ONLINE DISTANT LEARNING USING SITUATION-BASED

SCENARIOS

Fabrice Trillaud, Phuong Thao Pham, Mourad Rabah, Pascal Estraillier and Jamal Malki

L3i Laboratory, University of La Rochelle, La Rochelle, France

Keywords:

Situation-based Model, Adaptive Scenario, Online Distant Learning, Scenario Management, Scenario

Execution Process.

Abstract:

This paper is an overview of our work to deal with scenario representation and management model in Online

Distant Learning domain. Our approach is based on scenario structuring using the notion of “situation”. A

“situation” is an elementary building block dividing the interactions between actors into contextual scenes.

This pattern not only supports the scenario execution, but also its creation and evolution. After discussing the

global methodology to manage ODL applications and introducing the situation-based scenarios, we show how

our methodology and situation structuring can be applied to and enhance ODL.

1 INTRODUCTION

Online Distant Learning (ODL) is now becoming a

mature research domain (Lionarakis, 2009). We wit-

ness the development of online training applications

and the use of generic online meeting applications

for training purpose to create online virtual class-

rooms. But generic interactive applications are not

well suited to a training context, and specialized ones

can require too much learning time to master (Murphy

and Manzanares, 2008)(Kinser, 2003), slowing down

their acceptance by the users (Jung et al., 2006)(Pigli-

apoco et al., 2008). Moreover, users expect new learn-

ing possibilities through the use of these applications

(Hay et al., 2004).

ODL is not simply an unfolding of a “video con-

ference” or “online meeting”. A learning session can

be seen as a “scenario” that organizes the educational

activities. However, scenario organization for train-

ing purpose in online learning is still rarely used or

studied. We want to structure and organize learning

sessions into scenarios in an effective way. To achieve

this, we propose the use of “situations” blocks. Each

“situation” is a sequence of interactions between ap-

plication’s actors within a given shared context (Pham

et al., 2012). Furthermore, the situation-based sce-

nario uses interactive storytelling techniques as well

as consistency management (Pham et al., 2011) in dy-

namical execution to ensure robustness and interac-

tivity for online learning. It also facilitates the adapt-

ability during the training session and improves the

training quality by analyzing feedbacks and results.

We aim to obtain a complete generic situation-

based adaptive scenario management system, includ-

ing authoring tool, execution environment, and sce-

nario evolution control all along its lifecycle, since

users are looking for a system that can adapt itself

to its context and environment (McKee, 2010). The

resulting system has to be accessible for everyone,

without requiring particular training or equipment, as

these are the main problems associated with the im-

plementation of ODL systems (Cardoso and Bidarra,

2009). This paper gives a quick overview of our

situation-based model and details its application to

ODL case study.

2 ODL METHODOLOGY

Our scenario management system uses a three-

step cycle, namely Before (scenario’s construction),

Throughout (scenario’s execution) and After (execu-

tion’s analysis). Using this cycle, users involved in

scenario’s lifecycle are given tools and clues to im-

prove it between each execution. This cycle can be

applied to other interactive systems with scenario-

based execution.

We must at ﬁrst determine system’s actors and

their environment. In ODL, we deﬁne three different

types of real actors: learners, trainers and training or-

ganization. Each of them is involved in one or several

313

Trillaud F., Pham P., Rabah M., Estraillier P. and Malki J..

ONLINE DISTANT LEARNING USING SITUATION-BASED SCENARIOS.

DOI: 10.5220/0003914903130316

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2012), pages 313-316

ISBN: 978-989-8565-06-8

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

steps of the scenario’s lifecycle in ODL, and may take

on one or several roles, such as auditor, presenter,

moderator and designer. Figure 1 shows how each

involved actors and roles steps into this cycle, rep-

resented by a three-segment arrow, representing the

Before, Throughout and After steps.

Figure 1: Scenario’s lifecycle in ODL.

The seven points illustrated in the ﬁgure 1 are: the

deﬁnition of quality standards (1), the deﬁnition of

the training’s content (2), the choice of associated re-

sources (3), the execution of the training session (4),

the events recording (5), the events analysis (6) and

the feedback to the actors (learners, trainers, and or-

ganization) (7).

The “training organization” is responsible for the

training’s quality: Before the execution, it deﬁnes

rules and imperatives of the training. The “evaluator”,

in the After step belongs to the training organization

as well. He points out the most meaningful events

reported by some observation mechanisms, and dis-

patches them to the concerned actors in order to im-

prove the training prior to the next execution.

3 APPLICATION STRUCTURING

In the interactive domain, story or plot structuring has

been studied in many areas, such as games, interac-

tive drama and storytelling (Magerko, 2005)(Mateas

and Stern, 2005)(Paul et al., 2011), but also simula-

tion and educational applications. Interactive applica-

tions from our point of view always have a scenario

deﬁning the interactive environment and tasks that ac-

tors have to do. In order to provide a story model, we

propose the notion of “situation” (Pham et al., 2012).

The situations are the narrative basic blocks that fa-

cilitate the story planning and management by char-

acterizing and conﬁning the interactions.

A situation is a sequence of interactions between

two or more actors in a precise context to achieve a

predictive objective. It is characterized by the follow-

ing set of elements, illustrated in ﬁgure 2.

Figure 2: Situation model.

• Pre-conditions: set of conditions that must be sat-

isﬁed to enter the situation.

• Post-conditions: set of conditions or results that

must be completed in order to leave the situation.

• Progression: presents a frame where actors

behave and interact using local resources and

launching different tasks according to their objec-

tives. Situation progression involves:

– Actors: real (human, physical) or virtual (sys-

tem components, agents, non-player character).

– Application’s designer logic: what the system

is allowed/supposed to do. It will orient the ac-

tors’ activities and tasks along the progression.

• Event management: deals with the incom-

ing/outgoing events from/to the external world or

others simultaneous situations.

• Resources managers: system’s actors responsible

for resources access and utilization with respect to

actors’ needs. Resources can be local or global.

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• Consistency management: mechanisms handling

actor’s inconsistency (Pham et al., 2011).

We distinguish 3 kinds of situations: elemen-

tary situations (basic situations introduced above),

composite situations (abstract situations that recur-

sively include other situations) and usable situations

or parameter situations (ready-to-use situations, pre-

designed and instantiated with common parameters)

(Pham et al., 2012).

An application scenario is ﬁnally represented as

an ordered sequence or directed graph of all possible

situations that can happen between actors.

4 APPLICATION TO ODL

We applied our proposition to our Online Distant

Learning framework. This framework deals with ac-

tivities structuring in distributed virtual classroom.

We use our situation-based structuring to organize

class learning activities. We have ﬁrst identiﬁed the

corresponding situations and build the situations li-

brary. Then we have deﬁned the scenario situation

graph that allowed us to assess the methodology fea-

sibility and perform adaptivity tests.

4.1 Building Scenarios using Situations

Our methodology of scenario speciﬁcation is based

on the decomposition of pedagogic activities encoun-

tered in a classical face-to-face classroom. A clas-

sical course is regularly unfolded into several activi-

ties, such as lesson lecture, exercise working, going

to the blackboard, examinations... Each activity con-

sists of a set of actions and interactions between the

trainer and the learners using appropriate content and

resources.

This lecture structuring into activities in a face-

to-face class justiﬁes the situations construction in

our work. Our concept of situations is well suited to

represent learning relatively independent activities in

ODL because these scenario structuring blocs allow

actions and interactions contextualization.

Generally, the situations library is determined by

application designers from the development point of

view. They have to satisfy reusability and general-

ization. The ODL sessions are then created from the

situations library by the course designer or the trainer

himself. The scenario structuring is thus based on the

main activities and steps in a real classroom.

The elementary situations deﬁned for our virtual

classroom are: Presentation, Moderation, Discussion,

Individual working, Collaborative working, Browser

sharing, Survey and Grade. We also deﬁned the com-

posite situations: Lesson lecture, Class working, Go-

ing to the blackboard and Evaluation; and the usable

situations: Group work and Examination. The ﬁgure

3 gives three examples of situations.

Figure 3: Three kinds of situations.

To validate our proposition, we deﬁned a standard

typical scenario structured with situations for a les-

son session. The basic scenario contains the follow-

ing steps: Start of the lesson, Classwork, Going to

the Blackboard, Discussion and Survey. This ﬁve-step

scenario is “converted” into situations and organized

into a graph, as shown in the ﬁgure 4.

Figure 4: Example scenario.

Transitions between situations are triggered by

various events during the application execution, such

as publishing an exercise, designating a learner to go

to the virtual board, publishing a survey and so on.

4.2 Advanced Scenario Management

The course scenario is deﬁned before the course be-

gins. It may have some weak points if it has rigid and

static structure. Indeed, once the scenario is created

and the course begins, it cannot be modiﬁed; class ac-

tivities can neither be added nor deleted. In real class,

the trainer may plan out his course scenario in the be-

fore step, but he is not certain that he will follow it

exactly as he intended initially. Therefore, although

the scenario is predetermined, it must be adaptive to

ONLINEDISTANTLEARNINGUSINGSITUATION-BASEDSCENARIOS

315

be easily modiﬁed or customized during the course.

Our approach gives this freedom to the trainer by al-

lowing the trainer to interchange situation blocks.

We could also mention the adaptation resulting

from consistency management, external events or

other types of adaptation. These are further discussed

in other papers. Please see our case study for exam-

ples of adaptation, scenario’s execution, and more de-

tails about the architecture and the adaptive scenario

management (Trillaud et al., 2011)

5 CONCLUSIONS

We have presented the methodology overview of our

situation-based adaptive scenario management sys-

tem. The situation model is used not only to con-

struct scenarios, but also to improve them through the

3-steps lifecycle, namely before, throughout and af-

ter. The situations support the scenario creation be-

fore system execution beginning; the automatic nav-

igation, dynamic adaption and consistency manage-

ment in the throughout step; and scenario improve-

ment after its execution. The notion of “situation” is

proposed to be a reusable model to all types of in-

teractive applications for which the execution can be

organized as a scenario. This methodology allows us

to build robust system architecture.

Since the Online Distant Learning is organized

as sequence of learning activities, it is well suited

to situation-based structuring. We have categorized

ODL actors with their different roles; these roles can

be changed during training session. Form the iden-

tiﬁed activities, we have deﬁned the library of situ-

ations that is used to structure lessons in ODL. This

may allow best interactive online training, compared

to most existing online training or meeting applica-

tions: the trainer gets a permanent feedback on the

training execution; keeps control over the scenario

and can adapt it in a ﬂexible way (a comparative study

has been carried out and will be the subject of upcom-

ing publications (Trillaud et al., 2011)).

Finally, we gave a glimpse of what the scenario

adaptation can be within situation-based scenario, but

there is much more to say about it, through tracks

analysis, consistency management or interactive sto-

rytelling. This will be covered in future publications.

We are now completing our works through sev-

eral aspects: development of the authoring system

supporting scenario creation and improvement, use

of traces analysis to support the scenario’s lifecycle,

http://foad-l3i.univ-lr.fr for more informations about

our ODL project

complete integration of scenario management within

our ODL framework, and live tests with real online

trainers and learners. Our ﬁnal aim is to estimate and

prove the performance and pertinence of our scenario

management methodology for different scenarios in

various interactive applications ﬁelds.

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