Valerie Emin and Jean-Philippe Pernin: ScenEdit: an intention-oriented learning design authoring tool http://www.ld-grid.org/workshops/ASLD11

1. ScenEdit: an intention-oriented learning design authoring tool
Valérie Emin1,2, Jean-Philippe Pernin1
1
Laboratoire Informatique de Grenoble
110 av. de la Chimie - BP 53 - 38041 Grenoble- cedex 9 - France
2
Institut Français de l’Education - ENS Lyon
15 parvis René-Descartes, BP 7000, 69342 Lyon cedex 07 - France
valerie.emin@ens-lyon.fr, jean-philippe.pernin@imag.fr
Abstract. This paper presents the ScenEdit authoring environment, a graphical tool dedicated to the design of
learning scenarios. The environment is based on the ISiS (Intentions, Strategies, and interactional Situations)
intention-oriented conceptual model co-elaborated with teachers-designers. ScenEdit allows teacher-designers to
structure the design of scenarios by eliciting intentions, strategies and interactions included in the ISIS framework.
ScenEdit aims to favour sharing and reusing practices by providing patterns for each type of component (intention,
strategy and interactional situation). We present here the main functionalities of the environment through an example.
Keywords: technology enhanced learning, authoring tools, learning design, goal-oriented approach, patterns.
1 Introduction
For several years some researches have concerned the modeling process of learning situations integrating digital
technologies. Educational Modelling Languages (EML) [1] aim at providing interoperable descriptions of learning
scenarios. As noticed by IMS-LD authors [1], an EML is not intended to be directly manipulated by teachers or
engineers: specific authoring systems [2, 3, 4] must be provided to allow designers to design scenarios at a lower cost.
The first generation of EML editors has been mainly developed from technical challenges. The main goal of such tools
was (a) to transform easily designer's specifications towards implementation features and (b) to insure interoperability
in order to exchange learning scenarios between technical platforms such as Learning Management Systems. The
proposed editors, which reuse modeling techniques coming from computer science (such as UML, for example) were
considered too complex to be mastered by teachers [1].
A second generation of editors, such as LAMS [5], proposes another "tool-box oriented" approach. LAMS provides a
series of components of different levels which represent activities that can be combined to create a scenario. LAMS can
be easily used by a teacher to create different scenarios. Although LAMS provides patterns of activities and repositories
for sharing scenarios, it does not allow the designer to motivate its choices for the design or for the re-use by didactical
or pedagogical reasons. A third generation concerns "visual instructional design languages" [6], but according to the
authors themselves these tools are still too complex for a non-technical user: "editing facilities need to be more
accessible to non-technical user in order to develop, implement and reach an easier and further use of this type of case
studies in reality". Our approach is to combine the previous approaches in the teacher's designing process: (a) to
organize the scenario by eliciting formally the intentions of the designer and by representing explicitly the learning
strategies chosen and (b) to favour exploration of reusable components in specific libraries adapted to specific
communities of teachers.
To this end, we have co-elaborated the ISiS( Intentions, Strategies, and interactional Situations) intention-oriented
conceptual model [7] in a participative design approach with experimented and inexperienced teachers mainly at French
secondary school. This framework proposes a specific identification of the intentional, strategic, tactical and operational
dimensions of a learning scenario. ISiS aims to capture the teachers’ intentions and strategies in order to better
understand scenarios written by others and to favour sharing and reuse practices. The Intention level describes the
designer’s intentions, closely linked to the knowledge context which defines targeted knowledge items (competencies,
abilities, conceptions or misconceptions, etc.). The Strategy level is related to teaching methods, in order to reach goals
related to the intentions formulated at Intention level, the designer opts for the strategy (at pedagogical or didactical
level) he considers to be the most appropriate. The interactional Situation level represents the tactical level, i.e. the
proposed solution to implement the formulated intentions and strategies. Each “interactional situation” is defined as a
set of interactions with a specific set of roles, tools, resources, locations, according to the situational context. The
situational context is defined at an abstract level, which means that only typical elements are listed (i.e.: word processor,
mind map…). Physical spaces are represented by the item locations, which are typical abstract locations: classroom,
home, internet connected location… ISiS is not an alternative solution to EML, but complements them by offering
higher level models, methods and tools designed for and with teachers-designers. In parallel with the elaboration of the
ISiS model, we have co-designed with teachers a series of software prototypes progressively implementing ISiS
concepts. After the evaluation of some authoring solutions in learning design [1, 3, 5, 6], we have chosen to develop our
own graphical authoring environment based on the ISiS model: ScenEdit [8]. We will present now ScenEdit web
version, our latest prototype.
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2. 2 ScenEdit: a graphical authoring tool to design learning scenarios
The research work presented in this paper was conducted in collaboration between the Laboratoire Informatique de
Grenoble and the INRP1. This collaboration, part of the ApprenTice PPF Program, closely associates groups of teachers
in charge of co-elaborating and experimenting models we want to implement. Our research focuses on authoring
environments dedicated to specific designers: teachers who integrate digital technologies in French secondary
educational system.
ScenEdit is a web-based authoring environment which allows a community of teachers to create, modify and reuse
learning scenarios. ScenEdit allows teachers to quickly and easily create structured scenarios by:
− eliciting its intentions in terms of knowledge, competencies and abilities from pre-existing database, common to a
certain community of teachers;
− choosing scenario patterns corresponding to common or novel strategies, well adapted to its intentions and to the
learning context;
− selecting interactional situations and matching them to the different steps of the strategies;
− managing different components in specific databases, like scenarios, intentions, strategies, interactional situations…
In this version, operationalization features have not been yet implemented.
ScenEdit proposes three workspaces: the Scenario edition workspace, the ISiS Components workspace, and the
Context workspace represented by tabs in the ScenEdit editor as shown in figure 1, to edit a structuring scenario. Figure
1 shows the view provided by the Scenario Edition tab, on our scenario example: LearnElec [9]. LearnElec is a
collaborative scenario concerning the concept of power of a bulb in Physics in secondary school. This scenario has been
co-designed by didacticians and teachers with a main intention which is to destabilize a usual misconception in
electricity: “the proximity of the generator has an influence on the intensity”.
Fig. 1. ScenEdit main screen
Figure 1 shows this scenario implemented with the ScenEdit graphical tool, each type of component (Intentions,
Strategies, Situations) is shown with a different symbol: a triangle for a step, a rounded rectangle for an intention, a
rectangle for a strategy, a circle for a phase and a picture for a situation. Checkboxes (Intentions, Strategies and
Situations) of Figure 1 allows visualizing the desired levels.
In LearnElec scenario, the teachers’ first didactical intention is “to destabilize” a frequently encountered
“misconception” of students in electricity which is that “proximity of the battery has an influence on current intensity”.
Figure 2 shows how this intention is implemented within ScenEdit, by defining mainly 4 elements: the formulator of the
intention, the actor concerned by the intention, and the intention itself: an operation on a knowledge item. After having
defined his intention, the teacher-designer has to choose the appropriate strategy he wants to use to reach the goal.
1
Institut National de la Recherche Pédagogique (French National Institute for Research in Education), which is now Institut Français
de l’Education since April 2011
2

3. Fig. 2. An example of intention in ScenEdit: intention “destabilize- proximity of the battery has an influence on current intensity”
In LearnElec scenario, the didactical intention is implemented with a specific didactical strategy called “scientific
investigation” composed of four phases: hypothesis elaboration, solution elaboration, hypothesis testing and conclusion.
Figure 3 shows the visual representation of the intention and the strategy we have implemented with these four phases.
Fig. 3. An example of strategy in ScenEdit : “scientific investigation”
Each phase can be performed through various pedagogical modes and can be refined by another intention according to
the type of activity, the availability of computer services, etc. the teacher wants to use. In our example, the first phase:
“hypothesis elaboration” is refined by a pedagogical intention called “increase the ability to work in a collaborative
way” as shown in figure 1. This intention is implemented with a strategy called “elaborating a proposal by making a
consensus” composed of two phases: “Make an individual proposal” and “Confront proposals. Obtain a consensus”. For
each phase, an interactional situation can be defined.
Fig. 4. An example of interactional situation in ScenEdit
Figure 4 shows the form used to define the interactional situation: “Individual proposal using MCQ”, in which actors,
tools, resources and locations are specified. Finally, during these two phases the teacher is involved in an activity of
management of the groups symbolized by an interactional situation called “Group management” as shown in figure 1.
ScenEdit proposes three workspaces represented by tabs in figure 1. The Scenario edition workspace allows to
graphically design a structuring scenario using the hierarchy of ISiS levels by assembling and logically linking elements
defined in this tab or previously defined in the ISiS Components tab. The ISiS Components workspace is dedicated to
manage the three main components of the ISiS model: (a) Intentions, (b) Strategies and (c) interactional Situations.
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4. Each component can be made of re-usable elements that can appear in many scenarios, and for each type the author can
either create a new element or import and adapt an existing one from a library. The library contains the components of
the scenario and all the patterns provided in the global database. The Context workspace defines the two different types
of context in which a learning unit can be executed: the knowledge context and the situational context. The knowledge
context tab allows to define the different contexts of knowledge that can be used in the scenario for defining the
knowledge items used for intentions and pre-requisites. The situational context tab allows to define the elements of
interactional Situations: actors, tools, resources, locations. The choices available for each component depends on the
characteristics defined in the Context workspace.
3 Experimentation of the ScenEdit environment
Several experiments have been conducted since the beginning of this research work in order to adopt a user-oriented
approach. These experimentations with teachers-designers have shown the benefits of the ISiS model (1) to improve the
quality of the scenarios created, (2) to illustrate the importance of the elicitation of intentions and strategies by users
themselves, (3) to better understand the scenarios created by others and (4) to simplify the design process by reducing
the distance between users’ requirements and the effectively implemented system. An experimentation of our graphical
online tool ScenEdit in terms of utility and usability, has been done in April 2009 during two days in a French
secondary school. The subjects were a group of five teachers in Industrial Sciences and Techniques fields (electronics,
mechanics and physics). Two teachers had worked with us before on the definition of reusable components, such as
learning strategy and interactional situations patterns, inside our tool ScenEdit and the three others had never heard
about ISiS model or learning scenario design before this experiment. The analysis of this qualitative study [7] shows the
value for the practitioners of having reusable components in the context of designing for the teachers’ own ordinary
work in their classroom or for a collaborative work with other teachers. Some of the comments suggested improvements
of the visual representation of the ISiS model: in particular more precision is required for the temporal dimension which
is not represented on the actual simple tree version, as mentioned before. Moreover they pointed out that making the
phases and the activities more explicit helped them as « the scenario can be appropriated more quickly ».
4 Conclusion
In this paper, we have presented an overview of ScenEdit authoring environment whose purpose is to assist teachers in
the design of learning scenarios and to favour sharing and re-use practices. According to our experimentations, the ISiS
model, co-elaborated with a panel of practitioners, appears efficient. Part of our work with the teachers has been to
formalize and design patterns of learning scenarios, pedagogical approaches and recurrent interactional situations.
ScenEdit offers some patterns of different levels (intentions, strategies, interactional situations) elaborated from best-
practices found in the literature or within communities of practice. With this environment, we expect users will be able
to feed databases, in order to share their scenarios with others or reuse them further in related or different contexts. As
the scenario can be encoded as an XML file, different outputs can be produced and several possibilities of
transformation can be offered in nextversion: a printable text or form for the teacher is now available, and we plan to
provide a printable picture of the edition views, an IMS-LD compliant version for editing with another authoring tool
and a SCORM package which can be executed on a LMS. We aim at experimenting ScenEdit more thoroughly, with a
wider audience which not necessarily has a great familiarity with ICT and scenario design software and methods.
References
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5. Web-references for the demonstration
ScenEdit Home Page
http://eductice.inrp.fr/EducTice/projets/en-cours/scenario/scenedit/scenedit/view?set_language=en
Remote access to the Prototype
http://scenedit.imag.fr/demo/
login: demo_scenedit
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