Jean-Michel Adam

Experimentation and results for calibrating automatic diagnosis belief linked to problem solving modalities: a case study in electricity

Learners increasingly work with virtual laboratories that provide various activities and tools, including sophisticated modeling and simulation systems. The learning environments have to combine traces to establish the most precise diagnosis possible on the learners activity. This paper presents a diagnosis tool, called DiagElec, establishing a diagnosis on the learners activity. DiagElec integrates a notion of belief, which is related to the modalities in the generated diagnoses. To analyze our model, we have carried out a two-phase experiment, first with learners and then with teachers. From the corpus of diagnosis done by the teachers, we are looking for the emergence of a model of human behavior to recalibrate the degree of belief defined into the diagnosis rules.

Seeing the Face and Observing the Actions: The Effects of Nonverbal Cues on Mediated Tutoring Dialogue

Mediated communication technologies, conveying verbal and nonverbal cues, are more and more employed in learning activities. Nevertheless, their effects on teacher-student interaction have been not clearly stated yet. Through two experimental studies, we investigated on the effects of nonverbal communication cues (kinesic and ostensive-inferential) on synchronous mediated tutoring dialogue, in which a tutor and a student communicate through audio-video communication tools. The outcomes show that kinesic cues lead tutor to monitor more carefully learners ongoing task and to encourage much more them, while ostensive-inferential cues improve learners task performance and lead both tutor and student to focus better on tutoring speech acts.

The Influence of Facial Interface Design on Dynamic Emotional Recognition

The use of facial interfaces in distant communications highlights the relevance of emotional recognition. However researches on emotional facial expression (EFE) recognition are mainly based on static and posed stimuli and their results are not much transferable to daily interactions. The purpose of the present study is to compare emotional recognition of authentic EFEs with 11 different interface designs. A widget allowing participants both to recognize an emotion and to assess it on-line was used. Divided-face and compound-face interfaces are compared with a common full frontal interface. Analytic and descriptive on-line results reveal that some interfaces facilitate emotional recognition whereas others would decrease it. This study suggests that relevant interfaces could improve emotional recognition and thus facilitate distant communications.

Setting up On-Line Learning Experiments: The LearningLab Platform

To carry out experiments into classrooms, in order to test hypothesis or new learning tools needs to perform recurrent complex and time-consuming tasks. We propose means for setting up Web based experiments by distinguishing the experimentation perspective and the learning perspective.This paper presents the experimentation platform we have developed for the kaleidoscope network of excellence (NoE) ldquoshared virtual laboratoryrdquo action. This platform, called ldquoLearningLabrdquo, gives a concrete expression of our proposal, and provides researchers with useful tools for each phase of an experiment. The usability of this platform has been put to the test with two experimentations about electricity learning.

Oudjat: A configurable and usable annotation tool for the study of facial expressions of emotion☆

This paper describes Oudjat, a new software program which has been developed in order to conduct recognition experiments. Oudjat is dedicated to the manual annotation facial expressions of emotion (FEE). Considering the existence of other software applications in that field, Oudjat provides a compromise solution between the currently existing tools. For the investigators, it is an easy-to-configure interface to set up relevant behaviors to be annotated. For the annotators, it is an easy-to-use interface. This tool can perform complex annotations procedures utilizing multiple responses panels such as buttons, scales (e.g., Likert scales), and free labelling. Oudjat also allows to chain response panels or to conduct sequence marking annotations (i.e., two-steps temporal annotation). As it can be configured in any language, Oudjat is particularly suited for intercultural experiments. Four annotation procedures are presented to illustrate Oudjat’s possibilities with FEE annotation. Oudjat is an open source software available to the scientific community, and can be freely be obtained on request.