Christine Ferraris

Modeling Collaborative Learning Activities on e-Learning Platforms

The scenarization of educational activities, especially those that are going to take place within e-learning platforms, has for a number of years represented a major challenge for groups working to favor the emergence of educational standards. In this paper we describe a meta-model, LDL (Learning Design Language), to formalize scenarized activities. We particularly highlight the correct adaptation of this meta-model for modeling various collaborative situations

Constructing collaborative pedagogical situations in classrooms: a scenario and role based approach

Most CSCL works put forward the fact that learners working together would only need a means of communication. We feel this is not always sufficient. We have focussed on the collaborative activity itself and the way of enhancing collaboration. We have proposed a general framework which gives the teacher the possibility of defining and constructing pedagogical collaborative situations. It is based on regulation functions allowing the teacher to manage groups, to define the roles played by the participants in a group and to describe the way actions can be performed (by means of scenarios). This framework has been implemented as an independent software that can be plugged into any collaborative application. It has already been tested with a collaborative drawing software for young children.

The Electronic Schoolbag, a CSCW workspace: presentation and evaluation

This paper describes the Electronic Schoolbag, a digital workspace developed at the University of Savoie (France) and analyses its usages. This online environment is dedicated to the educational world: it offers pupils, students, teachers, school staff, or parents, personal and group workspaces in which individual or collaborative activities can take place. The flexibility of this software, allowing synchronous or asynchronous activities, lies in the “participation model”. This model allows groups themselves to describe and organise their activities. The architecture that permits its implementation in the Electronic Schoolbag workspace is described. The study of the practices of the workspace is then presented. This requires different observation methods, according to the different procedures chosen: real practices provided by quantitative methods (analysis of the logs of the actions and questionnaires) and imagined practices provided by qualitative methods (semi-directive interviews). The results obtained from the university users allow us to assess the evolution of the usages for different periods and on different university sites. The observatory also lets us list the main uses of the Electronic Schoolbag for educative communication (collaborative vs. individual, informative vs. communicative).

A Model for CSCL Allowing Tailorability: Implementation in the “Electronic Schoolbag” Groupware

We describe in this paper a model for Computer Supported Collaborative Learning and the corresponding architecture. This model has been designed to take into account the variety of educational activities and cultures. It offers primitives to endusers, mainly the teachers, allowing them to describe a collaborative activity and to regulate it (i.e. modify it dynamycally). It has been implemented within a groupware based on the metaphor of electronic schoolbag, which is used today by more than 40000 users in both University and secondary french schools. Thanks to the model, the developed groupware is flexible and tailorable.

Helping teachers in designing CSCL scenarios: a methodology based on the LDL language

When teachers prepare learning activities to be carried out by learners within web learning environments, they encounter two main problems: the modelling and the technical ones. The modelling one is nowadays regarded as being the most important, both in CSCL and Learning Design. We have defined a methodology to help the teachers to model. It is briefly presented here. It is subordinated to the educational modelling language used to produce the models: LDL.

LDL: An Alternative EML

This paper describes the foundations of LDL and the associated infrastructure LDI. It explains why we have chosen to define this new EML instead of using an existing one like IMS-LD..

A design rational of an editor for pedagogical procedures

The scenarisation of learning activities seems to be a promising way to answer CSCL challenges. The success of the corresponding Learning Design field depends largely on its ability to offer eLearning professionals well-adapted tools. Whereas a number of languages are coming to maturity in this field, the associated authoring tools are still too difficult for instructional designers to manipulate. This paper presents the specification of an authoring tool based on particular scenarios which are here called Pedagogical Procedures.

PPdesigner: An Editor for Pedagogical Procedures

The success of the Learning Design field to help teachers and instructional designers to create technology enhanced collaborative learning activities depends largely on its ability to offer eLearning professionals well-adapted tools. A number of approaches are coming to maturity in this field however, the associated authoring tools are still too difficult for instructional designers to manipulate. This paper presents an authoring tool designed in order to simplify the task of the instructional designers, who are confronted with the design of particular scenarios that are frequently used by teachers, and which are here called Pedagogical Procedures.