TOWARDS A COMPUTER AIDED PEDAGOGICAL

ENGINEERING

Aided Production of Pedagogical Devices based on MAETIC Method

Bénédicte Talon

Université Lille Nord de France, LISIC, ULCO, BP 719, 62228 Calais Cedex, Lille, France

Dominique Leclet

Université de Picardie Jules Verne, MIS, 33 rue Saint Leu, 80039 Amiens Cedex, Amiens, France

Keywords: Computer Aided Pedagogical Engineering, Collaborative Pedagogical Devices, Pedagogical Method,

Pedagogical Devices Design Method.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present the development of a Computer Aided Pedagogical Engineering studio

which provides assistance to any teacher wishing to develop educational devices. The devices, which

interest us allow the learning of vocational skills. They have been designed thanks to the pedagogical design

method called MAUI. The Information and Communication Technologies will instrument the devices built

from the studio. They will be adapted to the educational needs of the teacher. This article presents the

context and motivations that led to the development of this studio. It then describes the MAUI design

method which helped to design the educational devices based on the MAETIC pedagogical method. It then

presents the conceptual architecture of the workshop and the various modules that compose it.

1 INTRODUCTION

The research presented in this paper lies in the

domain of vocational training. We focus on a

pedagogy which favours collective learning

scenarios in project mode. To this end, we have

produced educational devices supporting hybrid and

at distance education.

Since 2004, a collaboration between the MIS

laboratory of University of Picardie (UPJV) and the

LISIC Laboratory of University of Littoral Côte

d’Opale (ULCO) has allowed to develop, to test and

to refine instrumented pedagogical devices. It has

also allowed to develop a pedagogical method called

MAETIC related to these pedagogical devices. This

method favours learning and acquisition of

professional knowledge and know-how. These

competences are developed in the context of project-

based learning in group. The method is implemented

through a device called a MAETIC E-suitcase which

is deployed since 2005 in various learning domains

at the UPJV and ULCO and since 2009 at the

University of Djibouti.

The purpose of this paper is to present the

development of a Computer Aided Pedagogical

Engineering Studio. The objective is to provide

assistance to a teacher who wishes to develop

MAETIC devices. This studio is built to follow the

MAUI design method. The E-suitcases and

toolboxes produced thanks to this studio are

instrumented by the Information and

Communication Technologies (ICT) and are

designed to meet the educational needs of teachers.

We want to change practices and procedures

adopted by the training centers towards courses

having an impact on the social integration of

students and that better meet the needs of companies

and universities.

To summarize the motivations underlying the

development of this studio, the objectives are to:

• Provide a solution for teachers who want to

offer their students an alternative to classical

pedagogy through the use of project-based

pedagogy. We want to offer them an

educational approach (MAETIC) that we have

developed and tested since 2004.

159

Talon B. and Leclet D..

TOWARDS A COMPUTER AIDED PEDAGOGICAL ENGINEERING - Aided Production of Pedagogical Devices based on MAETIC Method.

DOI: 10.5220/0003274701590164

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2011), pages 159-164

ISBN: 978-989-8425-49-2

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

• Develop a Community of Practice sensitive to

active learning that takes the form of projects

in-group. In fact, teachers are often constrained

by the heaviness, the difficulty and lack of

support to design a system that meets their

expectations.

• Enhance motivation among students and to

some extent, limit the failure and abandonment.

• Provide a repository of professional expertise

mobilized during the project. We aim to

respond to the issues of professionalization,

with the selection by the teacher, of a range of

skills, among those referred by their device. We

are responding to an ongoing concern of

assessing the skills of trainees.

• Offer tools from the Web 2.0 to teachers that

are appropriate to their needs and which they

control.

The distribution of "turnkey" products based on

free and easy-to-use technologies (for a teacher or a

student) promote the dissemination of training

materials. Thus, after recovery from our respective

training in UPJV and ULCO, we would like to

expand the recovery of the pedagogical devices on

Djiboutian and Morroco territory to test their

relevance in this context.

Indeed, Universities of the developing countries

are faced with the need to strengthen the

professional skills of their students. The search for

technical solutions based on ICT to provide quality

training at lower cost is a track among others, that

institutions must explore.

2 PEDAGOGICAL DEVICES

DESIGN METHOD: MAUI

2.1 MAUI Description

The MAUI design method (Leclet, 2004) is an

iterative method. It follows a succession of stages,

by gradually refining the specifications, by

estimating the remaining solutions and by realizing

and integrating modifications until obtaining of a

satisfying product. It is an incremental method that

allows the progressive adaptation of a system to the

met situations.

The method consists of five phases (figure 1):

Figure 1: Phases of MAUI.

The Phase 1 - Preparatory Study – consists of

defining the device. It produces a document called

“teaching requirements”. It consists of four stages:

1. The problem definition: why do you want to

develop the teaching device?

2. The context definition: Institution, Place,

Level, Discipline, Teaching module, etc.

3. The training definition: aimed competence.

4. The teaching mode definition: at distance, in

presence or hybrid.

The Phase 2 - General Design - structures the

teaching contents of the future device. It produces a

document called “model of teaching”. It consists in

an analysis and modeling of teaching sequence,

teaching activity, teaching task, teaching resources

and so on.

The Phase 3 - Operational Design - describes

learning situations and interactions. It produces a

document called “operational model of teaching

activities”. It is composed of two stages:

1. The choice of tools.

2. The definition of the training scenario:

meetings and their durations, activity tasks, relation

between teaching resources and type of activities.

The Phase 4 – Prototyping – is the realization

of the prototype of the teaching device and the

development of the interface by progressive

adjustments.

The Phase 5 – Evaluation - tests and evaluates

the use of the learning system under real conditions.

We find here the participative techniques.

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2.2 Maui Application: MAETIC

e-Suitcases Design

It is clear that the know-how transmission, in the

professional contexts, appears reluctant to

theoretical (Potteck, 2003). In this context, new

ways of teaching are then considered (Baker,

Navarro and Van der Hoek, 2003) (Newman,

Daniels and Faulkner 2003), experienced and among

these project-based teaching (Thomas 2000). The

project method offers an alternative to the

transmissive pedagogy.

In active learning through project in group, the

teacher plays a facilitating role and accompanies the

learner in the process of acquiring knowledge

(Goguelin, 1994) (Schneider, 2003). The teacher

determines the required work, organizes and directs

research information and produces assistance to

overcome difficulties in order to maintain the

motivation of learners.

Thus, project-based learning allows learners to

make sense of their actions that are based on an

objective (Sims-Knight and Upchurch, 1998). The

motivation to create a product involves a

commitment on the part of learners.

Given all these considerations, and in respect of

MAUI stages, we have developed, tested and

refined, since 2004, instrumented pedagogical

devices called E-suitcases (Talon and al, 2006).

They all incorporate a pedagogical method named

MAETIC (Leclet and Talon, 2008a). The concept of

E-suitcase refers to a device "which conveys to the

image of a suitcase, and that is not tied to a fixed

place of education" and MAETIC “because this

teaching device is the result of an organization and

instrumentation of the MAETIC pedagogical

method”. Finally, we called our educational system

dedicated to teachers: MAETIC Toolbox. It refers to

tools used by teachers to pilot and control students’

actions. The MAETIC method has been published in

a book (Leclet and Talon, 2008b).

3 e-SUITCASES AND THEIR

PEDAGOGICAL METHOD

.1 MAETIC e-Suitcase

The MAETIC e-suitcase is a device which

implements a specific organization of the MAETIC

method and which is equipped with ICT.

For example, according to MAETIC approach,

the teacher must be informed of the progress of the

project. The MAETIC method requires each group

to keep a logbook update (this is indicated in the

guide in the inserts "work to do for next session”).

This logbook aims to describe the life of the project.

The teacher and other group members are so

informed of the developed deliverables and of

project advancement. The logbook should be

updated regularly as recommended by the guide.

This activity engages students in an action of regular

communication and asks them to maintain social

ties.

The MAETIC method does not endorse how the

logbook must be instrumented. The teacher-designer

can quite make the choice to hold this logbook, for

example, as a notebook. If they want to orchestrated

devices through ICT, teachers have the task to

choose the kind of technology that will implement

the method. We find teachers who have opted for the

blog technology to implement the principles of

logging. Others have opted for the Wiki technology.

Similarly, each teacher determines the tools he

wants to implement for each of the activities

advocated by the MAETIC method:

communications, document management, logging,

planning, editing, etc. Thus we find teachers who

have implemented a CVS for document management

while others require a deposit available on the blog

in a specific tab. Some have included a chat tool and

an awarness tool in the environment, while others

advocate a communication by electronic mail.

A number of devices have been designed and

developed by teachers since the introduction of

MAETIC. Each device is the result of an

appropriation of the method by the teachers: a

preliminary organization to meet the constraints of

the teaching module and instrumentation choices to

produce a device that corresponds to their uses.

3.2 MAETIC Pedagogical Method

The pedagogical method describes an approach that

favours the implementation of a project-based

learning in group. MAETIC is based on five steps

(Figure 2) commonly adopted in the project

management approaches (Marchat, 2001).

The steps aim to develop activities that will

promote the production, in group, according to a

project mode, of a "product" requiring solicitation of

expertise. The aim is, firstly, to train students in

project management. The other aim is to develop

skills by implementing a development process of the

product in question. The method implies to establish

the organization of the group (description of roles)

that promotes the development of general skills such

as decision, communication, negotiation, etc.

TOWARDS A COMPUTER AIDED PEDAGOGICAL ENGINEERING - Aided Production of Pedagogical Devices based

on MAETIC Method

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Ste

1 :

Initialisat

ion

Ste

3 :

Planificati

Ste

4 :

Project

monitoring

Ste

5 :

Recette

Demand answer

Ste

2 :

Preparation

Client

request

Requirements

document

Planning

Product

CD Rom

Documentation

project

Products

Start

TD n° 1

described

TD n° 2

described

TD n° 3

described

TD n° 4

described

TD n° 5

described

Figure 2: Steps of MAETIC pedagogical method.

Thus, as shown in Figure 2, each step requires

one or more deliverable(s) and one or more

meeting(s). Step 1 produces the "request response,"

step 2 the "specifications document", and so on.

Each of these steps is explained in a guide that

introduces the student how to carry out the steps. In

addition, each step of the guide refers to "technical

books" which consist of sheets and templates that

are designed to facilitate group work.

4 THE STUDIO

The Computer Aided Pedagogical Engineering

studio proposes 5 software components.

4.1 The Assistance Module

The assistance module guides teachers in their

MAUI design approach. It allows them to develop

an educational device that will meet their choices.

By following the steps of MAUI, the module asks

the teacher to fill a number of query fields. These

actions help to determine the organizational

constraints of the module. The organization is

governed by different constraints in a specific

sociocultural context like time, space, human

resources, financial, project establishment, form of

instruction (in presence, at distance or hybrid).

The aim of the assistance module (the heart of

the studio) is to produce the educational device

incorporating all organizational constraints. If a

teacher does not use any of the other optional

modules, the assistance module will for generate a

standard device corresponding to a proposed pattern.

The teacher will then dispose of a standard toolbox

allowing him/her to monitor the students’ E-

suitcases. E-suitcases and toolbox will be

automatically generated (by the generator module).

A PhD student is currently working on the

generation of standard pedagogical devices.

4.2 The Skills Module

The skills module determines the educational

activities to implement in order to work the skills

that the teacher wishes to develop with his student

audience.

We believe that prior knowledge of these skills

contributes to the strengthening of educational

effectiveness. We agree with the statement of G.

Paquette for whom, in the context of training,

competency profiles can be used to define learning

objectives, to specify the content of a curriculum or

materials, to select teaching strategies, media and

delivery modes of training (Paquette, 2002a).

In this perspective, knowing the skills developed

by students appears to us indispensable. The

exercise consists therefore to examine the MAETIC

pedagogical method in terms of the skills it builds

among students.

The skills module is being finalized. The first

phase (Hassan, 2010), aimed to identify the skills

developed by MAETIC during its various stages and

activities. These skills were modeled using the MOT

language (Paquette, 2002b). MOT models were

made and translated to form an ontology that has

been instrumented with PROTÉGÉ software. The

module allows to select skills from a list and shows

MAETIC activities to deploy. The next phase is to

couple the tool with the assistance module in order

to customize the activities within the e-suitcases.

4.3 The Teacher Module

The teacher module facilitates the production of a

suitable device with an adapted teaching scenario

and suitable technological tools (Rosselle and al,

2010). The aim of the teacher module is to collect

teacher needs and wishes (teacher profile and

education profile).

The model is reified as a teacher profile. This

profile relates to a person who has skills, knowledge,

attitudes, personality profile and preferences,

especially preferences for ICT tools he/she usually

use.

For further information, the reader can consult

the teacher model that we have developed in

(Rosselle, 2010).

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4.4 The Evaluation Module

The evaluation module assists the teacher to conduct

the evaluation and reengineering of the device

he/she has produced. This module corresponds to

phase 5 of MAUI.

We must therefore provide tools and assistance

to carry out experiments (assistance in design and

development and distribution of questionnaires and

interviews). We must facilitate too the reengineering

of the educational device. This module initiates a

new phase of the spiral design.

This part of the studio has not yet been

undertaken and is work phase planned to start in

January 2011.

4.4 The Generation Module

The generator module is responsible for generating

the technological environment specified by the

teacher-designer: the student’s e-suitcases and the

teacher’s toolbox. The environment is based on a

template selected from a list: a blog, a Wiki Doku,

FaceBook, i-google, a COOLDA type environment,

etc. This skeleton has been previously informed by

the actions of the designer through the studio

(assistance module and its possible profiling via the

competence module and the teacher module).

This module is in the design phase. The MODEL

research team of LISIC supports a part of this work.

It is based on a project for the production of a

malleable environment dedicated to collaborative

work. These researchers try to create better software

environments supporting collaborative activities

(Lewandowski and Bourguin, 2006) (Lewandowski

and Bourguin, 2005) (Lewandowski, 2006). Their

approach has been synthesized into the concept of

co-evolution and led to the creation of CooLDA

platform.

A key point of their approach is to consider that

many tools already exist, and are useful in

supporting some activities we are interested in.

Thus, the goal is not to create such tools, like a new

discussion tool, or a new text processor. Rather, they

create an environment that integrates these tools. For

example, a group may use in parallel a chat, a web

browser, a text processor, and a mailing software.

Each of these tools supports a particular activity

(online discussion for the chat, etc.) but they do not

know each other.

Such an environment has been tested to

implement MAETIC activities (Talon and al, 2009).

Results have encouraged us to follow and refine this

research track.

4.5 The COP Module

This module offers the service of a community of

practice. The teacher will be able to draw answers to

his/her questions when designing or monitoring of

the pedagogical device (Quénu-Joiron and Leclet,

2010).

An experiment is underway in the preamble to

the implementation of this module. Through this

experiment, we can:

• Check the need for a support tool to assist the

teacher during monitoring activities.

• Identify a typology of problems encountered

during the implementation of MAETIC

projects.

• Collect a corpus of cases

• Analyze the process of problem formulation by

a teacher and the different approaches of

explanation that can occur between the first

formulation and the ranges of solutions

provided by the expert teachers.

• Establish the baseline functionalities of the

COP module.

Thus, the experiment started in January 2009, is

being analysed. The first prototype will be tested as

part of the design of MAETIC e-learning devices at

the University of Fès in Morocco and at the

University of Djibouti.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The CAPE Studio will be able to produce in the next

2 years MAETIC E-suitcases and toolboxes. These

MAETIC e-suitcases and toolboxes correspond to

tools available from the Web 2.0.

Compared with the French scientific community,

there is no research laboratory working on

developing such a CAPE incorporating a design

approach similar to MAUI. There is no educational

device similar to MAETIC e-suitcases. Finally, there

is no teaching method similar to MAETIC (Leclet

and Talon, 2008).

Compared to the international scientific

community, to our knowledge, the main

international laboratory working on issues related to

ours is that of Gilbert Paquette. However, it should

be emphasized that no studio offers the generation of

environments based on light tools from the Web 2.0

and modulation offering such an adaptation to the

teacher.

TOWARDS A COMPUTER AIDED PEDAGOGICAL ENGINEERING - Aided Production of Pedagogical Devices based

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