No 2, November 2019

Follow-up to the CIRTA 2018 conference

As part of a project entitled “Evaluation of a context-adapted wiki-based decision aid supporting critically ill patients' decisions about life-sustaining therapies”, funded by the Canadian Frailty Network, the instructional design team of the Society for Life Long Learning (SAVIE) joined the research project to develop an online course for physicians and students considering a number of technical requirements from a needs analysis. The course was developed by rapid prototyping. The learning management system includes xAPI compliant learning objects for a very detailed learning monitoring. These data, combined with a questionnaire for users participating in the experiment, make it possible to evaluate the use and relevance of the course modules. This first experience of learning analytics allows us to evaluate this technical setting (xAPI and LRS) and highlight its possible applications for improving the training system.

In this article, we examine the place that mainstream video games can take in school. Often instrumentalized – and therefore transformed – to achieve goals targeted by the teacher, the video game tends to enroll today in a work of education by the media. We propose to think about a possible video game education (and more specifically its cultural and artistic specificities) and the construction of a literacy that would support this work. Focusing on a field approach, we describe the construction of a first tool that guides the interpretation of the rules of a video game. Then, we present a cultural mediation workshop organized in secondary school around the game My Memory of Us (Juggler Games, 2018).

Our research problem arose from a twofold observation based on personal observation of Arabic-speaking learners confronted with reading comprehension of pedagogical content, which through our reading has been further consolidated, notably with the work of Boudechiche (2008), Sebane (2008) and Rekrak (2016) in which they clearly demonstrated that students, in trying to build knowledge in French as a foreign language, encounter many difficulties. We assume that using the multiple contributions of a "MoodleCloud" e-learning platform in a hybrid education approach would enrich classroom instruction and best develop the reading comprehension skills of these students.

In order to verify our research hypotheses, we conducted a three-phase field survey throughout a semester of study with Algerian students enrolled in the first year of their bachelor's degree in the French department.

In this article, we present a brief theoretical and conceptual portrait of collaborative problem solving in order to bring it closer to digital technologies, which proves to be a major mediation tool. We discuss the different theoretical currents of problem solving, moving from Polya to Jonassen, and then we discuss the concept of Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS), an important component of the 21^stcentury skills. Digital technologies are treated as a vector of learning and transmission belt for digital collaboration. This portrait helps to better understand the symbiosis between digital technologies and CPS.

BEE focuses on the pedagogical support of teams of teachers, through the construction of digital learning ecosystems. The objective is to reverse the trainer-trained relationship and adapt it to the environment of today's future teachers. By supporting this paradigm shift, BEE is considering simultaneous learning and theory-practice articulation through the scripting of pedagogical practices that develop reflective thinking. Content and devices are reviewed with the help of digital tools to strengthen the training of future teachers in the integration of ICTE. BEE provides technical, pedagogical and human resources to a team of trainers who wish to train future teachers according to their needs and the resources at their disposal. This contribution presents an assessment of the first two years of experimentation of the project.

Distance learning is still a new practice for many players in university education. University librarians have had four years of distance training in poster-based science communication. The training is appreciated. In addition, for the sake of continuous improvement, the team compiled and analyzed data collected at the registration of participants, using a survey of appreciation and experience in training. It appears that the disciplinary heterogeneity and previous experience of the participant, as well as the implementation of participants in distance learning, are issues for the quality of the training experience. 

Digital innovations are increasing in the field of education. These new practices require the consideration of certain parameters for a better learning. Indeed the effect of technological fascination or "pseudo-autonomy" of learners can inhibit learning and constitute blocking points in the process of online education. As for digital literacy, scripting content, the proposal of activities and projects to motivate students, they can found a new relationship to knowledge in the digital age. Face-to-face pedagogy differs from that to be adopted online. Moving from the metric space to the virtual space imposes pedagogical changes that should not be neglected in order to pass an online course. 

This paper expands on the effective implementation of collaboration platforms for research purposes in primary education settings. In our study, Edmodo has been introduced as a medium for facilitating the asynchronous discourse between learners of Guadeloupe and Quebec. The following analysis is based on the digital traces derived from the online activity of users working on two different disciplinary research projects: one in linguistics and one in education for sustainable development (ESD). In essence, this paper covers the procedure of introducing a collaborative tool for educational purposes to an audience with diverse expertise in understanding and using it. In addition, it provides a conceptual analysis for understanding the online messages exchanged during these context-related interactions.

A serious game is a computer application that combines a serious intention of a pedagogical, informative and a communicational type with playful springs of the video game (want to win, collaboration, competition, strategy). This two-dimensional approach has transformed the game from a simple means of entertainment to a robust-integrated tool growing in the world of training and learning. Serious games include the engagement of video games with the worlds of educational and computer simulation to integrate the user in a safe and entertaining learning environment. Many techniques have been used to ameliorate computer graphics and technology in the last few years to make this type of game more adaptive to the learning context. In this study, we are interested in presenting the pedagogical contributions of serious games as well as the different possible approaches of their integration in a learning situation and this is based on a variety of case studies and examples of experimentation. We will start with definitions of other video games that have some valuable characteristics of learning in order to contrast and relate them with serious games. Subsequently, we discuss the definition of serious game and the benefits of its use in education. We will, then, examine approaches to integrate serious games into classrooms with an emphasis on the assets and liabilities of each approach. To finish, we conclude on the trends that will follow the serious games technology in the educational field as well as some recommendations to be taken into consideration in order to better exploit these tools in a pedagogical context.

This paper focuses on the scenarization of learning/teaching modules and on the process carried out to elaborate pedagogical scenarios. This work starting point is an experience conducted to create online training courses leading to a universitary diploma. We aim at capitalizing the scenarization skills deployed during this experience. To this end, this paper presents the models elaborated in order to specify not only a scenario but also the underlying scenarization approach. These models have been integrated in an environment allowing pedagogical engineers and teachers to cooperatively specify courses and to put them online on the Moodle platform.

A developmental research has created a multimedia and interactive support system to help perseverance of high school studies (SAMI-PRO). This system hopes to connect with high school students, more specifically those from adult training center. Based on a user-centered methodology, the first phase of the SAMI-PRO system has been commented by teachers and students in three stages: choice of content (difficulties and help tools in French and mathematics), validation of the navigation and display features of the device, design and relevance of the device. These three measures allowed for modifications in order to meet the expectations of students and start the second phase of the research, focused on the development of learning strategies and school integration. 

The contemporary context of digital technology diffusion, supported by the various public policies implemented in France since 1967, allow to study these technical tools effective uses and appropriations. In order to understand social mutations in progress, this paper intends to test a processual analytical model, constituted by Serge Proulx (2001), by proposing to revisit the construction of relationships to digital technologies: accessibility of these tools, uses made of it and appropriations carried out by users. The analyses presented, based on empirical case studies, allow us to take a critical look on the observed reality and on the “effects” produced by new digital technologies, especially through insufficient democratic plans and limited forms of mediation.

An article published in 2017 in the Canadian Bar Review challenges the requirement for a number of mandatory hours for continuing education for professionals, and suggests in return an approach based on "reflective practice". In the following article, we first propose to distinguish the terms "reflective practitioner" and "reflective approach", and then, through a review of the data made available online by the various law societies in Canada, we analyze the applicability of the e-learning community model to the continuing education of lawyers.

The advent of smartphones and social networks in the mid-2000s has brought with it new forms of school violence and bullying: online violence and cyberbullying. Since the French law of 8 July 2013, aimed at reforming the school system, the fight against "all forms of bullying" has become a priority. This article will analyze the different forms of online violence amongst students, it will illustrate the characteristics of cyberbullying at school and it will then present the main prevention measures put in place in France since the beginning of 2010. Finally, it intends to show how Media and Information Literacy, Empathy Education and the development of both students’ critical thinking and their emotional skills are effective weapons in the fight against the phenomenon.

In the digital age, learning requires strong informational skills and mastery of cognitive operations to identify, explore, separate, choose, link, cross-reference, analyze and process the proliferation of content. In this fragmented and transformed context, the contents and learning processes are no longer the same. The idea of the autonomous learner, very often put forward for many years, is now taking place, imposing its full meaning and inviting us to redefine the training paradigm. More concretely, it is a question of engaging in a reengineering of training that is authentically open to the use of digital technology; a reengineering whose depth and complexity should not be underestimated; a reengineering that calls into question both the purpose and the means of training.