Laurence Vignollet

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

Evaluation of verification tools for knowledge-based systems

Validation has emerged as a significant problem in the development of knowledge based systems (KBS). Verification of KBS correctness and completeness has been cited as one of the most difficult aspects of validation. A number of software tools have been developed to perform such verification, but none of these are in widespread use. One of the reasons for this is that little quantitative evidence exists to demonstrate the effectiveness of the tools. This paper presents an experimental study of three KBS verification tools: a consistency checker, a completeness checker and a testing tool (for correctness). The tools are evaluated on their ability to reveal plausible faults seeded into a complex, realistic KBS application. The cost of using the tools is also measured. It is shown that each tool is independently effective at detecting certain kinds of fault and that the capabilities of the tools are complementary?a result not revealed by previous studies.

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.

Using the Learning Design Language to model activities supported by services

The main objective of the field of Learning Design (LD) is to provide teachers and instructional designers with the conceptual and technological means to create and manage e-learning activities. This paper addresses a paradox in existing approaches to LD: the activity mediated by services is neither prescribed nor observed. Our proposition is to use LD languages to model an activity supported by a service. This paper describes how to use a specific LD language, also called Learning Design Language (LDL), to model such activities and how Learning Design Infrastructure (LDI), the associated infrastructure, has been extended to allow the operationalisation and execution of these improved scenarios. Thus, the approach attempts to improve service support in the LD field.

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.

A Contact Recommender System for a Mediated Social Media

Within corporate intranet or on the WWW, a global search engine is the main service used to discover and sort information. Nevertheless, even the most “intelligent” ones have great difficulties to select those targeted to each user specific needs and preferences. We have built a mediated social media named SoMeONe, which helps people to control their information exchanges through trusted relationships. A key component of this system is a contact recommender, which helps people to open their relationship networks by exchanging targeted information with qualified new users. Instead of using only matching between interests of users, this “socially aware” recommender system also takes into account existing relationships in the social network of the system. In this paper, we describe the computations of those recommendations based on a social network analysis.

A Generic Specification of the Data-Flow Issue in the Learning Design Field

Many studies show the advantages of using a learning design approach to help teachers and instructional designers to create technology enhanced collaborative learning activities. However, some of these studies highlight lacks in such approach. This paper addresses one of them: the representation of the flow of data in the learning activity models. A generic specification is proposed that aims at pointing out the conceptual needs that should be taken into account in the languages to improve the approaches.

OpenScenario: A Flexible Integrated Environment to Develop Educational Activities Based on Pedagogical Scenarios

Creating technology enhanced collaborative learning activities remains a difficult task. Despite the very serious and costly efforts deployed during the past years, teachers or trainers have not yet fully integrated the possibilities offered by the technology probably because the tools provided do not match their habits and requirements. In order to contribute resolving this issue, we propose OpenScenario, an open integrated e-infrastructure articulated around the notion of the 4 pillars of pedagogy that we coined recently. OpenScenario allows, through a unique interface, to access all tools and services required to flexibly create, deploy, monitor and assess scenario-based activities, and in particular pedagogical activities In this paper we will briefly explain our approach, describe the theoretical basis of the 4 pillars of pedagogy, depict OpenScenario and illustrate one of its possible uses by describing EME, a real life fullyfledged application for Competencies Assessment.

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..