Innovative training system (DIF)

Project leader : TELECOM ParisTech

The innovative training system is one of Institut TELECOM's key projects.

Objective

Within the French context, the field of distance learning today appears to be dominated by approaches focusing on the enhanced teaching content and the technologies (multi- and hyper-medias, platforms) used to deliver them.

Our project, which complements these approaches, concentrates on innovative training systems (DIF)

• incorporating the content and technologies
• in the context of learning activities, 
• organized to be linked together, 
• based on their respective places and durations
• and the type of pedagogical relations (tutoring, collaboration between learners, etc.).

For this purpose, this project proposes three complementary working strategies, tackled according to an approach linking technological dimensions with human and social dimensions:

1. Designing and developing tools for these DIF
2. Defining methodologies or operational recommendations fostering DIF design and usages
3. Lastly, producing theoretical elements capable of "modeling" processes for the design and usages (by learners or professors-tutors) of these systems.

Specific experiments and case studies will be the favored methods for achieving these objectives.
Focus will be put on the collaborative dimension which, in terms of innovative systems, appears to be crucial in terms of both design and usages.
Lastly, all this work is aimed at enhancing the department's "training-support" activity, particularly within the context of the graduate training portal.

Innovative training system's engineering

This work leads to the creation of two links in the chain of tools used to implement our approach:

• The first, which operates as part of the design (construction) phase of these DIF, is the OASIF tool: "Outil d'Aide à la Scénarisation pour l'Ingénierie de la FOAD" or Scripting assistance tool for open distance-learning program engineering.
  
  Based on an analysis of existing usages, a new version of the OASIF tool is currently being worked on, in collaboration with TELECOM & Management SudParis and CNERTA ("Centre National d'Etude et de Ressources en Technologies Avancées" or National Center for Advanced Technology Studies and Resources ) in order to offer a version (in freeware form) focusing on collaboration and decision-making support in early 2006 (see section on Outil OASIF).
  
• The second, which operates as part of the implementation phase for these DIF, is the AMARANTE platform. Linked with OASIF, AMARANTE is currently under development (in freeware form) in collaboration with EOF (voir rubrique Plate-forme AMARANTE).
  Current usages for these tools are assessed, providing feedback to the research project.