Towards Industrialized Conception and Production of Serious Games

Serious Games (SGs) have experienced a tremendous outburst these last years. Video game companies have been producing fun, user-friendly SGs, but their educational value has yet to be proven. Meanwhile, cognition research scientist have been developing SGs in such a way as to guarantee an educational gain, but the fun and attractive characteristics featured often would not meet the public's expectations. The ideal SG must combine these two aspects while still being economically viable. In this article, we propose a production chain model to efficiently conceive and produce SGs that are certified for their educational gain and fun qualities. Each step of this chain will be described along with the human actors, the tools and the documents that intervene

A Web-based System for Observing and Analyzing Computer Mediated Communications

Tracking data of user's activities resulting from Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) tools (forum, chat, etc.) is often carried out in an ad-hoc manner, which either confines the reusability of data in different purposes or makes data exploitation difficult. Our research works are biased toward methodological challenges involved in designing and developing a generic system for tracking user's activities while interacting with asynchronous communication tools like discussion forums. We present in this paper, an approach for building a Web-based system for observing and analyzing user activity on any type of discussion forums

Rôles du tuteur

National audienceDans la littérature, le tuteur est nommé différemment, selon les rôles qu'on lui assigne : modérateur, facilitateur, tuteur en ligne, coach, mentor pédagogique, e-tuteur, accompagnateur... Dans cet article, nous nous attachons à mieux définir l'acteur de l' apprentissage que l' on nomme " tuteur " en étudiant ses rôles en fonction de trois facteurs : la médiatisation des communications (médiatisées ou non), la nature de la tâche (collaborative ou individuelle) et la temporalité de la formation (ponctuelle ou durable). Nous relevons ainsi 16 rôles dont la présence dépend de l'importance de chacun de ces facteurs. Ce travail a été réalisé dans le but d'identifier les difficultés et problèmes rencontrés par le tuteur en fonction du contexte de la formation, ses besoins et l'état actuel des outils existants pour y répondre

Diurnal cycle of fossil and nonfossil carbon using radiocarbon analyses during CalNex: Radiocarbon diurnal profiles in L.A.

Radiocarbon (14C) analysis is a unique tool to distinguish fossil/nonfossil sources of carbonaceous aerosols. We present 14C measurements of organic carbon (OC) and total carbon (TC) on highly time resolved filters (3–4 h, typically 12 h or longer have been reported) from 7 days collected during California Research at the Nexus of Air Quality and Climate Change (CalNex) 2010 in Pasadena. Average nonfossil contributions of 58% ± 15% and 51% ± 15% were found for OC and TC, respectively. Results indicate that nonfossil carbon is a major constituent of the background aerosol, evidenced by its nearly constant concentration (2–3 μgC m−3). Cooking is estimated to contribute at least 25% to nonfossil OC, underlining the importance of urban nonfossil OC sources. In contrast, fossil OC concentrations have prominent and consistent diurnal profiles, with significant afternoon enhancements (~3 μgC m−3), following the arrival of the western Los Angeles (LA) basin plume with the sea breeze. A corresponding increase in semivolatile oxygenated OC and organic vehicular emission markers and their photochemical reaction products occurs. This suggests that the increasing OC is mostly from fresh anthropogenic secondary OC (SOC) from mainly fossil precursors formed in the western LA basin plume. We note that in several European cities where the diesel passenger car fraction is higher, SOC is 20% less fossil, despite 2–3 times higher elemental carbon concentrations, suggesting that SOC formation from gasoline emissions most likely dominates over diesel in the LA basin. This would have significant implications for our understanding of the on-road vehicle contribution to ambient aerosols and merits further study

Evolution of particle composition in CLOUD nucleation experiments

Peer reviewe

Data Descriptor : Collocated observations of cloud condensation nuclei, particle size distributions, and chemical composition

Cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) number concentrations alongside with submicrometer particle number size distributions and particle chemical composition have been measured at atmospheric observatories of the Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research InfraStructure (ACTRIS) as well as other international sites over multiple years. Here, harmonized data records from 11 observatories are summarized, spanning 98,677 instrument hours for CCN data, 157,880 for particle number size distributions, and 70,817 for chemical composition data. The observatories represent nine different environments, e.g., Arctic, Atlantic, Pacific and Mediterranean maritime, boreal forest, or high alpine atmospheric conditions. This is a unique collection of aerosol particle properties most relevant for studying aerosol-cloud interactions which constitute the largest uncertainty in anthropogenic radiative forcing of the climate. The dataset is appropriate for comprehensive aerosol characterization (e.g., closure studies of CCN), model-measurement intercomparison and satellite retrieval method evaluation, among others. Data have been acquired and processed following international recommendations for quality assurance and have undergone multiple stages of quality assessment.Peer reviewe

Development of an Assistance Environment for Tutors Based on a Co-Adaptive Design Approach

International audienceIn this paper, we present a co-adaptive design approach named TE-Cap (Tutoring Experience Capitalisation) that we applied for the development of an assistance environment for tutors. Since tasks assigned to tutors in educational contexts are not well defined, we are developing an environment which responds to needs which are not precisely identified or not expressed by these users. Our approach rests on three development cycles which aim at gradually clarifying and refining users' needs and expectations which we translate into computing functionalities. Each cycle is composed of three steps that allow the use of prototypes developed with regard, on the one hand, to theories of users' activities and, on the other hand, to the needs that we have identified to be observed. We finally obtain a stable typology of users' needs and expectations upon which we base the development of the computer environment. We illustrate the two first cycles of this iterative and co-adaptive approach during the development of TE-Cap. We then discuss the difficulties raised by this type of approach

Tracking Human-Computer Interactions in E-Learning: An Application to Computer Mediated Communications

International audienceno abstrac

Supporting a virtual community of tutors in experience capitalising

International audienceNowadays, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are changing the way students learn. Many researches focus on the development of new forms of pedagogy and software for student learning. But ICT also involve changes in teachers' roles, which are not yet well defined particularly for online tutors. In this paper, we present new ways for tutors to define their own 'professional identity', their functions and 'good practices'. By providing a platform to develop Communities of Practice (CoPs) for tutors, we aim at giving them the possibility to share knowledge and experiences and to refer to those in their day-to-day practice. We detail the interface to classify and retrieve experiences stored as knowledge in a database

TrAVis to Enhance Self-Monitoring in Online Learning Supported by Computer-Mediated Communication Tools

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