Digital learning, a major research theme in computer science

Digital learning tools are more and more popular among learners and teachers, in the context of hybrid pedagogical programs. At IRIT, a research niche exists in this field and the researchers involved in this research theme are invested in two projects that we wish to highlight in this article. These two projects are Agr-eSchool, developed within the framework of the Dispositifs France Formation Innovante NUMérique (DEFFINUM) and POUCEEC, developed and tested within the framework of the DIMEDD project. 

The jobs in agricultural education through a playful hybridization

DEFFINUM is part of a vast transformation plan led by the High Commission for Skills and integrated into France Relance to take training to a new level and make France a world leader in educational innovation. This is why the Agr-eSchool project, “Anchoring professional learning through edutainment hybridization,” is investing in the creation of multimodal edutainment resources.  

The main idea is to acquire the professional skills and competences of the agricultural professions through a playful hybridization. The project will focus on creating a digital shelf of ludonumeric resources promoting play, VR and anchoring through sensory and motivational functions. Multimodality for learners will be a reality and no longer a label since the proposed playful modules will not be fixed. Like a board game in which the cards can be changed without affecting the rules of the game, the proposed serious games will be matrices in which teachers can include their own resources. The learning is as much social as technical. They respond to professional needs in order to insert and integrate learners into a multiple and complex reality. The act of learning is therefore part of a generational modernity and amplifies professional know-how and skills. Whatever the generations involved, one constant is increasingly visible: digital technology is impacting the way we learn.

A video-based learning platform

The stakes of DIMEDD  are those of a digital citizenship of the pupils, so that they develop a critical analysis of the media and the video resources; of a society respecting a principle of sustainable development and of a pedagogy adapted to the attitudes and processes of change of these attitudes. The national education system has made this one of its priorities. This is why the main objective of the POUCEEC project is to accompany the deployment of the POUCEEC learning platform, which is a learning platform based on videos to promote critical analysis of videos and the arguments they convey. This platform, initially developed and tested in the framework of the DIMEDD project, will be deployed in various secondary schools, in 3 different academies (Toulouse, Marseille and Lyon). The platform allows teachers to build pathways (pedagogical scenarios) for studying videos with the objective of critically analyzing the information presented in the videos. It also allows students to carry out active study activities of different videos to build a critical analysis and their own point of view. The platform offers some pedagogical features such as sorting and labeling of videos or prompts (prompts appearing during the viewing of a video to lead the student to question certain elements of the video such as the source of the information). From a scientific point of view, the project will evaluate both the impact of the platform on teaching practices and the acceptability of the platform by teachers, and the impact of the platform on students’ learning of critical thinking skills (tests at the beginning, middle and end of the year), as well as the nature of the activities carried out by students with the platform and the links between the types of activities and the expected improvement of critical thinking skills. Finally, a participatory design process with teachers will also allow the platform to be improved during the two years of the project in order to adapt it to the needs of teachers and pedagogical practices. This improvement of the platform should contribute to a better adoption of the tool for an anchoring of the use in the uses.