to a collaborative project approach. This method has been described and modeled according to the CooLDA meta model. The resulting platform has been experimented during year 2007-2008. This article presents the scientific context of this work, the CooLDA platform and its underlying activity model, the MAETIC pedagogical method and the various associated to it students activities.