International audience

This article introduces Virtual3R, a platform that uses collaborative virtual environments to simulate animal experimentation scenarios while respecting the ethical and educational principles. Virtual3R represents an evolution from the VEA project, integrating collaborative learning, introducing new functionalities, and incorporating learning situations developed through a close partnership with biology teachers. The primary focus of this article centres on the virtual pedagogical activity model adopted by the platform. This model, a flexible framework guiding virtual learning interactions, comprises several interconnected components, including virtual activities, actions, learning situations, virtual objects, and animations. Additionally, the article outlines experiments conducted to validate both the VEA platform and different versions oWirtual3R, representing an evolution from the original VEA. These experiments were carried out in collaboration with two biological engineering departments of the University Institutes of Technology in Laval and Lyon, France. They demonstrated user satisfaction with the proposed platforms and provided insights into the challenges and opportunities of simulation-based learning.

This research work is part of the VEA (Virtual Environment for Animal experimentation) project. The aim of this project was to develop an alternative method based on virtual reality for learning the correct gestures in animal experimentation while respecting the rules of ethics (the Rule of 3Rs). Our goal was to facilitate this learning via digital means, and to provide trainers with an educational toolkit that allowed them to recreate virtual reality scenarios and to assess each learner's progress. In this paper, we are particularly interested in the design and operationalisation of learning situations in virtual environments, and propose solutions in the form of virtual action models that allow the user to learn the correct gestures.

Human learning has become an emerging discipline for virtual reality. In this context, we are interested in VRLE (virtual reality learning environments), which aims at putting the learner of a pedagogical situation in a virtual reality environment. We have found in literature that VRLEs are dependent on a particular field or context and do not allow teachers to define or adapt their models of scenario to new pedagogical situations they might imagine. To help teachers in designing and generating VRLE adapted to their needs, our approach aims at defining a process for the design and production of VRLE that can be instantiated in different pedagogical situations. Our contributions focus on the definition of a scenario’s model and the development of an editor allowing the specification of scenarios and pedagogical activities based on VRoriented pedagogical objects.

Although VRLEs (virtual reality learning environments) place the learner of a pedagogical situation in a virtual reality environment, they are dependent on a particular field or context and do not allow teachers to define or adapt their models of scenario. To help teachers in designing and generating VRLE adapted to their needs, we aim at defining a process for the design and production of VRLE and a scenario's model. We develop an editor allowing the specification of scenarios and pedagogical activities based on VR-oriented pedagogical objects.

International audience

Virtual reality (VR) technology has been applied in many sectors. Recent technological innovations have facilitated the access to virtual reality for anyone. VR offers new experiences to users that will make it possible to break the boundaries of formal education. But the design of educational environments named Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLEs) exploiting this technology is complex. We note that, because the pedagogical scenario have to be designed in the early time of VRLEs' design, it offers limited issues to teachers to adapt to new situations. We aim in this work at studying and proposing solutions to help trainers to design and spread their educational scenarios in the VRLEs.

Helping learners to easily develop their skills and adapt to their new profiles, are among the biggest challenges of the actors of the training field. The JEN.lab project aims to offer innovative perspectives for learning based on the design of digital epistemic games. Though designing activities are complex especially for teachers. The research effort presented in this paper is part of the JEN.lab project. We aim to study problems related to modeling and designing digital epistemic games (DEG). We propose a co-design process and an assistant tool to guide teachers to design DEG, called ADDEGames.

This paper focuses on pedagogical scenario building process in cMOOCs. We aim to offer solutions to support teachers in the design, deployment and adaptation of such courses. To achieve this goal, we propose a generic cMOOC oriented pedagogical scenario building process. In adequacy with cMOOC aspects, this process allows to describe learning environments' elements, roles and pedagogical activities in this massive, open and connectivist situation. Moreover, the proposed model is generic in the sense that it allows to create scenarios regardless of a particular context or domain.

The operationalization of learning scenarios on learning management systems (LMS) is more than a technology-related question. Different research issues around instructional design are to be addressed in order to provide pedagogical expressiveness of the different elements within a learning scenario, while it respects sufficiently the structure to describe it. In this work, we examine existing pattern-based approaches for learning design, and we provide a pattern's formalism for learning designs that enables their deployment automatically on the chosen LMS. We have adopted a methodology elaborated on the basis of a case study on which we have executed a process of learning scenario's operationalization. One of the results was to prove the usefulness of a pattern's formalism to design learning scenarios. We have considered the structural, constraints and content aspects of a learning scenario from both human and computational point of view. The formalism described in this paper is part of a process based on ontologies and semantic web principles, offering a support for teachers-designers to produce deployable learning scenarios without having to master the target platforms.

The use of existing LMSs presents many difficulties related to the design and operationalization of learning scenarios. Teachers have to encompass the LMS technical features and services in order to understand the underlying way of designing. Generic instructional design editors fail in bridging the gap between how they design a learning scenario and how the learning session can be set up within the target LMS. If LMSs could be able to make explicit their intrinsic and implicit learning design model, it can be exploited as a proprietary format to build tools and facilities dedicated to this LMS. The research presented in this paper aims to present our method in terms of necessary analysis and steps for the identification and the formalization of such LMSs’ instructional design languages. The method takes into account three different viewpoints: a viewpoint centred on the LMS macro-HMIs (Human-Machine Interfaces), a functional viewpoint and a micro viewpoint. We concretely illustrate the proposed method about the Moodle platform.

For the research domain we study, Technology Enhanced Learning Systems (TELS), these systems do not consider pedagogical and computer science aspects be unrelated.One of the teachers' major objectives is to define the way of designing, adapting or choosing the accurate platform to support the pedagogy they need to implement.Therefore our work aims to propose an approach to help the teachers to choose a platform of e-learning and deploy their lessons according to the objectives of a Project-Based Collaborative Learning (PBCL) framework.We focused on the choice and adaptation strategy rather than on the design development aspects.In this publication, we define an MDA based approach in order to establish a methodological framework of our research project and therefore meet with our objectives.We will also report on our research progress and propose a state of our work in PBCL modeling.

With the MOOC movement, education stakeholders are taking part of a pedagogical renewal. These dynamics present different advantages such as: massiveness, openness, accessibility, etc. However, it raises particular issues related to the dropout. To remedy to this issue, a promising lead resides in supporting learners’ motivation and engagement. To reach this goal, innovative pedagogic strategies and /or sophisticated Instructional design, personalization or even adaptability are needed. The purpose of this paper is to examine the point of view of literature, the dropout issue and possible solutions to motivate learners.

Teachers confront many difficulties in the use, the design and the operationalization of their instructional scenarios on Learning Management Systems (LMSs). They don't often have a competence in IT, so they don't succeed to overcome technical and administrative features in order to concentrate on the instructional design language. In previous publications, we propose necessary analysis and steps for the identification and formalization of an LMS instructional design language. The objective of this paper is to validate our process on two versions of Moodle. The learning design model resulting from this process is exploited by pedagogical/IT engineers to build dedicated tools that fill the gap between Moodle technical services and teachers needs in term of instructional design.

This paper presents an LMS centered instructional design approach by focusing on an original process for the identification and the formalization of the instructional language of LMS systems. This process takes into account two complementary viewpoints: the user-centered viewpoint based on the Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) analysis and the techno-centered viewpoint primarily based on the database analysis.

This paper aims to facilitate the operationalization of scenarios on learning platforms. We propose an approach based on the explicitation and the formalization of the implicit business language in order to use it as a mean of communication with external design tools without losing the semantic of the designed scenario. The originality of our approach relies in performing the scenarios operationalization by the development of a simple API based on the implicit language of the platform. Our proposal is based on a theoretical framework inspired from the Domain Specific Modeling. Finally, we detail the implementation of our proposal on MOODLE.

In this article we illustrate and discuss a techno-centric aspect of re-engineering realized on an existent TEL system: the Apprenticeship Electronic Booklet. Although this system has been designed with end-users following a participatory process, the first version had also been found too rigid in regard to the roles management and to the underlying academic structures. In order to improve this TEL system, two approaches of re-engineering have been conducted. The first solution focuses on an internal modification of the system functionalities and parametrization facilities. The second re-engineering work follows a Domain-Specific Modeling approach that led us to propose a graphical editor communicating with the TEL system. This external component aims to provide end-users with a more user-friendly facility to configure booklets. This second work is particularly illustrated and discussed in regard to the promising underlying re-engineering process.

In this paper, we present the work done for a small company who launched a reengineering process on an existing LMS called SERPOLET in order to allow flexibility in design and interoperability with other LMS. This paper proposes a set of metadata for describing learning resources. For that purpose, we analyse the many data which are processed both by humans and machines about a digital learning resource and to use existing models from the learning sciences field to organise these data from an education perspective as well as from a technical perspective.