Proposal presented to KTI/CTI, Scientific committee of BBT/Switzerland

for a

Leading House

Technologies for

Vocational Training

by

Prof. P. Dillenbourg, CRAFT, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Prof. M. Betrancourt & Dr. D. Schneider, TECFA, Université de Genève

Prof. J.-L. Gurtner, Département des sciences de l’éducation, Université de Fribourg

July 2005

Summary

Learning technologies are nowadays present in the educational system at almost all levels. They are however used in many different ways, based on different teaching paradigms. Because of its specific organisation, called dual system, and its specific needs, the swiss vocational education model imposes special requirements to the use of these technologies. Our Leading House does not expand traditional e-learning research, but develop a specific approach more dedicated to the specific situation of an educational program run jointly by several partners.

All the projects conducted or promoted by the Leading House lie on the general hypothesis that the more appropriate uses of learning technologies in such a distributed training system are those who, by fostering collaboration and coordination among its various actors, will facilitate the constitution of a coordinated and mutually enriched vocational education program distributed over multiple locations.

Three research projects will be conducted by the members of the Leading House. The first one explores how mobile and flexible technologies could foster the development of apprentices’ autonomy by helping them to better appreciate their needs for assistance. The second project will investigate the use of learning technologies to help apprentices take advantage of a web-based journal to write down personal experiences made while learning in different settings and share them with others under different conditions. Finally, the third project will explore the pedagogical use of ICT tools especially designed to be used in “wild” (that is with dirty hands, away from a desk) or “blind” conditions (that is with objects that are not easy to track down). Each of these projects will first be realized in one specific context (i.e. in one particular branch of vocational education) and finally transferred to the other two contexts examined by the Leading House, namely, mechanic, health and logistics professions.

The Leading House will also encourage and finance further research projects exploring how other partners in education, such as parents for instance, can be involved in such a network aimed at improving the coherence between all the skills acquired in various learning situations and contexts. The Leading House will also set up and conduct a doctoral program on the use of ICT in vocational education.

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Table of Contents

1 State of the art on learning technologies ..............................................................................................................4 1.1 What are learning technologies?..................................................................................................................4 1.2 Educational technologies and learning theories .........................................................................................4

1.2.1 From behaviourism to instructional science ...........................................................................................5 1.2.2 From constructivism to cognitive science...............................................................................................5 1.2.3 From socio-cultural theories to situated cognition..................................................................................7

1.3 School practices with learning technologies................................................................................................8 1.4 A technical overview of learning technologies ..........................................................................................10 1.5 Experts' review ............................................................................................................................................12

2 A brief analysis of the Swiss legal Framework and its implication for related ICT research ..........................13 2.1 The new legislation on vocational training (LFPr): .................................................................................13

2.1.1 The general anatomy of basic vocational education and training .........................................................15 2.1.2 Salient features of interest to ICT-based scenarios ...............................................................................16

3 General research questions addressed by the Leading House and the corresponding theses adopted within its own research program................................................................................................................................18

4 Research projects planned by the Leading House..............................................................................................20 4.1 Research project 1 – Fostering autonomy through on-line scaffolds across learning contexts............20

4.1.1 Theoretical framework..........................................................................................................................20 4.1.2 Research questions................................................................................................................................20 4.1.3 Data.......................................................................................................................................................21 4.1.4 Subjects.................................................................................................................................................21 4.1.5 Practical relevance ................................................................................................................................21

4.2 Research project 2 – Learning by writing in project-based scenarios ...................................................22 4.2.1 Summary...............................................................................................................................................22 4.2.2 Objectives .............................................................................................................................................22 4.2.3 Practical relevance ................................................................................................................................22 4.2.4 Theoretical framework..........................................................................................................................23 4.2.5 Participants research .............................................................................................................................25 4.2.6 Research Overview ...............................................................................................................................26 4.2.7 Study 1: Introduction of a web-based platform bridging workplace and school activities...................26 4.2.8 Study 2: Effect of event-contingent or interval-contingent experience sampling on the apprentices’ representation about their activities. ..............................................................................................27 4.2.9 Study 3: Introduction of collaborative writing scenarios in a web-based platform ..............................28

4.3 Resarch project 3 – Integrating technologies in heterogeneous contexts ...............................................29 4.3.1 Research direction in collaborative learning.........................................................................................29 4.3.2 Research directions in collaborative technologies ................................................................................31 4.3.3 Methodology and timeframe.................................................................................................................37

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4.4 General timeline of each of the projects run by the Leading House.......................................................38 4.5 Cross-fertilisation of the projects...............................................................................................................39

5 Other activities of the Leading House.................................................................................................................40 5.1 Call for project(s) ........................................................................................................................................40 5.2 Leading House Doctoral School .................................................................................................................40 5.3 Dissemination and scientifc events.............................................................................................................41

6 Partners ................................................................................................................................................................42 6.1 Leading House .............................................................................................................................................42

6.1.1 CRAFT, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne ...........................................................................42 6.1.2 Département des Sciences de l’Education, Université de Fribourg ......................................................42 6.1.3 TECFA - Université de Genève............................................................................................................43 6.1.4 ISPFP (Institut Suisse de Pédagogie pour la Formation Professionnelle). ...........................................43

6.2 Partnership ..................................................................................................................................................43 6.3 International scientific board.....................................................................................................................45

7 References ............................................................................................................................................................46 7.1 References to others' work .........................................................................................................................46 7.2 Laws, ordinances and other official documents .......................................................................................55 7.3 References to the applicants' publications ................................................................................................56

8 Funding (provisional)............................................................................................................................................1

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1 State of the art on learning technologies

1.1 What are learning technologies?

Educational technology research always had an ambitious agenda. Sometimes it “only” aims at increased efficiency or effectiveness of current practise, but frequently it aims at pedagogical change. While it can be considered as a design science it also addresses fundamental issues of learning, teaching and social organization and therefore makes use of the full range of modern social science and life sciences methodology. "Technology provides us with powerful tools to try out different designs, so that instead of theories of education, we may begin to develop a science of education. But it cannot be an analytic science like physics or psychology; rather it must be a design science more like aeronautics or artificial intelligence. For example, in aeronautics the goal is to elucidate how different designs contribute to lift, drag manoeuvrability, etc. Similarly, a design science of education must determine how different designs of learning environments contribute to learning, cooperation, motivation, etc." (Collins, 1992:24). Technology is therefore both a tool and a catalyser and it can become a medium through which change can happen. “Educational technologists would not therefore consider the computer as just another piece of equipment. If educational technology is concerned with thinking carefully about teaching and learning, then a computer has a contribution to make irrespective of its use as a means of implementation, for the design of computer based learning environments gives us a new perspective on the nature of teaching and learning and indeed on general educational objectives”. (O'Shea & Self, 1983: 59).

These somewhat older quotations anticipate today’s discussion on e-Learning. E-learning is defined in many different and sometimes contradictory ways by the literature regarding its scope and essence. A lowest common denominator could be: e-learning exists when learning processes take place in scenarios that integrate information and communication technologies. This definition is adapted from Seufert and Mayer (2002); if they see learning processes as constituent items they also put emphasis on multimedia and (tele-) communication. In order to define what we mean by “learning processes” we will begin by discussing its learning theoretical foundations (section 1.2), point out possible practices involving learning technologies at school (section 1.3) and finally provide a short technical summary of the various technologies used for educational purposes (section 1.4). We conclude this section by listing the most important advices given by the expert panel that our group has contacted prior to set up this proposal (section 1.5).

1.2 Educational technologies and learning theories

Despite common beliefs, learning technologies are not based on one learning theory but reflect a large spectrum of theories. Actually, the diversity of educational software reflects the diversity of educational models. In many cases, the design of educational tools has forced the designers to make explicit they approach to learning. Hence, the experimentation of educational software also contributed to the evolution of theories. This introduction surveys the interplay between the different families of educational software and the learning theories. While these different approaches have been for long described as exclusive, the field being structured around conflicting school of thoughts, the last decade opened the door for integrating different learning models into computerized learning

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environments. This pedagogical integration was facilitated by the new possibilities, at the technical level, to integrate multiple tools, for instance communication and problem solving tools.

This theoretical survey does not aim to provide a complete history of learning theories. Our ambition was to describe, in a succinct way, the relationship between the theories and the educational software. Hence, for the sake of brevity, we structured this review in three sections.

1.2.1 From behaviourism to instructional science

Learning technologies have their roots in the behaviourist theories. As early as 1912, Thorndike wrote "If, by a miracle of mechanical ingenuity, a book could be so arranged that only to him who had done what was directed on page one would page two become visible, and so on, much that now requires personal instruction could be managed by print."(P. 165). The first mechanical teaching machine was developed by S. Pressey in 1927.

Behaviourist theories, developed in psychology (Skinner), soon had an important impact on pedagogy, leading to programmed instruction (Crowder, 1964). The key principles were to make the learner active, to give him immediate feedback, to decompose the learning process into a sequence of small steps (which augments for the learner the probability of receiving a positive reinforcement), and to individualize the learning activities (amount of time, difficulty level of exercises presented). These principles first used in paper-based programme instruction were transferred to computer-based teaching programmes during the sixties.

Despite the fact that educational technologies now cover a variety of approaches such as microworlds or virtual communities, they still hold in layperson’s view the caricature of these early days: a sequence of question-answer-feedback frames or a drill-and-practice environment. Such an approach may be useful for the acquisition of procedural skills, but the high granularity of instruction is inappropriate for objectives of higher levels. Progressively therefore, the original theory has been influenced by more modern ones: the constructivist ideas led to reduce granularity and to include open problem solving situations; the cognitive science influence led to provide the learner with metacognitive tools instead of immediate feedback.

Progressively, computer-based learning tools provided learners with more control of their activities. The mastery learning approach (Bloom, 1979) borrows the idea of a continuous control of effectiveness, but the notion of modules refers to a coarser grain in instructional sequence than the behaviourist notion of frames. In summary, if nowadays e-learning is much broader than its behaviourist origins, it still relies on the concepts of individualized instruction and of sequenced learning activities; but it now incorporates the contributions of instructional science such as the effectiveness of pre-structuring and post-structuring activities, the importance given to naïve pre-representations, the benefits of multiple representations and even the enrichment of peer interactions.

1.2.2 From constructivism to cognitive science

In the eighties, the traditional computer-based instruction paradigm was inflected in three directions. The first direction was influenced by works from Piaget and his followers and tended to promote environments in which learners could verify their conceptual hypotheses with concrete actions on objects in the computerized program. The second direction came from the cognitive science trend and aimed at introducing intelligence in the computerized environment in order to react adequately according to learners’ actions and underlying conceptions. The third trend tried to design

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environments in which units of information would be organized in a multidimensional way just as they are in our internal semantic networks.

One of the major theories that lead the development of computerized environment is constructionism, a theory that grows out of the work of Seymour Papert and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 60's. Constructionism is based on Piaget's theory of constructivism which states that knowledge is a value-laden subjective construction rather than a passive acquisition of objective features. As a learning theory, constructivism is an approach to teaching, which values learners’ action on the world and where the teacher plays a supporting role in the learning. The children learn by doing, and not by being told what will happen. Constructionism adds an extra layer to constructivism asserting that people learn with particular effectiveness when they engaged in constructing public and personally meaningful artefacts such as a sand castle, a computer programme or a soap sculpture, on which they can act and reflect (Papert, 1980). The first computer environment embodying this approach was Logo, a microworld developed in the 1960’s in which children could learn logical and mathematical notions in problem solving tasks, while playing with a turtle that moves on the screen. In the last two decades, with the development of graphical user interfaces, a large number of “learning by discovery” environments were designed particularly to support science teaching. In these environments the main task of the learner is to infer, through experimentation, characteristics of the model underlying the simulation (de Jong & van Joolingen, 1998). Many simulation games have been developed from quite simple device (for example, Rieber (1990) game simulations to teach Newton’s laws of motion) to very sophisticated applications (i.e. business simulation) Despite the enthusiasm for educational simulations, the research evidenced several bottlenecks due to the difficulty for learners to generate hypothesis, to design the experiment to assess them, to interpret the resulting data and finally to monitor the whole learning process (de Jong & van Joolingen, 1998). To overcome those problems, careful attention has to be put on the design of the simulation both at the instructional level (guidance, support for designing experiments and reflecting on data, adequate level of task) and at the interface level (combination of visual, auditive and textual elements).

The second trend was motivated by the impossibility for traditional drill-and practice environments to remediate to learners’ failure. The basic learning was essentially made by providing standard pieces of information regardless of learners’ specific difficulties, or else was to be provided outside the computer environment. Taking roots in the sixties and expanding fully in the eighties, the information processing model in psychology, with the “brain as computer” metaphore, lead to considerable work on the way humans reason and solve problems. Cognitive science was born and with it, artificial intelligence that claimed that the way human process information, reason and acquire knowledge could be simulated with a computer program. With progress in artificial intelligence, it was possible to consider integrating an intelligent agent which would be able to diagnose the type of errors made by the learner, and hence the underlying conceptions, and to provide adequate feedbacks. As stated by Dillenbourg and Martin-Michiellot (1995), the intelligent agent is a modeling of the expert’s knowledge that can simulate all steps of the solving process. It is thus supposed to lead to interactions that are context-sensitive and meaningful to learners. However, those “Intelligent tutoring systems” have not been as satisfying as expected. First the modeling of expert’s knowledge is insufficient to enable the diagnosis of errors: The modeling of all possible misconceptions is needed, which requires an impressive amount of data taken from actual learning situations and a great deal of programming (Balacheff & Gaudin, 2002). Second, contrary to the basic assumption of intelligent systems’ designers, it turned out that the behavior of novices learners is not consistant, neither are their conceptions, so that it seems utopian to believe that ITS will be able to diagnose and remediate reasoning mistakes. The only favorable future for ITS seems to be the ability of the systems to get the learners reason about their own problem solving process, using contextual feedbacks, history tracking, and continuous guidance through the solving process itself (see Aplusix software for an example).

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Conjointly to ITS, cognitive science gave birth to hyperdocuments, a tentative to model the complexity of our internal structure of knowledge in a multidimensional networks. The basic idea was simple: Instead of having books that are artificially sequenced from chapter 1 to the end, learning resources should be organized as the underlying conceptual networks. One unit will then be related to several other semantically relevant units. Learners would then browse from a unit to another, not for sequencing reasons but according to their own present learning goals. As they browse in the semantic networks, constructing the conceptual relations between units of knowledge might become easier. This quite genuine idea, embodied by the cognitive flexibility theory (Spiro, Feltowich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1991), did not prove to be that effective by itself. However, hypertexts still have an interesting potential for supporting learning, provided that they are integrated in adequate learning activities. Hypertexts can play an interesting role in three kinds of activities (Depover, 1996). At a first level, hypertexts can be used as information pools in which learners can search and retrieve information that they will then use in another learning activity. At a second level, hypertexts not only give access to information but also provide guidance to the learners through various tools (selection of paths according to selected perspectives, integrated quiz, annotation, etc.). At a third level, hypertexts, as multidimensional ways of presenting units of information in a domain, would in itself foster the knowledge construction and its organization process. Therefore, an interesting way of using hyper-documents is to have learners build themselves the conceptual structure by way of concept map design tools. Hypertexts could then be both, the starting point and the product of the learning activity.

1.2.3 From socio-cultural theories to situated cognition

The last twenty years of the past century have seen the raise of two new perspectives on cognition, often hard to disentangle, namely distributed cognition and learning in context. While the first one is a tribute to information processing and cognitive theories (PDP; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986), the second is a spin off of Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory of learning, which emphasize both the importance of interpersonal interactions and that of cultural determination of any learning situations.

Based on careful observation of the functioning of whole systems, such as the cells of a brain, processors running in parallel or societies of ants, distributed cognition and connectionist models brought to our understanding that a high level of cognition can occur at the level of the whole system even when each of its contributors only masters limited bits of the global knowledge. Notions of computer networks, platforms, nowadays standards in all e-learning environments, directly come from this view of cognition. So does even Internet.

New theories and concepts have been developed to describe how learning occurs in such situations. Among them, collaborative learning is certainly that who has been the most widely used and studied model in connection with e-learning. In search of the determinants that makes collaboration efficient for learning, Dillenbourg, Baker, Blaye and O’Malley (1995) notice that the quantity and especially the quality of verbal interactions among the members of a group are crucial determinants of this group performance and learning. As Roschelle (1977) puts it, such interactions force the members of the group to co-constuct a common meaning for the notions and objects being used in the situation.

The second approach expands Vygotsky’s ideas that learning takes place in highly culturally and contextually defined situations, where objects and interactions with more advanced persons often provide scaffolds to the young learners. Ethnographical observations of the process of skill building and expertise transmission among various types of traditional arts and crafts communities (Lave; Rogoff or Greenfield) have shown the large variety of often unconscious mechanisms used within traditional communities to simultaneously get the younger generations to learn the specific techniques with no real teaching taking place and without sacrificing the production.

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According to this view, cognition is necessarily situated, embedded in a given context and will lead to general learning or transfer from one context to another only in specific situations (Anderson, Greeno, Reder & Simon, 2000). As school situations are far from presenting the characteristics of real-world settings, in which such authentic learning happens, is learning in school useful for out of school contexts or vice versa? More research is obviously needed on that. What is now clear is that school can make authentic learning happen by presenting technology rich environment allowing to acquire knowledge as well as strategies, through modeling, coaching, scaffolding articulation, reflexion and exploration and by putting the learner in close contact with both experts and fellow learners of different level with different abilities and skills (Collins, Brown and Newman, 1989). As Lave and Wenger (1991) noted, even peripheral participation can make learning happen in authentic situations, as it is the case of the kind of contexts and activities in which apprentices are placed on the job. By analogy, Collins, Brown and Newman have proposed to call cognitive apprenticeship the kind of situations that can foster authentic learning in school subjects such as reading, writing and mathematics.

Bransford, Brown and Cocking (2000) propose that, in order to achieve the new goals imposed to education, learning environments should be learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered. Learner centered refers to environments taking into account the various and necessarily unequal knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs that learners come with in any learning situation. Knowledge-centered environments help students to acquire knowledge that will help them not only memorize and perform but also understand and make subsequent transfer of a given set of knowledge. Assessment-centered learning environments should provide enough feedback and revision opportunities to the learner while learning and promote the development of self-evaluation skills. Finally, effective learning environments should also help students connect what is done and learned at school with their out-of-school life, whatever culture they come from and have been raised in. CSILE (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994), Knowledge Forum (Scardamalia, 2003), or the Jasper series (Vanderbilt Group) are some examples of such powerful learning environments.

Developed along the lines of the situated cognition perspective by specification of the concept of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), the notion of communities of learners have become extremely popular nowadays and probably one of the most generally used in context with e-learning. Notice that the concept has been given two slightly different meanings (Dillenbourg, Poirier & Carles, 2003). In the broader sense, the concept is used to describe any grouping, real or virtual, of people attending the same class, and interacting physically or over the Internet. In the narrower sense, the concept is reserved to groups which share a certain common experience prior to the tasks they are facing and who have accepted to share their knowledge, interests and emotions at least for a certain time. This sharing builds for the community its common culture. Many of the tools implemented in current e-learning situations actually help the establishment of this community culture, especially chat, forums, blogs and the like. According to their presence in these communication tools, participants of such communities will get more central or more peripheral roles (Kim, 2000).

1.3 School practices with learning technologies

The use of learning technologies in schools cover the variety of approaches indicated in the review of learning theories, plus a number of other practices described below. We restrict ourselves to practices that appear in secondary schools:

1. Reinforcement of basic skills with interactive software, namely in mathematics, mother language or foreign languages.

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2. Augmenting information access. Internet and encyclopaedia provide students and teachers with an access to a huge space of information.

3. Augmenting students' work: Computers provide students with advanced tools for their work, such as graphical calculators, geometry editors, graphical editors. The spread of laptops among classes gives access to more and more powerful tools.

4. Augmenting teaching: teachers have access to a variety of tools used for enriching their teaching with animated pictures, interactive simulations, modelling tools, etc.

5. Opening the classroom. Internet is a window through which teachers and students insert in their teaching material coming from other classes, from the world (volcanoes, weather, news, etc.), or from the industry (catalogues, real data, etc.).

6. Augmenting students' projects. In project-based approaches, hypertexts and Internet tools are used (1) to access information necessary to conduct the project, (2) to share resources among team members, (3) to engage learners in collective writing activities and (4) to deliver the project outcomes, especially, by making them available to a broader community (other classrooms, parents, etc.).

Up to now, most projects conducted with Learning technologies in swiss vocational schools are of types 1 to 4 (Perret & Grossen, 2005). The projects run under the present leading house only marginally touch one or the other of these possible types of practice. They further extend approach 6, by using technology for networking all the actors and the settings of the educational system (apprentices, teachers, supervisors, professional associations and parents, on the one hand, school, workplace and home, on the other). This shift is perfectly in-line with recent development in the use of learning technologies within vocational education. Tiemeyer’s (2005) recent handbook for e-learning in vocational education, for instance, introduces “cooperative learning” and “online communities” besides the more traditional tele-teaching and web-based training. In Germany, recent focus on “Lernfeldorientierung” has lead to Pilot projects using ICT to integrate school and workplace, e.g. the Anuba Project (Strahler et al., 2003). But, as related literature points out (e.g., Strahler, 2003; Tiemeyer, 2003), such endeavours are not easy and usually require intensive change management methodology, since cooperation between schools and the workplace is difficult per se (Pätzold, 2003). Anuba (Aufbau und NUtzung von Bildungsnetzwerken zur Entwicklung und Erprobung von Ausbildungsmodulen in IT- und Medienberufen) is a particularly interesting R&D project with this respect. Its principal aim was to initiate cooperation between vocational schools and business with the help of ICT, e.g. for the development of curricula, but it also addressed the question of how to create learning scenarios that extend across learning places. This project published some guidelines (Strahler et al. 2003) and produced some materials to be used in teacher training (http://www.anuba-online.de/). In this project however, there were few learning scenarios dealing with authentic mutual integration of initial workplace training and vocational classrooms. More typical are projects like LearnART (http://www.learnart-online.de/) which is an e-learning further training project for German medical assistants (“Entwicklung, Erprobung und Implementierung von internetbasierten multimedialen Lerneinheiten für die berufliche Fort- und Weiterbildung von Arzthelfer/-innen in den Themenfeldern Praxismanagement, Qualitätsmanagement und Kommunikation“). While this project is not concerned with initial training and while it does not engage into school-workplace integration, it demonstrates that office management and communication with patients has been identified as “critical” and “difficult” by German doctors participating in the project. In conclusion, most reviewed projects in either Switzerland or Germany rather describe interesting problems (i.e. things that are difficult to teach and to learn) than offer sustainable solutions. The most powerful conclusions one can take from the literature dealing with such ICT-enhanced reforms of vocational training concern change management issues; implication of all

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involved stakeholders in the design process is seen as decisive, an observation already made by Engeström (1987; Engeström et al., 2002).

1.4 A technical overview of learning technologies

First large scale usage of new technologies can be traced to US WWII training of soldiers through training films and other mediated materials. With evolution of technology, presentation-based technology based on the idea that people can learn contents trough aural and visual reception exist in many forms, e.g. streaming audio and video, PowerPoint presentations + voice-over. The 1950's led to two major still popular designs. Skinner’s work led to "programmed instruction" focussing on the formulation of behavioral objectives, breaking instructional content into small units and rewarding correct responses early and often. Advocating a mastery approach to learning, Bloom endorsed instructional techniques that varied both instruction and time according to learner requirements. Models based on these designs were usually referred to as "Computer-aided Instruction" (CAI) and "Computer-based Training" (CBT) in the 1970’s through the 1990’s. In a more simplified form they correspond to today’s “e-contents” that often form the core of "e-learning" set-ups, sometimes also referred to as web-based training (WBT) or e-instruction. The course designer divides learning contents into smaller chunks of text augmented with graphics and multimedia presentation. Frequent Multiple Choice questions with immediate feedback are added for self-assessment and guidance. Such e-contents can rely on standards defined by IMS, ADL/Scorm and IEEE.

The 1980’s and 1990’s produced a variety of schools that can be put under the umbrella of the label “Computer Based Learning” (CBL). Frequently based on constructivist and cognitivist learning theories, these environments focussed on teaching both abstract and domain-specific problem solving. Preferred technologies were micro-worlds (computer environments were learners could explore and build), simulations (computer environments where learner can play with parameters of dynamic systems) and hypertext.

Digitized communication and networking in education started in the mid 80’s and became popular by the mid-90’s, in particular through the World-Wide Web (WWW), eMail and Forums. There is a difference between two major forms of online learning. The earlier type, based on either Computer Based Training (CBT) or Computer Based Learning (CBL), focused on the interaction between the student and computer drills plus tutorials on one hand or micro-worlds and simulations on the other. Both can be delivered today over the WWW. Today, the prevailing paradigm in the regular school system is Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), where the primary form of interaction is between students and instructors, mediated by the computer. CBT/CBL usually means individualized (self-study) learning, while CMC involves teacher/tutor facilitation and requires scenarization of flexible learning activities. In addition, modern ICT provides education with tools for sustaining learning communities and associated knowledge management tasks. It also provides tools for student and curriculum management.

In addition to classroom enhancement, learning technologies also play a major role in full-time distance teaching. While most quality offers still rely on paper, videos and occasional CBT/CBL materials, there is increased use of e-tutoring through forums, chat rooms, video-conferencing etc. Courses frequently use “blended” or hybrid designs that mix presence (usually at the beginning and at the end of a module) with distance activities and use various pedagogical styles (e.g. drill & practise, exercises, projects etc.). However, in initial vocational training, distance teaching doesn’t play an important part.

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The 2000’s emergence of multiple mobile and ubiquitous technologies gave a new impulse to situated learning theories favouring “learning-in-context” scenarios. Some literature uses the concept of “integrated learning” to describe blended learning scenarios that integrate both school and authentic (e.g. workplace) settings.

Today, we are facing a wide range of pedagogical strategies and available technologies. Classification schemes taking into account both dimensions can become very complex, e.g. Joyce (2000) or Reeves & Reeves (1998). We therefore conclude our short overview with a simple summary table adapted from Baumgartner and Kalz (2004); they distinguish between three major forms of pedagogies and the associated technology observed in current on-line teaching practice.

Table 1: Three major forms of pedagogies and associated technologies (adapted from Baumgartner & Kalz, 2004).

Dominant Strategy Transfer

(learning I)

Tutoring

(learning II)

Coaching

(learning III)

Knowledge type Factual knowledge, “know-that”

Procedural knowledge, “know-how”, problem solving, concepts

Social practice, “knowing in action”

Aims of Teaching Transfer of propositional knowledge

Presentation of predetermined problems

Action in (complex and social) situations

Learning goal to know, to remember to do, to practice, to argue to cope, to master

Assessment Production of correct answers

Selection of correct methods and its use

Realization of adequate action strategies

Learning content type Verbal knowledge, Memorization

Skill, Ability Social Responsibility

Teaching and learning strategies and activities

to teach, to explain to observe, to help, to demonstrate

to cooperate, to support

Preferred technologies e-Instruction: Learning Management System, Learning Content Management Systems.

Multimedia presentations

Simulations, micro-worlds, CSCL

e-Tutoring, e-Moderation: Forums, WebLogs, Groupware including conferencing and application sharing

e-Coaching: Collaborative Content Management Systems (Portals, Wikis, etc.), Knowledge Forums, collaborative mobile technology

As table 1 shows, pedagogical aims and strategies can be tied to certain technologies. Or the other way round: most technologies are not innocent and do at least implicitly put constraints on didactical range.

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1.5 Experts' review

The reports produced by the experts contacted by our group prior to establish the present proposal provided advice in several areas not only restricted on the use of ICT in vocational education. Here are the most salient points (a more detailed synthesis is included in Section 12 of this document):

1. The vocational system is in need for better coherence, in particular since professional development has become more differentiated and flexible (Depover).

2. Modern working environments ground on intensive collaboration, expertise sharing and social knowledge that require new educational standards (Järvelä).

3. There is a need to make the learner active, self-directed, creative and independent, he/she should develop higher order and metacognitive skills e.g. «learning how to learn» through autonomous and collaborative learning activities (Depover, Järvelä, Simons).

4. Increased focus should be put on the acquisition of operational competences, i.e. a complete «competence matrix». Also, the importance of implicit learning should not be underestimated (Järvelä, Simons).

5. This goals can be better achieved through pedagogical strategies like enquiry-, problem-, case-, and project-based learning that takes place in realistic (authentic) settings and has strong collaborative components (Depover, Järvelä, Simons)

6. When learning takes place in open and complex environments there is particular need for guidance and other scaffolding (Rouet, Järvelä, Euler).

7. New pedagogies can be much better achieved with ICT and even more so with flexible, mobile technology (all).

8. Successful implementation of new practices needs to take into account contextual factors and therefore implementation and evaluation instruments need to be adapted to specific objectives and situations. Little is known on the use of ICT in vocational training. (Euler, Rouet).

9. There is strong need for change management both at the teacher, the school level and curricula planning. This should include creation of computer-mediated teacher networks. (Depover, Euler).

Their list of recommendations focuses on three major issues

1. Vocational training needs better coherence and it should prepare the student for the modern working place. Conversely students should become better learners, better general problem solvers and better group workers.

2. Vocational training (in particular) should lead to operational competencies and that can only be acquired through authentic and rich learning experiences. These experiences, however, will require coordination and guidance.

3. New technology (and mobile technology in particular) is required to deal with the complexity of more effective new pedagogies that can address these issues in vocational training.

The reports produced by the experts also illustrate that learning technologies hardly reached the world of vocational training. Our interpretation is that these technologies so far have mostly carried out a model of training (reading texts, answering quizzes, using simulation tools or argumentations tools) that is not adequate to vocational training. Therefore, we will not expand traditional e-learning research to vocational training, but develop a specific research and development plan.

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2 A brief analysis of the Swiss legal Framework and its implication for related ICT research

The Swiss vocational education system currently schools almost 190’000 apprentices. Most curricula are regulated by federal law. In 2004, 51302 federally recognized certificates have been delivered and 63406 new contracts have been signed. Vocational education represents about 80% at the secondary level (16-20 year olds) and most is delivered through “dual mode”, i.e. an apprenticeship in a business complemented by an average of 1-2 days of schooling / week in a vocational college. In the French part, full time professional schooling with extended internships reaches a higher proportion (30% against 17% in the German part). Both types of schooling can be extended to achieve a higher federal diploma, diplomas delivered by higher professional schools or a professional baccalaureate giving access to universities of applied sciences. Currently, there exist over 200 federally recognized professions that lead either to a 2 year basic federal certificate or to the more dominant 3 or 4 years advanced federal certificate. Each training program is defined by an ordinance edicted by the Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology (OPET). Among the 51302 certificates delivered in 2004, the largest shares are taken by metal and machine industries (12’238), Organization, Administration and Office (12’719), and Sales (6461). The examination’s pass rate is about 90%. New professions (either newly created or currently regulated at cantonal level) are being integrated into this system. In particular we can cite health care and social work professions which represented only 2689 certificates in 2004. E.g. the newly created medical health specialist is expected to take a large job market share away from formerly less qualified nursing aids.

2.1 The new legislation on vocational training (LFPr):

A new legislation came into force in 2004, the "Loi fédérale sur la formation professionnelle (LFPr) of December 2002 and its associated "Ordonnance sur la formation professionnelle" (OFPr) of November 2003. It attempts to add new dynamics and increased flexibility to Switzerland’s apprenticeship system and explicitly states support for future career domains (LFPr Art. 1). This new legislation has been designed as a general framework (“loi cadre”) and its impact can only be evaluated once all the training programs have been redesigned and reimplemented, in principle until 2009 according to art. 73. However, initial analysis can rely on the message to the parliament, parliamentary debates, various directives issued by the OPET to whom the law attributes coordination, quality insurance and supervision of general culture training. In addition, there exist already a few rewritten training ordinances.

The message to the parliament (Conseil fédéral, 2000) outlined several aims of the proposed draft: (1) Maintenance of a system combining theory and practice that will give direct access to the job market and that favors professional competency without neglecting "school knowledge". Apprenticeship remains the preferred organizing principle, but also full-time schooling with extensive internships leading to the same kind of certificate is covered. (2) Differentiation of offerings according to different cognitive capacities (a 2 year basic training, the typical 3-4 year training leading to a advanced federal certificate of capacity, and new specialized training leading to federally recognized specialized diplomas). (3) Integration of new professions (e.g. health and social work). (4) Greater flexibility in the organization of offers (e.g. introduction of formalized business-to-business courses). (5) Improved horizontal and vertical mobility which already has been a hallmark of the Swiss system. Furthermore, the message insisted on "new needs" due to structural change of

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the economy. Such needs are for example capacity for life-long learning, higher “general” skill levels including ICT skills (Conseil fédéral 2000: 5258, 5270). Vocational schools are also invited to change. E.g. they should teach interdisciplinary skills, introduce project-based teaching (Conseil fédéral 2000: 5272), introduce modular training, and cooperate better with other actors. Finally, also more political agenda points, like social integration, gender issues and durable development were addressed.

Although parliament made several modifications to the draft (major differences of opinion concerned finances and the role of the Cantons in certain areas), all major political forces were behind the revision and the general spirit summarized above has been maintained in the final adopted version. As several members of parliament pointed out, since the law is written as a general framework it remains to be seen how specific training programs will be implemented.

The new LFPr stresses collaboration between actors (art. 1 LFPr, art.1 OFPr) and clearly outlines major roles for involved actors. The legislation identifies vocational learning as common task of the Swiss confederation, the Cantons and organizations from the working environment. All three kinds of actors are obliged to collaborate in various task domains. A central role is given to the Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology (OPET). It has been given strategic management tasks that include quality insurance, transparency of training throughout Switzerland, coordination of training plans and enactment of training ordinances for each profession. OPET also defines minimal prescriptions for teaching of general culture (e.g. languages). OPET also runs the Swiss Pedagogical Institute for Vocational Education (SPIVE) that trains teachers and teacher’s trainers and promotes innovation and research. Cantons run vocational colleges (both part- and full-time). They also implement vocational education offices that offer career and study advisory services and that supervise apprenticeship contracts. Cantonal policies are coordinated through the Swiss Conference for Vocational Training Offices (SBBK), one of the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Directors of Education (EDK) subcommittees. Organizations from the working environment are deeply involved in vocational training. The most important role goes to professional organizations. These define requirements (vocational qualifications), curriculum, and create placements. They also may develop new training opportunities (outside vocational schools). Social partners (e.g. labor unions) and other concerned organizations also must be consulted and in certain cases may even play stronger roles (e.g. in case specialized professional organization do not exist). Business, whenever possible provides apprenticeships and/or internships for full-time students.

Art. 4 implicitly stresses the need for flexibility and further adaptations. Not only it lays the foundations of a 10-year research programme, but the confederation also reserves itself the right to initiate pilot projects for new professions and to create the associated structures. Art 8. LFPr and OFPr gives the OPET extended competency to define a list of quality insurance methods from which training agencies can choose and which must then be enforced by the Cantons (Art 24 LFPr).

Art. 15 LFPr defines the object of vocational training. It defines "qualification" as competencies, knowledge and know-how needed for a specific professional activity. It then distinguishes between (a) "specific qualifications" needed for a professional activity, (b) "general culture" needed to integrate both the "job world" and society, various knowledge and competencies needed to insure sustainable development, and (c) finally the aptitude and the disposition for life-long learning, critical sense and decision making. Clearly some of these goals may need to interpreted in a wider political context, but others, e.g. the association with "general culture" with work-place and social integration or also mentions of more meta-cognitive skills clearly should have an impact on learning goals and training plans being currently redefined for all career-specific ordinances.

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Art. 16 outlines a flexible training system that ties learning contents to various learning places and it defines responsibilities. Al. 1 defines three major types of contents: (a) training for professional practise, (b) school education composed of general culture and specific job-related knowledge, (c) complements to both (a) and (b). Al. 2 defines the following training places for professional practise: the business, a training network of business, a vocational or commercial school or similar. Vocational school (college) delivers general culture and specific job-related education. Complements are delivered by inter-business courses and other places. Art. 16 also adresses full-time non-apprenticeship models but art. 15 OFPR requires that full-time schools must organize extensive internships and in addition art. 16 OFPr requires that Cantons have to verify together with professional organizations that links with the job world are adequate. Furthermore Art. 16 requires training, according to the definition of al. 1., to be fixed in career specific ordinances and again that all concerned agents must collaborate. While (a) and (b) are typicial of the Swiss system, it is interesting to note that full-time schooling programs are required to establish strong ties with the workplace and that a new form of organization, i.e. (c) “complements” may be organized to cover deficiencies of either workplace apprenticeship or vocational school.

2.1.1 The general anatomy of basic vocational education and training

A standard apprenticeship takes place in a business where practical skills are learned. Businesses may organize training associations within which an apprentice can migrate to acquire specialized skills that single small businesses cannot offer. Vocational colleges provide both vocational and general education, usually 1-2 days /week but other models are possible. The same schools also can offer full- time schooling leading to federal certificates but must organize extensive training workshops. Finally, Business-to-Business courses are a newly defined feature and assist in the teaching and acquisition of basic skills if there is a need.

The near majority of the currently over 200 federally recognized careers are codified by OPET enacted ordinances (LFPr Art 19) defining elements like job descriptions and associated skills, goals to be met, learning contents and associated roles of various learning places, certification and examinations. Each ordinance is also joined by a curriculum (training plan). Currently, most of these ordinances as well cantonal legislation predate the revision of the law and they ought to be adapted to the new legislation by 2009. Around 30 having received a "ticket" in 2003 are slated for 2005.

One major change introduced with the new LFPr is variety. Each training model can considerably differ from one profession to another. In particular, in the 1-2 days of school/week model, one can adopt a “degressive model” with a very high load of school training in the beginning and more time spent in business during the last year. Business-to-business (inter-enterprise) courses are also an innovative feature. Importance of development of social and personal competencies (including life-long learning capacity) has an impact on qualification procedures, i.e. formative examinations during the training gain importance. General culture education is now formally in the hands of OPET that can issue detailed directives (currently under consultation, planned for 2006). It is not clear if integration of general culture subjects and curricula specific contents at the level of certain learning activities would be desired by all stakeholders.

A major difference between “old” and “new style” ordinances relates to the way in which job competencies are defined. In new ordinances (including the health specialist that anticipates an OPET ordinance) there is a clear distinction between key competencies and specific competencies related to the job. Key competencies are formulated as objectives to be achieved during the training. E.g. Health workers have to accept and understand persons and understand the system of their values, build professional relationships, be reflective etc. Examined ordinances (old or new) also explicitly addressed difficult "soft skills" that are not easily taught. E.g. the logistics worker has to develop

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positive attitude with clients or deal with faulty deliveries. The training of mechanics insists on "learning to learn" and to become autonomous, as well as developing teamwork, creativity, flexibility and change. Such skills cannot be taught in the abstract, they must be acquired through the integration of real or, at least, well simulated situations.

In addition to these soft skills, both taught at school and learnt in the workplace, there are a number of "technical skills" that also exist throughout global "learning fields". E.g. radiography in health professions is taught in schools and considered to be difficult, but it also appears at the workplace. Most ordinances also require acquisition of various ICT skills, e.g. office management tools that again are taught in both places.

2.1.2 Salient features of interest to ICT-based scenarios

Clearly, “ICT in professional training” research projects have to take into account the rapidly changing landscape of professional education, i.e. in particular its emphasis on “higher learning skills”, increased skill levels required for some careers, and integration of new professions of the health, arts and social sector. Also one may ask how to support “verticality”, i.e. how to prepare learners in initial training (secondary II) what kinds of skill ought to help them to enter specialized schools or even UAS. Following an analysis of various legal texts and interviews led with several stakeholders from vocational schools, advisory services and professional organization we identified the following areas as being interesting for further investigation.

(1) ICT skills as a subject. The LPFr explicitly mentions "future domains" explicitly tied to ICT in the message of the Swiss government. Also it requires (art. 3 LFPr) that training is geared towards integration in society and the job place and therefore requires ICT skills from anyone. In extension, one can claim that mastery of ICT skill also includes necessary attitudes and behaviors required in the “learning organization”, e.g. the ability to participate in knowledge sharing and group learning activities.

(2) Coordination between learning places is emphasized in several places. Although it only requires various agencies to collaborate towards the definition of training programs (with the technical help of OPET who then enacts the ordinances), the spirit of the law allows for integration of learning activities. E.g. Art. 21 LFPr allows schools to coordinate collaboration of actors in professional training. Art. 17 OFPr requires schools to acknowledge links in various training contents and to identify contact persons for apprentices and their business if applicable. Coordination of contents and learning activities is not explicitly planned, but should remain highly desirable given the generally outlined goals. Adequate ICT tools can greatly facilitate such an endeavor. In particular tools and concepts for project- and problem-based learning scenarios, but also various forms of e-tutoring.

(3) The journal. Most examined training ordinances require from apprentices to keep a journal at their workplace and have it controlled by the apprenticeship master at regular intervals (a few weeks). Interview data suggests that in many cases the journal is neglected and in no case we found evidence that journal writing is integrated with school learning.

(3) Acquisition of general skills, in particular life-long learning skills (LFPr, OFPr) and ability to execute complex job-related tasks with a precise goal over a longer period (OFFT, 2001) require in principle project-based learning scenarios. In addition, all apprentices have to produce a “travail pratique individuel” (TPI) at the end of their training. Probject-based learning can benefit a lot from ICT-based orchestration, scaffolding, management, and facilitation frameworks like “community, collaboration and content management” (C3MS) portals.

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(4) Optional training courses and supporting courses are defined in Art. 20 OFPr and could be of interest to providers of e-learning materials. Along similar lines, initial training (about 6 weeks), delivers specific general basic domain-related knowledge, but also social and methodological knowledge. Learning of both facts (“know-that”) and simple skills (“know-how”) could be complemented with simple electronic learning units (e-learning), but there also could be some space for ICT-facilitated project-work.

Our consortium will primarly focus on the issue of coordinating learning activities between learning places, but integrate issues raised by the other areas outlined above.

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3 General research questions addressed by the Leading House and the corresponding theses adopted within its own research program

Despite the many studies conducted to establish the effectiveness of computers is education, there is no evidence that computers per se increase or decrease the quality of learning. Media have no intrinsic effect. The effectiveness depends on the quality of the software being used and not on the use of computers. In addition, we have seen that the same software may have different effects according to the context of its use, for instance the instructions given by the teacher (Zeller & Dillenbourg, 1997). Therefore, this project does not address the effectiveness of computers in general, nor the effectiveness of generic softwares such as hypertexts or forums. This projects aims to establish the effectiveness of more specific training scenarios that apply state of the art learning technology to the specificity of the Swiss vocational training contexts.

Vocational training differs in many ways from other secondary education: different objectives, audience, organization, curriculum, culture. A key difference here refers to the dual system around which vocational training is organized in Switzerland: Unlike general education, vocational training occurs concurrently on multiple sites with multiple actors.

3.1.1. General thesis 1

Our first thesis is that the main role of learning technologies in such a distributed context is different from that of computer-based activities designed for other secondary schools. Therefore, instead of focusing on individual learning software as used in general education, we aim to investigate situations and scenarios where technology sustains interactions among multiple actors located in multiple places (school, work, home, etc.). In particular, we postulate that feeling part of such a network should improve the process of autonomy building by the apprentice, one of the main objective of vocational education. It is also expected that the quality of training will increase for the students as well as for the trainers if the technology contributes to augment the consistency of training activities across multiple spaces. In other words, we will focus on technologies for networking, in the social sense of the word.

However, technologies have no intrinsic effect. Educational technologies have been available for many years but it is not enough: installing a forum for instance does not automatically generate rich argumentation or mutual help. The actual effects of technologies depend on the activities that students and teachers engage in the environment. Therefore, we will develop and experiment several educational scenarios that all reflect our research paradigm.

3.1.2. General thesis 2

Our second assumption is that the concrete modality of this networking facilities need to be adapted to the context of each specific vocational programme and to common practices and skills available among different branches of the vocational education systems. The schools concerned by this study cover a large variety of intellectual and physical skills, variety of students (gender, age, interests, etc.), of training places (from very small to very large companies), or partnership with corporate associations (from very loose to very close). Our research agenda is also distributed over various branches (in particular health, mechanics and sale). Therefore, our networking hypothesis will be

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instantiated in very different ways, allowing for interesting possibilities to compare the benefits and potential of such networks across branches and domains.

Therefore the main research questions, which will be tackled by our Leading House are :

Question 1: Can technology foster the collaboration between the actors of vocational training, in particular by providing tools for a better assistance and follow-up of the apprentices across contexts?

Networking is more than enabling communication among different persons (students, teachers, supervisors). We aim to explore if the networking environment would enable to bring closer the different training contexts, for instance to reuse professional situation in school courses and to re-invest the content of school courses into the professional settings.

Question 2: How can professional situations be captured by technologies and exploited within or together with classroom activities?

Modern portable devices can easily capture, store or forward blueprints or pictures of events when they happen, regardless where they happen. These real life events can fertilise later classroom activities, which in turn will allow better understanding of what exactly has happened then. But they also allow an apprentice, when confronted with a difficulty in the workplace, to receive direct “just-in-time” comments or help by others (teachers, supervisors or peers) even if they are not physically present in the same location. We suspect that such exchanges will enlarge the potential of experiences made on the workplace and help make sense of what is being learned at school for the professional life.

Question 3: How can acting in a professional situation be enriched by the reuse of classroom learning activities?

Among the technologies that enable to bring closer the training contexts, we will focus on tools that capture and make instantly available the “student record” in terms of tasks already completed in the company and at school. This record of tasks completed provides the apprentice with direct indications of how to engage in a new task. But it will also help both the supervisor in the company and the teachers at school to finer tune the kind of activity they propose to the trainee.

Question 4: How to adapt on-line relationship (support, tutoring,…) and networking to the diversity of professions and branches in vocational education?

Vocational education is diverse and each branch has its specificity, its habits and conventions in how apprentices should be trained. Our leading house will therefore carefully examine how the general concept of “learning network through technologies” promoted here needs to be adapted to these specificities.

Question 5: How to enhance the collaboration between the actors of vocational training by providing tools for a better follow-up of students?

This question relates to e-Porfolio research, which aims to foster individual development of learners. While we do not directly address this question in one of the projects, it may emerge from certain field activities in later stages and therefore be reconsidered.

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4 Research projects planned by the Leading House

4.1 Research project 1 – Fostering autonomy through on-line scaffolds across learning contexts

4.1.1 Theoretical framework

1) Scaffolding is the name originally attributed to the way mothers help their kids to act safely and to improve their competence in solving problems (Woods, Bruner & Ross, 1976). By providing assistance and guidance and by removing it progressively as the kid gains confidence and ability in a given situation, scaffolding allows children to succeed in their enterprise, to gain a feeling of competence and to develop progressively a sense of autonomy in more and more complex situations. Scaffolding has now become one of the prominent metaphor for describing assistance attitudes in problem-based learning (Greening, 1998) and on-line tutoring (Ludwig-Hardman & Dunlap, 2003). This project will establish the pertinence of this concept and related attitudes for on-line tutoring in vocational education.

2) Learners do not always find help when they need it. While they sometimes do not dare to ask for help (Ryan & Pintrich, 1997), they also sometimes simply do not find somebody to ask for help when they would appreciate it (Karabenick & Knapp, 1988). During their training, apprentices spend long minutes alone on the job or in front of a book, without anybody to ask a question. Having the possibility to ask questions or to request help using technology could be of a great advantage in many situations and sometimes prevent larger mistakes. On-line remote help through technology offers here a solution.

3) Adaptive help-seeking behaviours have been seen as appropriate strategies for self-regulated learning (Newman, 1994). Learning to understand when you need assistance and what help would be useful also contributes to the development of self-regulated learning (Puustinen, 1998). Learning to find appropriate help (and to avoid seeking unnecessary help) using light and portable technology at work should foster autonomy of the apprentices.

4.1.2 Research questions

This project is dedicated to answer the following questions:

- What kind of help do apprentices need in the different learning contexts?

- How easily do they find help in the various learning contexts?

- How easily can apprentices formulate the kind of help they need?

- What kind of help do apprentices ask for as they become more competent and where do they expect to receive it from?

- Does the feeling of being able to find “just-in-time” and appropriate help foster the development of autonomy by the apprentice?

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4.1.3 Data

Data used to answer the questions regarding “help requests” will be gathered by means of a questionnaire and by collecting just-in-time calls for help messages sent by apprentices at different periods of their education (longitudinal study). The questionnaire will be adapted from Ryan and Pintrich (1997) and filled in by apprentices of the three professional streams examinated by our Leading House. The calls will be collected from all the calls apprentices will make during two-weeks periods (while working in their companies, making their homework or revising after a lesson), in their first, second and third year of their vocational education.

Data concerning the development of self-regulated learning strategies and autonomy will be collected by means of regular interviews of both the apprentices and their supervisors in the companies. Comparaisons will be made with apprentices of the same branch not using these technologies.

4.1.4 Subjects

As for all the projects run by our Leading House, the present project will first be developed within one specific context or professional branch, and transferred to the other contexts examined by the other projects later on (phase 6 and 7). The present project will be initiated within the machinery domain, with “polymechanicians”; the choice of this profession is both a challenge and an opportunity. Interactions, questions in this domain very often require images and gestures rather than words and verbal comments. Assistance will have to be passed up and down visually, by means of demos, simulations and examples with few words and information passing. “Polymechanicians” are also led very early in their training to work alone on a machine, with few opportunities to find assistance exactly when they would need it. On the other hand, “polymechanicians” are asked to and used to work in very different settings, on different machines or tools and to accomplish very different tasks. Learning to make connections between all the pieces of knowledge acquired in so different settings, becomes a valuable objective, and surely one challenge that an appropriate use of technology for learning could tackle effectively, in order to avoid the building of so called “träges Wissen” (Gruber, Mandl & Renkl, 2000).

Furthermore, ”polymechanics” belongs each year to the “top ten” of the choices made by youngster starting vocational education, immediately after formations within the office or sale domains. Observations made in this domain should rather easily be extended to other professions of the technical sectors. Finally, its professional association, SWISSMEM (www.swissmem-berufsbildung.ch) is well organized and structured and has a long experience with ICT-based learning, contributing among others to Crealogix’s time2learn project.

Once the tools and the pedagogical scenarios will be secured within this profession, attempts will be made to transfer the tools and the scenarios to the two other contexts involved in our work namely that of health (dental care and medical assistants) and that of logistic managers.

4.1.5 Practical relevance

It is often mentioned, in order to explain why numerous youngsters simply do not find companies willing to accept them as apprentices, that accompanying an apprentice costs time; small enterprises nowadays indeed tend to be reluctant to hire new apprentices because they consider that the time spent to answer questions and to supervise an apprentice has to be taken on the cost of the trainers own production. By diminishing the number of questions to be addressed to the professional in the

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work place, new technologies could greatly improve the willingness of such reluctant enterprises to accept apprentices again. Furthermore, if the way learning technologies are to be used in the present project really fosters the development of autonomy and self-regulated learning, the apprentices formed under these conditions should quickly take over more initiative and be willing and able to assume larger responsibility than currently.

4.2 Research project 2 – Learning by writing in project-based scenarios

4.2.1 Summary

The following project aims at investigating how ICT can support experienced-based and project-based learning scenarios to improve the integration between school and workplace knowledge and skills. The first study is a focused study (one school, one class, few workplaces and trainers involved) to investigate the impact of using a web-based workbook to import actual situations from the work place to the school classroom. The second study aims at fostering project-based scenarios in which apprentices will be asked to write down their experience along the course of the project. Two protocols will be compared with regard to their effectiveness in inciting reflexive activities and deep learning. The third study will integrate and evaluate on a larger scale the methods and tools developed in study 1 and 2 of this project as well as in project 1 and 3.

4.2.2 Objectives

Our general research question deals with how writing scenarios can improve the learner’s understanding of the situation and consequent knowledge creation processes. More specifically:

• How can writing about one’s experience support the learning process, particularly linking particular events to a subject matter learned in school and promoting strategic skills in professional situations (decision making, adapting behaviour)?

• How can writing as a result of social interactions support these processes?

• How should the learning environment be designed (including the technical environment but also the pedagogical scenario) in order to scaffold both the “writing for learning” process and the creation of social learning communities?

4.2.3 Practical relevance

This research project is focused on vocational training in health1. The examination of research reports on these professions (e.g. Beutner 2004) as well as interviews with key persons in health vocational training in Geneva highlighted the following specificities: First, it seems that one area which is

1 Particularly : dental care assistant (assistant(e)s dentaires), medical assistant (assistant(e)s de médecin), or health worker (assistant(e)s en soins communautaires).

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particularly hard for apprentices in the workplace is handling difficult relational situations with patients (e.g. body care). Second, those professions required the apprentices to acquire good theoretical knowledge in some medical domain (for example radiology, anatomy, prophylaxis…). Most apprentices consider those subjects matters as particularly difficult and far from their daily practice. As a result, many apprentices fail examinations in these subject matters. Finally, those professions require the apprentices to learn computer skills in order to be able to use professional software (mostly office management for patient files, accounting, agenda, etc.).

Our project will both anticipate the changes in curricula as a result of the new LFPr and try to overcome the difficulties that health apprentices, teachers and trainers meet during training. Our project proposes to better integrate actual practice situations and school learning situations by reusing workplace events or objects at school by the way of a web-based system available at school and at the workplace. Moreover, we propose to introduce project and experience-based scenarios that aim to develop adaptive, practical and self-management skills, while raising motivation to learn.

In health vocational training as in most others, apprentices fill in a “journal” in which they have to explicit skills and procedures acquired in the workplace, under the trainers’ responsibility. Though the journal could be an excellent opportunity to bridge between workplaces and school, it is not sufficiently filled up by apprentices nor used by trainers and teachers. Our project will build on the formal requirement to fill up a journal, while proposing a more flexible, socially shared, web-based support for it. Ultimately, we may be able to suggest a new electronic form that goes beyond simple digitalisation (e.g. the German Berichtsheftgenerator or Berichtsheft Pro software), but combines functionality that can be found in pedagogical collaborative content management and e-Portfolio portals

The health sector which is not yet fully integrated in the federal vocational training system has an important share of the job market. The current number of secondary II level apprentices and pupils is expected to grow since new professions, e.g. the health worker, only have been integrated recently. Three careers are dominant: Health Workers (Assistant-es en soins et santé communautaire), Dental assistants and Medical Assistants. In 2004 there were 8328 contracts in the health sector (i.e. 4.8 % of the total apprentices population) plus an unknown number in full-time school training + internships that also may lead to a federal certificate. In Geneva alone, there are currently about 350 apprentices.

In 2004 there were 2237 dental assistants, 2500 health workers in training (1396 new candidates), 2276 medical assistants according to Office fédéral de la statistique (2005). In Geneva, we found about 95 dental assistants and 80 medical assistants (June 2005) in training.

CEFOPS (Centre de formation professionnelle santé-social) has a total of about 700 pupils for 13 curricula, mostly full-time students in the health sector. In domains where Geneva only offers full-time schooling (e.g. medical assistants) there are very few apprentices (about 8 medical assistants) and they are schooled in Lausanne. Dental assistant's training is organized in the traditional dual way and this was the reason to use that population for the first stage (sub-project) of our project. As outlined below successful designs from study 1 will be tested with other populations, i.e. health workers and medical assistants. Scenarios from both study 1 and study 3 also may be tested with populations engaged in our partner's projects (e.g. polymechanics and logistics employees).

4.2.4 Theoretical framework

Research reveals that one learns both from and with interactive technology. In this research we will focus on the use of ICT as social expressive digital media. In this cognitive tools approach, interactive

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tools are given directly to learners to use for expressing what they experience and know to themselves and also to others.

(1) “Writing-to-learn” has a long research tradition that initially focused mostly on the effects of individual writing and related cognitive issues. Klein’s (1999) detailed research review identifies four major research lines and associated main hypothesis: (a) The “point of utterance" hypothesis: writers spontaneously generate knowledge when they write (Galbraith, 1999). (b) The “forward hypothesis”: writers externalize ideas in text, and then reread them to generate new inferences. (c) The “genre hypothesis”: writers use genre structures to organize relationships among elements of text, and thereby among elements of knowledge (Newell, 1984). (d) The “backward hypothesis”: writers set rhetorical goals, and then solve content problems to achieve these goals (Flower & Hayes, 1994). These four hypotheses invoke different aspects of writing and are in principle compatible with regard to the learner’s competence matrix. According to Klein (1999:252) there are plenty of supportive studies, but only the genre hypothesis has been systematically tested against measures of writers' learning, and shown to have generally positive effects.

(2) More recent research mainly conducted in the CSCL (computer-supported collaborative work) community focused on collaborative learning mechanisms, its impact on individual learning and development of tools that enhance collaborative and social learning. For a review see e.g. Dillenbourg (1999), Stahl (2002) or Haake (2004). Learners can be co- located, e.g. in computer-integrated classrooms (Tewissen, 2001). Writing activities are essential to many different CSCL paradigms. While mainstream “writing-to-learn” research focuses on the production of larger texts or at self self-contained entries, writing in the CSCL perspective concerns rather producing short texts in various genres (questions, arguments, definitions, etc.). Learner productions plus interactions are meant to provoke various meta-cognitive mechanisms beneficial to learning e.g. conceptual change and deeper understanding (see the EPFL research project for more details). In this research, we would like to focus on “restructuring learning environments” (Flower & Hayes, 1994; Erkins et al. 2003) where the main hypothesis is that knowledge transformation leads to knowledge constitution (Galbraith, 1999). Restructuring and knowledge building can be enhanced through computer-supported “knowledge building communities”. Writing then contributes to a larger collective body of knowledge whose elements can be edited, manipulated and put in relation. A good example are so-called computer-supported intentional learning environments (CSILE) (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994), that aim at reframing classroom discourse to support knowledge building in ways extensible to out-of-school knowledge- advancing enterprises and make school education more situated (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In one scenario, records made at the place of work (knowledge in action) “ground” reflective activities in the classroom. Many compatible instructional models, like inquiry-learning (Aubé & David, 2003; Hakkarainen, 2003; Clark et al. 2003), problem-based learning (Greening 1978) or project-based learning (Thomas et al., 1999) can integrate research results from successful experimental of clinical CSCL studies.

(3) Co-construction enhanced by collective knowledge management is also related to organizational learning. Community memories are to communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) what human memories are to individuals. They make use of explicit, external, symbolic representations that allow for shared understanding within a community. They make organizational learning possible within the group (Stahl, 2000). Conversely, such communities need a social infrastructure around the technical infrastructure (Hakkarainen 2003; Bielaczyc, 2001). Interest in knowledge-building communities is both shared by education and the business literature (Snyder, 2003; Bereiter, 2002; Paavola, 2002). In other words, individual learning in school and workplace, life-long learning, and organizational learning are related issues in this perspective (Scardamalia, 2001).

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How is this research related to vocational learning and training?

School-workplace integration is a major issue. Workplace learning is not simply unstructured but follows sustaining practices which are inherently pedagogical and that even in situations less formal than in the Swiss apprenticeship system (Lave, 1990; Scribner, 1997).“Just as the goals, norms and practices of educational institutions frame the activities students participate in, similarly workplace goals and practices determine workplace tasks and activities, and which individuals engage in these activities and how they engage” (Billet, 2001). In other words, they are clearly identifiable activities that can be reflected upon in school and therefore make school learning more authentic and in turn make the school contribute to better workplace learning.

Second, learning at workplace is constructive and situated by nature and occurs mostly through interaction with others, in a social environment. In addition, the modern workplace increases in complexity that requires reflection, teamwork and distributed cognition. All these issues are directly addressed by CSCL research that not only produced conceptual frameworks for analysis but also tools (e.g. CSILE environments) to enhance these factors of apprenticeship. It is noteworthy, that studies of vocations (e.g. Schon, 1987; Lave, 1993; Brown, 1989) have a major impact on educational reform in schools, but that this it not yet reflected in the literature on vocational education (exceptions are e.g. Stevenson, 1994; de Laat, 2002). Practitioners need to get at school the capacity to adapt, make decision, and find by themselves any information they would need in and out the workplace.

Third, life-long learning is an increasingly important issue and requires learners to be more efficient in the pursuit of understanding and knowledge creation. Active and autonomous participation in knowledge creating communities should be the main purpose of “getting wired”. This is related to a fourth issue, namely organizational learning (von Krogh, 2000) which is of strategic importance to Swiss industry and relies a lot on the abilities of workers to participate in knowledge creation and management (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002). It is important to give apprentices the capacity to learn by themselves through the life span, particularly by actively participating in knowledge and practice communities.

4.2.5 Participants research

Research in computer-mediated communication is one of TECFA’s traditional research lines and is conducted through fundamental and applied projects. Collaboration with Pierre Dillenbourg (who is now at EPFL) has let to several research projects regarding how collaborative learning can be implemented with ICT technology, e.g. over the Web (Dillenbourg & Schneider, 1995), through virtual environments or web-based Internet applications. Through the SEED project, D. Schneider has tried to develop an integrated pedagogical and technical framework to support activity-based teaching (Schneider, 2002; 2004a; 2004b), e.g. project-based learning, project-supported open learning, inquiry- learning. This applied project sponsored several successful field projects from primary school through higher education and we would like to adapt parts of the framework to vocational education.

Comprehension and production of text or multimedia documents is also a major issue in our research. With respect to writing, we found that when a spatial configuration is presented sequentially by the computer program, learners produce a description that is structured the way it was presented to them (Betrancourt, Bisseret & Faure, 2001; Betrancourt & Tversky, submitted). This result comforts our assumption that the written production reflects learners' mental representation of the subject matter. Recently, we have started another line of research of the type of instruction that fosters meta-cognitive regulation and awareness, using a situation in which two learners in collaboration at a distance had to write a common document. A questionnaire was given at some times in the task that requires the

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learners to describe their individual and collaborative strategies. These meta-cognitive prompts increased the number of interactions at a meta-cognitive level and also improved the quality of the written production (Gagnière, Betrancourt, Détienne & Chabert, 2004). Finally, research is in progress on how learners in collaborative situation make sense of a multimedia document explaining dynamic phenomena (i.e. motion of planets and plaques tectonics) in collaboration with Pierre Dillenbourg (Rebetez, Sangin, Betrancourt, & Dillenbourg, 2004).

4.2.6 Research Overview

This project consists of three successive phases that will incrementally build on each other. In each phase a new paradigm is experimented in a small-scale case study, and, if the experiment is successful, is then tested on a larger scale in the next phase.

4.2.7 Study 1: Introduction of a web-based platform bridging workplace and school activities

Objectives

This first study aims at introducing a web-based environment including a web-based diary to import actual situations from the work place in the school, with a case-based approach. It also intends to foster the use of such technologies and scenarios in the school context, and consequently to study how teachers and students take over the tools and what needs emerge while using ICT.

Research design

The platform will be a web-based platform like those we used for teaching and research at TECFA, e.g. a C3MS (Schneider et al. 2004c). Those platforms are designed in order to foster collaborative meaningful activities and interaction between the students and with the teachers and / or tutor.

The participants will be teachers (one or two), apprentices and trainers of a specific branch of training. This branch of training, the teachers and the trainers involved will depend on discussion with the head of the school department and on practical matters (i.e. the computer equipment in the workplace). We will take care of involving teachers whose class is particularly strategic for the training and involve them actively in the design of learning environment.

First, teachers will be trained both on a technical level (how to use the platform and the web-based journal?) and a pedagogical level (how can I use it in my class with a case-based approach?). During a 6-month period during which teachers and students get used to the platform, their actions and interactions will be recorded and analyzed.

Analyses

We will first focused on pedagogical uses of the web-based journal by the way of several indicators:

• the interactions in the platform (frequency of uses in each training place, type of content…),

• direct observation of uses in the classroom and in the workplace,

• interviews of participants at each level.

• questionnaires to all apprentices before and after the experiment.

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On a smaller extent, the apprentices’ results to examination taken in this subject matter can serve as supplementary indicators, though it would be very optimistic to think that a limited experiment can change performance to a global examination. Moreover, analyses of interactions in the platforms (tools used, number of information exchanged, time spent in and out the classroom…) will lead to the definition of the teachers’ level of use: one-way information (news, calendar), communication (forums, email…), individual activity (the students upload individual activities and the teacher comment on them) or collaborative activities (collaborative use by the students of production, evaluation and interaction tools). Careful attention will be paid on the pedagogical scenarios teachers will use with this platform.

Hypotheses

We assume that the web-based journal will foster the use of workplace materials in the school and improve the capacity of apprentices to link practical situations and school matters. We expect that they will be better motivated and engaged in learning theoretical subjects, while also more prone to talk about actual situations in the classrooms.

Beyond the use of the journal, we expect that teachers will use the other tools of the platforms. As usually found in the literature, we expect that most teachers will use the information tools and that only few of them will investigate individual or collaborative pedagogical activities. Another interesting issue is how apprentices, who are usually not comfortable with writing but quite familiar with instant messengers and chat, will use the platform.

Depending on the results, the tool will be made available to other classes and/or other schools in the second year. Pedagogical uses of the platform will be followed by way of the analyses of interactions in the platform and interviews with the participants.

4.2.8 Study 2: Effect of event-contingent or interval-contingent experience sampling on the apprentices’ representation about their activities.

Objectives

The objective is to investigate whether writing about one’s experience can support the learning process in a project-based scenario, particularly by linking particular events to a subject matter learned in school or to a general strategy (“know-how”) that could be applied in other situations.

Research design

The study would compare 30/40 apprentices in a similar domain but not necessarily in the same school or school year.

Two instructions for scaffolding the sampling will be compared. In the interval-contingent experience sampling condition (Conner Christensen et al. 2003), the apprentices are asked to enter their activity every day or even twice a day (the mobile device could ring and enable entering the data). In the second condition, called event-contingent sampling, the apprentice is prompted to enter data in the system each time he/she encounters what he/she considers to be a critical event (Flanagan, 1954). In both condition, the sampling will be integrated in a project-based scenario that calls for collaborative and self-reflexive (metacognitive) activities.

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In the interval-contingent sampling condition, the writing is structured in a way that engages the student to analyse the situation from an activity point of view, i.e. according to a grid adapted from Kuutti (1996) or Engeström (1987). In the event-contingent condition, the writing is structured in order to consider the determinants of the situation and its consequence. On a regular basis that will be defined in preliminary experiments, apprentices are asked to organize and elaborate the information they entered using the web-based platform.

The sampling experiment will last between 15 days and one month. The apprentices will be asked to answer to a questionnaire on their activity before the experimental intervention and just after. To enable comparisons, we should either find a more or less identical curriculum (e.g. Geneva – Vaud) or use both sampling condition in reverse order in, say, two different years. The first solution is more scientifically reliable but less convenient.

Analyses:

The analysis will first verify that apprentices are able to enter data on a regular basis. The analysis includes comparison of the information entered in the two conditions and the result to a post-questionnaire asking them to elaborate on their working situation (according to the type of apprenticeships, either case based problem solving or free essay on what is the activity, what are the difficulties and the usual solutions to get help, and so on). Participants’ subjective evaluation will be considered as complementary data.

Hypotheses:

1. In the questionnaire, apprentices show a higher level of elaboration (more information, better structured) in the post-test than in the pre-test.

2. Apprentices in the event-contingent sampling condition show a “problem-solution” oriented representation of their activity, whereas apprentices in the interval-contingent sampling condition demonstrate a hierarchical kind of representation of their activity.

3. The written content in the event-contingent sampling condition will be regarded by the participants themselves as more usable and more useful in order to complete the project.

4.2.9 Study 3: Introduction of collaborative writing scenarios in a web-based platform

Objectives

This third study will integrate the scenarios, platforms and tools developed in study 1 and 2, as well as in the two other projects. On a practical perspective, the third study will assess whether the tools used and the results obtained in particular classes and domains can be applicable and generalized across different fields. Moreover, we will put the bases for using the web-based journal as a support for a portfolio strategy and the web platform in general as a support community knowledge building.

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Research design

For this intensive study only single courses (one or two teachers and apprentices of the same year) will be involved. Ideally, the chosen courses will be in close relation to what happens in the place of work. The teacher(s) will most likely be chosen on the basis on his/her activity with the platform in study 2, in order to avoid contextual bias linked to teacher’s attitudes.

A collaborative “learning by writing” scenario will be designed in collaboration with the teacher(s) on the basis of collaborative scenarios described in the TecfaSEED catalogue (Schneider et al., 2004c). Adaptation to the context of vocational study will be made on the basis of the results of study one and two of the present project and fed by the results of research project 1.

The platform, e.g. a “Knowledge Forum” (Scardamalia, 2004) will enable collaborative discussion on specific topics related to the class and that apprentices should encounter in the place of work.

The general scenario would develop as follow: During the experimentation (about one- month duration), the teacher proposes a list of topics related to his/her class and that require real and precise information from the workplace. Those topics could be issues in the domain (how to handle a given task), general questions on organization or communication skills (e.g. how to handle an angry consumer), or projects (e.g. create an on-line course for your peer on a specific activity). Groups of 3-4 apprentices are constituted to work on the topic. When at the work place, the apprentices are asked at the end of each day of work to leave records on that topic in a common database and to comment on it. At the end of the period (one-week to one-month duration depending on the type of scenario chosen), students expose their work to the class and receive feedbacks from the students. The final version of the work is made available in the platform. Access to this knowledge base will be made possible to fellow apprentices, teachers and supervisors all over the year.

4.3 Resarch project 3 – Integrating technologies in heterogeneous contexts

4.3.1 Research direction in collaborative learning

This project belongs to a field referred to as 'computer-supported collaborative learning' (CSCL). The world of learning technologies has traditionally focused on individualistic views of human learning. A main achievement of CSCL has been to open learning technologies to the social nature of cognition. CSCL is grounded in previous research on collaborative learning. Why would student learn better in groups? How could knowledge emerge from the interactions among students who don't have this knowledge? Initial empirical studies have shown that collaborative learning is often more effective than learning alone, but not systematically (Slavin, 1983). Hence, a second generation of studies attempted to determine under which conditions collaborative learning would be effective: task features, group size, group heterogeneity, medium features and the like (Dillenbourg et al., 1996). However, too many parameters need to be controlled for predicting effects. Moreover these parameters interact with each other in a complex way. Therefore, the third generation of studies does not try to control the effectiveness of collaborative learning as if it was a black box but zooms in the collaborative process in order to grasp which interactions produce learning and when these interactions do occur. In other words, the effects of collaborative learning depend on the quality of interactions during collaboration. Several types of interactions have been studied such as the quality of explanations (Webb, 1991), mutual regulation (Blaye, 1988), argumentation (Baker, 1999), conflict resolution (Doise, Mugny & Perret-Clermont, 1975). These various types of interactions have in

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common that they lead students to verbalize knowledge that would otherwise remain tacit. Roschelle and Teasley (1995) described collaborative interactions as the process of building and maintaining a shared understanding of the task that learners have to achieve.

The evolution of research on collaborative learning has obvious pedagogical implications. Instead of trying to control the conditions that determine the effectiveness of collaborative learning, designers attempt to (directly) influence the interactions: augmenting the frequency of conflicts, scaffolding explanations, supporting mutual understanding. Collaboration can be influenced anticipatively, by structuring the collaborative process in order to trigger productive interactions, or retroactively, by regulating interactions, as tutors do. These two complementary approaches are described below.

Figure 1: On the left, structuring interactions with a semi-structured interface. The buttons in the bottom part offer pre-defined communication acts and

sentence openers (Soller, 2002). On the right, regulating interactions. The group mirror is the red-green meter (Jermann, 2002).

Structuring collaborative learning is achieved by semi-structured communication interfaces and/or by the application of scripts for collaborative learning.

A semi-structured communication interface is usually a text-based communication tool that makes explicit which utterance is being acknowledged, which object is being referred to or which type of speech act is being uttered. Examples of these are given by Baker & Lund (1997), Suthers et al., (1995); Jermann & Schneider, (1997), Veerman & Treasure Jones (1999) and Soller (2002), see figure above. These tools are relevant for the three projects of the leading house in order to structure communication between the learner and either his peers or his tutors.

A collaboration script (Aronson et al, 1978; O'Donnell & Dansereau, 1992) is a set of instructions prescribing to how the group members should collaborate. The collaboration process is structured as a sequence of phases, each phase corresponding to a specific task where group members have a specific role to play. A well-known script is the 'reciprocal teaching' approach set up by Palincsar & Brown (1984): one peer reads a text paragraph and the other questions him/her about his/her understanding, for the next paragraph roles are shifted. Many variations of this script exist such as peer tutoring (O'Donnell & Dansereau, 1992; Fantuzzo et al., 1989) or peer teaching (Reiserer, Ertl & Mandl, 2002). We developed and experimented several examples with distinctive features such as the ArgueGraph script that fosters argumentation and the ConceptGrid script that fosters mutual explanations (Dillenbourg & Jermann, 2005).

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While the effects of semi-structured interfaces have not been clearly established (Veerman & Treasure Jones, 1999), the effectiveness of CSCL scripts became a hot research topic (Kollar et al, 2003; Weinberger et al, to appear). Scripts offer the opportunity to turn basic research into classroom guidelines. At the same time, they also raise the risk of drifting away from the very idea of collaborative learning, by forcing interactions that do not match the social dynamics of groups, what we called 'over-scripting' (Dillenbourg, 2002).

Regulating collaborative learning is a subtle art. The tutor has to provide prompts or cues without interfering with the social dynamics of the group. Human tutoring is a necessary, but expensive resource for computer-supported collaborative learning. Some of the current research aims to design computerized tutors (Inaba & Okamoto, 1996; Barros & Verdejo, 2000; Constantino-González & Suthers, 2002) or to develop tools that facilitate the group regulation by human tutors (Després, 2001). Group tutoring is not directly related to this research project but by the research project 1. However, one extension is that the tools designed for helping tutors to regulate individuals could be given to the group for helping it to regulate itself. These tools provide the group with a representation of its own processes or interactions (Jermann, 2002; Dillenbourg et al., 2002, Donath, 1999; Zumbach et al, 2002). We refer to them as group mirrors (Dillenbourg et al, 2002) not as passive mirrors but as mirrors that have a memory. P. Jermann (2002) investigated the hypothesis that these mirrors would enhance the group self-regulation. The task given to pairs was to tune the lights of several crossroads to optimize the flow of cars through a city. In a first set of experiments, he observed that the most effective pairs were those that discussed their options before tuning the lights: in such a dynamic system, a simple approach by trial-and-error leads to low performance. Therefore, this information was encompassed into a group mirror (figure 1). Experiments show that pairs do interact differently when provided with this feedback, although this difference does not lead to higher group performance.

These three functionalities (mirroring, structuring communication and scripting collaboration) suffer from a paradox: they haven't been investigated in the context of vocational training while they would be extremely relevant to address the main thesis of this leading house: networking the school actors who are geographically distributed. Among the reasons for this paradox is the fact that most applications run on desktop computers, requiring space and time for reflection, conditions hardly compatible for the everyday life of most apprentices. This leads us to consider a new relationship between computers and learning environment. Hence our focus is on integrated learning, i.e. the integration of activities occurring across multiple spaces (school, workplace), with or without computers.

4.3.2 Research directions in collaborative technologies

The last decade revealed an evolution of computer science towards more physical interactions between the users and the tools. Information technology is not anymore bound to desktop or laptop computers. Let us explain why this evolution if important for vocational schools. This evolution is characterized by the following axes:

"Ubiquitous computing": this vision, produced by Weiser in 1991, has now become a reality. Instead of accessing information through his single computer, one person daily interacts with a large variety of tiny computers embedded in various devices such as his watch, phone, car, TV, …

"Disappearing computer" or "invisible computing": closely related to ubiquitous computing, this concept stresses the fact that these big ugly boxes called computers will disappear while access to computing will increase. Computers will continue to increase their impact on our life but they will be more in the background. The figure 2a below (left) illustrates this concept: in this first year primary

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school, while the kids intensively use computer-based learning software, they told us "There are no computers in our classroom" simply because they don’t' see them. They interact via touch screens embedded in their school tables and the computers are simply in the next room. Computing power is present, but it is fully integrated in the classroom context!

Figure 2a: Kids learn together on a table with embedded screen, computers are not

visible. (REF)

Figure 2b. "Illuminating Light" : student learn with a simulation by

moving tangible objects. (Underkoffler & Ishii, 1998)

"Tangibles" refers to the fact that the interaction between the user and the computer is not bound the usual input devices such as a keyboard and a mouse, but to a variety of physical objects. Figure 2b illustrates an environment where students learn about laser-based optical layouts (Underkoffler & Ishii, 1998). Instead of manipulating virtual objects on the screen, this simulation software enables students to manipulate concrete objects representing lasers, lenses and mirrors. The system detects the orientation of these elements and projects on the table the lines that represent laser light.

"Augmented reality" is the result of overlaying and adding digital information to real objects. The display of simulated laser beams on a workspace with tangibles elements (figure 2b) is an example of augmenting reality. We stress the difference with virtual reality. In a virtual reality training environment, an electrician would set up cables into a simulated 3D house. In an augmented reality, he would walk in the real house and perceive the position of existing cables though head-mounted displays (glasses).

“Ambient displays” refer to an architectural interface (Wineski et al., 1998). Sensors and displays located on walls, ceilings, etc. interface people with digital information. The idea is not to transmit critical information for a specific task but to provide artistic and subtle changes in light, sound and movement in order to convey atmosphere, peripheral awareness of the group activity and the sense of being connected with others. This is illustrated by the Hello.Wall presented in figure 3a, which emits information via light patterns to reflect identity and distance of people passing by (Prante et al., 2003).

"Roomware" (Streitz & al., 1998) addresses the design and the evaluation of computer-augmented room elements like doors, walls, furniture with integrated information and communication technology. This research stream stresses out that the traditional desktop metaphor (1 user/1 computer) has shown its limits. Traditional computers keep attention focused at the expense of human-human interaction (Prante et al., 2003): collaboration usually ends up with one person controlling one computer or everyone working alone on his computer (Shih & al, 2004). On the other hand, collaboration around a traditional table is fluid and dynamic (Bly, 1998; Tang 1991). The goal

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of roomware is to create a hybrid world that combines affordances of real objects and the power of computers.

"Locative Media" refers to the new functionalities created since devices such as phones or PDAs know their own geographical position by various techniques (GPS, Wifi signal, phone operator antennas, RFID tags, etc.). The so-called "context-aware" applications provide users with information that is specific to their location. In a training context, it could be "who is the teammate or tutor closest to me?". Location concerns both persons and objects, for instance "where is that book?" or "where is the tool I need to use?" We are currently exploring how group members jointly annotate their space by associating a message to a physical location (Figure 3b)

Figure 3a: Ambient display: the FraunHofer Hello.Wall (Prante &

al., 2003)

Figure 3b. ShoutSpace enables to attach email messages to a

geographical place

Many of these applications raise privacy issues that can be tackled in two ways. If an artifact mirrors the activity of a small group, only group members have access to this shared information and trust replaces privacy. If the artifact mirrors the activity of a larger group, privacy is managed by displaying only aggregated information in such a way that users may perceive the intensity of interactions at the group level without identifying personal information. In addition, our current experiences on spatial coordination tools show that self-declared positions lead to better group representations than automatically tracked positions, which solves many of the privacy issues.

CRAFT has organized an international workshop on new computational tools for collaborative learning settings (June 2005). We conduct several projects using mobile phones (the RoadForum project funded by Nokia) or handhelds computers (the TeamFrames project funded by HP).

Let us state clearly that a new technology does not constitute per se an educational innovation. We are not interested by technologies per se but by their effect on collaborative learning mechanisms. However, we aim to see how this evolution of computer science may lead to a shift in learning technologies. Our reasons to investigate these technologies are:

Ambient technologies have the potential to change the relationship between technology and education. This potential has been poorly explored in the field of education.

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This potential is especially relevant for educational context where the students do not sit the whole day in a classroom but may change workplaces several times per week. We stress the convergence between the dual training approach, which strength is to involve apprentices in authentic contexts, and the evolution of computer science towards technologies that adapt to their physical context.

For decades, learning technologies focused on the conceptual aspects of learning, turning namely physical experiments into virtual experiments. There is nowadays a great potential to use technologies that foster the physical aspects of learning technologies, especially in the field of vocational training. A physical approach to information technology may be more appropriate for students who do not feel easy with desktop technologies.

This technological evolution raises a key question: What if, instead of having a computer in the center of his workplace, the apprentice would interact with his peers and tutors through artifacts that are in the background, that do not interfere with his work but nonetheless support collaborative learning functionalities (as described in the previous section) ?

Research Context and Research Questions

A main research question of the leading house is: "How to adapt on-line relationship (support, tutoring…) to the diversity of contexts in vocational training?" Our project explores this question in the context of collaborative learning and ubiquitous computing. Our general question hence becomes: Which physical artifacts can be introduced in the students workplaces for fostering interactions with other students and tutors without interfering with their work and with local social interactions (with colleagues, with the boss…)? To state it differently:

Main question: Traditional learning technologies fit with students who sit on a chair in front of a table with a computer in a quiet environment. What is the potential of learning technologies for students who move all the time, carry objects, may have dirty hands and work in a noisy environment? Are learning technologies irrelevant for them or should we develop new ways to use technologies that are more appropriate to these contexts?

To refine these objectives, we will first instantiate them within a concrete training programme, namely that of "logistics manager" ("gestionnaire en logistique", "logistikassistent"). In this program, students will work in the reception, storage, transport and delivery of goods ranging from letters to televisions or engines. The training is structured around 3 domains of activity: "stockage" ("Lager"), "traffic" ("Verkehr") and "distribution" ("Distribution"). As explained later on, we will also work with the professional association of this domain (ASFL) and with “La Poste”, one of the main employers of these apprentices (cf Figure 4).

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Figure 4: Pictures taken from www.asfl.ch, the website of the Swiss association for the training in logistics, concerning the profession of “logistic manager”

Our rationale for choosing to start our investigation with the logistic manager branch is the following:

It currently concerns 2408 students in Switzerland, including 431 women. In 2005, 757 certificates will be delivered and 770 new students have been accepted to start a new training. In addition, the results of this study may apply to similar groups of apprentices such as "Employé de commerce E" ("option logistique de transport international").

By definition, the logistics employees live in a mobile and diverse environment for which the new forms of computing depicted in the previous section is relevant.

The field of logistics has a well-structured professional organisation "Association Suisse pour la formation professionnelle en Logistique" (see www.asfl.ch or Schweizerische Vereinigung für die Berufsbildung in der Logistik www.svbl.ch).

This association has already an experience in e-learning (see http://www.logistics-academy.ch/) on the top of which we could build further experiments. The goal of this project is in no way to reinvent yet another learning management system.

The industry in the geographical region covered by EPNV (North of Candton Vaud) has clear needs in logistics, as illustrated by the new development of the Swiss Post infrastructures. The Swiss post will be our partner.

The curriculum of these students ("guide méthodologique", "Modell Lehrgang") stresses four main objectives. Two of them are especially important for this study. The objective 4 refers to the diversity of information sources:

4. Utilisation des sources d’information Les gestionnaires en logistique et les praticien(ne)s en logistique doivent recourir à diverses sources d’information (systèmes informatiques, documents de livraison, formulaires, fax, téléphone, radio, etc.). Ils/elles doivent donc apprendre à choisir leurs supports et canaux d’information en fonction des tâches et à utiliser ces sources de manière judicieuse et correcte.

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This objectives confirms that it is important to develop the use of information technologies for these students. More importantly, the objective 3 refers to what constitutes the key element of our project:

3. Pensée globale, axée sur les processus Celui ou celle qui ne voit que ses propres tâches ou activités se retrouvera isolé(e) à long terme et aura probablement de la peine à situer son activité dans un ensemble harmonieux. Un grand nombre de tâches et de processus de travail s’influencent réciproquement. C’est pourquoi les apprenti(e)s doivent connaître les processus fondamentaux concernant de manière directe ou indirecte la logistique et axer leurs activités sur le produit final de la chaîne de processus.

Within this training context, our general question and the research directions in CSCL (see the state of the art above) generate several specific questions.

Do cognitive group mirrors, placed in the background of workplaces, provide students with a better understanding of the global activity of their team? Would these tools enable students to reflect in real time or would they be more effective for a reflective analysis later on ("replay")? Could teachers use these 'replay' in their classes or at the 'centre de formation professionnelle' at Marly?

Could personal devices be used to facilitate non-disruptive interaction with peers and with the tutors? As explained in the state of the art, we will pay attention to 'semi-structured communication interfaces' that prompt students to engage into productive interactions.

As this stage, we do not want specify the tools that will be developed because our methodology (see next section) consists in observing the students', supervisors' and teachers' activities before to design any tool. However, these tools will borrow some of the cheap tracking technologies such as radio-frequency tags (RFID), bar-codes as well blue-tooth or WI-FI connexions. Other devices for which we have experience are mobiles phones, handheld computers (PDAs) and tablet PCs will be used as input display. As output devices, we will use mobile phones, specific watches as well as ambient displays. Concrete examples of functionalities could be: the student passes his phone camera on the code bar of a product and see who in his company has manipulated this product before; the apprentices have a display on the wall of their room where they see of they contributed to the global logistics chain.

The goal is not the development but the experimentation of these tools. Our experiments aim to answer questions that concern

How are these tools used: How do these tools integrate in the workplaces, schools and training centers? Do they raise privacy concerns? Are the colleagues disturbed by their presence? Do they raise safety issues? Do apprentices pay attention to background information tools? How do they use them? How often do the look at them?

How do these tools influence teamwork: Do these tools change their work practices? Do they improve coordination among colleagues? Do they enable apprentices to communicate with peers/teachers without interfering with work processes? Do they have an effect on productivity?

How do these tools influence learning: Do they augment the frequency of productive interactions? What are their effects on the students' understanding of logistics flows? How do teachers and work supervisors use these tools to follow their students or to explain them logistics processes.

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These questions require long experiments (see methodology – phases 3 to 5): one hour experiments would not be relevant; we need to conduct longer observations to see how students, teachers and professionals appropriate these tools. The tools themselves will evolve along these experiments.

4.3.3 Methodology and timeframe

Our research methods will start with intensive qualitative studies (detailed analyses of small samples) and move to extensive quantitative studies (experimental comparison of groups in contrasted conditions).

Phase 1 (6 months): In-Situ Observation

During this first phase, we will use ethnographical methods to observe the daily work of the apprentices in 3 places: at work, at their school in Yverdon and at the training center in Marly, during the "inter-entreprise" courses provided by professional association. These observations will be conducted on a voluntary basis. We will collect information in 3 ways:

The "shadowing" method consists in following a student during one week, across his different places. We used this method in the past in observing CERN teamwork.

Subjective cameras are cameras that subjects carry around all the day and that give a very realistic account of their activities. We will collaborate with S. Lahlou from EDF (Electricité de France) who intensively used this method in professional settings.

Locative media enable to record the student’s path in his workplace.

These data are not used as primary data. Instead, we display them to the users during debriefing interviews: typically, the researcher replays the collected data and asks the apprentice and his supervisor ("maître de stage") to comment on specific events. We have developed tools that enable to conduct this replay interview. We are currently using these replay interviews with EPFL students. We will apply this method with students from first, second and third year in order to grasp how the evolution of knowledge can be traced in their concrete daily activities.

These ethnographical studies will be supervised by J-B Haué (CRAFT) who conducted similar studies for NISSAN when he was working at UCSD (San Diego). In addition, the collected data (films, paths, etc.) will be presented to a panel of teachers to explore how this material could enrich their activities at school. These studies aim to collect information on the way these students learn and work:

How do students progress towards the "Objectif 3: Pensée globale axée sur les processus"? How do they become aware of their role in the complex chain of logistics, how do they understand the implication of their activity to downstream activities, etc. While this objective is easy to formulate in abstract terms, our goal is to grasp the very practical aspects of it.

How do students interact with the other members of their work settings: other students, older students, colleagues, their supervisor ("maître de stage") and their teachers? Which events in the workplace trigger their interactions? When would it be useful to interact with students or tutors who are not on site?

How do students interact with their environment? Do they leave marks on objects or other tricks to remember what to do? How do they represent the workflow of objects in their environment?

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Phase 2 (12 months): Participatory design

The goal of phase 2 is to design the mirroring tools with the students, the supervisors and the teachers. This phase will start with a session where the data collected during phase 1 will be presented to all participants and the goals of this second phase will be set up. Then we will conduct 3 cycles. Each cycle is composed of 3 steps: collaborative design (we work with students, supervisors and teachers), prototyping (constructing quickly a mock-up of the target solution) and finally informal testing with the users. The output of phase 2 will be a set of mirroring tools that help students to understand their role and the role of their team mates in the global logistics workflow.

Phase 3 (6 months): Empirical validation

The goal of phase 3 is to freeze technology in order to conduct a systematic empirical validation. Since the EPNV has several classes of students in this domain for each year of the curriculum, the technology will be tested in one class of each year. We will combine a traditional pre-test / post-test comparison (the knowledge measured is described in the "guide méthodologique") with post-hoc interviews.

The output of phase 3 will be a description of the effects of these new tools on interactions among students and how interactions between students and tutors. Learning effects will also be compared. We do not expect a global result such as a tool being globally effective or not but rather to gain understanding of how these tools enhance (or not) some types of social interactions.

Phases 4 and 5 (12 months): Re-design and Empirical validation

For the last year, our work will be split into parallel tracks. The first track –phases 4 and 5- aims to use the results of phase 3 to transform the tools, redesign them slightly or mainly (phase 4), and conduct new validation studies (phase 5). During the redesign phase, we will also integrate the ideas that our colleagues from the leading house have successfully tested in other contexts.

Phases 6 and 7 (12 months): Transfer to other vocational training context

The second track aims to transfer the results of phase 1-3 to the other educational contexts investigated by our partners from the Universities of Geneva and Fribourg. The tools developed for training logistics will not be applicable as such to the other training environments. Hence, phase 6 aims to see how the principles tested with logisticians could be adapted to the new training contexts. Finally, phase 7 aims to validate the effectiveness of adapted tools in these new contexts.

4.4 General timeline of each of the projects run by the Leading House

The seven phases described for project 3 will more or less organise the work of all three projects run by the Leading House. Figure 5 presents these phases in the prospective timelime. Begin and end of each phase is deliberately fuzzy on this representation, in order to stay more in line with the specificities of all the projects and contexts we will work with.

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Figure 5: prospective timeline of the calendar to be followed, with small variations from one project to the other, by the projects lead by the Leading House.

Legend: 1: In-situ observation 2: Participatory design 3: Empirical validation 4-5: Redesign and empirical validation (2) 6-7: Transfer to other training contexts

4.5 Cross-fertilisation of the projects

As explained above (see section 3), all these projects share a same view of the potential of learning technologies for vocational education. They also intend to tackle the same research questions, are grounded in the same theses and have several theoretical concepts in common, although they each explore other dimensions of the problem. In addition, they also have a certain number of concrete applications on each other: therefore, the three projects are not going to be carried out separately but rather within a cross-fertilization perspective, in the sense that results obtained in one project will be communicated to and possibly used by the two other projects. Tools as well as observations made with given professional branches and contexts in each project during year 1 and 2 will be transferred, with the necessary adaptations, to the two other contexts and branches involved in the other projects.

Cross-fertilization between the research projects will be conveyed by informal communication among the partners, but will also be formally planned. Three workshops will be organized at the end of each year to disseminate the three projects' results to all partners. It is important to involve the partners in the schools into such meetings in order to reinforce the research-action community and possibly give birth to interactions between the schools. In addition, a common web-based platform will be opened in order to provide communication and information tools, and in which partners will deposit and access documents produced by the other partners.

.

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5 Other activities of the Leading House

5.1 Call for project(s)

The leading house will launch a call for project(s) open to all research institutes across Switzerland. The successful applicants will also become research partners within the network, i.e. they will participate to the workshops, conferences and doctoral activities listed below. The general topic of this call for projects led by others will be the parental contribution to the whole enterprise of bringing the apprentices work more autonomously, more collaboratively and more reflectively.

Among the specific questions which the applicant(s) should tackle are :

- In the general effort to bring the apprentices to work more autonomously, more collaboratively and more reflectively, how should technology render the students activities more transparent for their parents, both at school and in companies?

- How could parents be made regularly aware of what their youngsters are learning at school and at the workplace?

Several teams have already expressed their interests at previous stages of the proposal preparation: Centre de Didactique Universitaire, Université de Fribourg (Prof. Charlier); Centre Nouvelles technologies et enseignement, Université de Fribourg (Dr. Collaud), centre Edutech (Dr. Monnard), Haute Ecole de Fribourg en Technologies et Gestion (Prof. Delley), group 'Media' EPFL (Dr. Vanoirbeek); Laboratoire 'Economie et planification de l'éducation' de l'Université de Genève (Prof. Hanhart).

The call for projects will be distributed all over Switzerland and the selection procedure will be supervised by our scientific board.

5.2 Leading House Doctoral School

The leading house will organize doctoral training activities for all PhD students involved in the projects. These courses and workshops will offer opportunities to discuss research at a very deep level. By this doctoral effort, we aim to produce between 5 and 8 PhDs related to the use of technologies in vocational training. This new generation will be the best guarantee that research on this topic will continue for many years.

• Two workshops for the PhD students involved in this leading house will be set up every year. The first one, in February, will focus on each students’ personal project within the research program of the Leading House. The second one, in July, will bring together students, heads of the schools, project leaders and members of the scientific board of the Leading House in order to evaluate the progresses and frame the possible obstacles encountered by the research program.

• Students will also be invited to attend the course on 'distributed cognitive systems’ given by Pierre Dillenbourg within the 'doctoral programme in computer science’ of

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EPFL as well as the course ‘Hot topics in educational technologies? Given by TECFA within the doctoral program in Education at Geneva University.

• Doctoral students will also be encouraged (and supported) to contribute to international workshops and conferences both on vocational education and on ICT in education.

• Furthermore, students will be enrolled in the general doctoral school in educational research, funded by CUSO (Conference of the Swiss universities of Western Switzerland), co-directed by Jean-Luc Gurtner (University of Fribourg).

• Finally, through the numerous contacts existing with the Virtual Campus Schweiz, (VCS), students will be encouraged to take part in the annual conference of that national project.

5.3 Dissemination and scientifc events

Beyond the publication of the main results in journals and as chapters in specialized books, dissemination will be achieved through research workshops; workshops will take place at the end of each academic year, where our results will be presented and discussed both with international experts on the one side, with school authorities, ISPFP and OPET responsibles. These workshops will be held in conjunction of the meeting of the scientific board and with the meetings of the doctoral school. Media specialists will be invited and demos of the tools as well as of the pedagogical scenarios will be provided.

In partnership with ISPFP (Institut Suisse de Pédagogie pour la Formation Professionnelle), the leading house will organize events where all practitioners (school teachers, directors, corporate supervisors, etc.) involved in one of the projects will be invited to report on their participation and will be informed of the advances made in the other projects. Participants from outside the network will be allowed to participate. We will especially invite the other schools with which we had recent contacts. This conference aim to involve more schools in the project when our first results convince them on the relevance of our approach.

These four events, the doctoral school, the research workshop, the practionners and the scientific board meeting will be held all together in order to enhance the publicity around these meetings, to foster cross-fertilization of the different projects and finally so as to decrease the travel costs for the participants.

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6 Partners

6.1 Leading House

The leading house is formed jointly by four research units that have acquired a long experience in the field of learning technology:

• Centre de Recherche et d'Appui pour la Formation et ses Technologies (CRAFT), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Director: Prof. Dillenbourg

• Le Département des Sciences de l’Education, Université de Fribourg, Director: Prof. Gurtner

• Unité de Technologies de Formation et d'Apprentissage (TECFA), Université de Genève, Director: Prof. Betrancourt

• ISPFP (Institut Suisse de Pédagogie pour la Formation Professionnelle). Dr Berno Stoffel, head of the R&D sector at the national level, is based in Lausanne, very close to EPFL. The daily coordination will be done my Markus Sanz.

CRAFT is in charge of the administrative coordination of the activities. It will also serve as the official contact for OFFT and KTI.

6.1.1 CRAFT, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

CRAFT is the Center for Research and Support of Training and its Technologies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Its mission is to improve the quality of teaching at EPFL, with or without technologies, and to conduct advanced research in the field of learning technologies.

Former teacher in elementary school, Pierre Dillenbourg graduated in educational science (University of Mons, Belgium). He started his research on learning technologies in 1984. He obtained a PhD in computer science from the University of Lancaster (UK), in the domain of artificial intelligence applications for educational software. He has been director of TECFA, the educational technology unit at the University of Geneva. He joined EPFL in November 2002. His publication list includes more than 50 publications and 100 conferences worldwide. His current interests concern computer-supported collaborative learning: the role of space in social interaction; the effects of awareness tools on group performance and mutual modelling; the design of mixed-reality learning environments; mobile technologies for learning. P. Dillenbourg has served as consultant on training technologies and HCI issues for large companies in Switzerland and Europe. He is the editor of the Kluwer Series "Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning" and President of the International Society for Learning Sciences.

6.1.2 Département des Sciences de l’Education, Université de Fribourg

The Department of education of the University of Fribourg is in charge of preparing teachers for the secondary education as well as future researchers in education.

Jean-Luc Gurtner is professor of education and educational psychology and head of the Department. His main themes of research are the evolution of motivation during adolescence on the one hand and the promises of educational technology to improve learning on the other, especially in the case of

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distant learning. He conducts his research both within the regular school system and in the context of vocational education and training.

On his publication lists are around 50 papers and chapters and 4 books. He has developed with his team a web-based platform designed to help students organize their work in remote learning (www.eif.ch/LA).

6.1.3 TECFA - Université de Genève

TECFA is a research and teaching unit created in 1989 by the Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education ("School of Psychology and Education") of the University of Geneva. It is active in the field of educational technology. TECFA's research covers a large area of interests, including: cognitive issues in learning technology, computer-supported collaborative learning, virtual learning environments, computer-mediated communication, information systems in education, and distance education. Since 1994, TECFA offers STAF ("Sciences et Technologies de l'Apprentissage et de la Formation"): a postgraduate diploma (DESS) in educational technology. TECFA supported many developments and participated in several EU projects. Since it creation, this degree combines presential activities (6 weeks per year) and web-based activities. TECFA has been a pioneer in the design of a virtual campus promoting a constructivist approach.

Mireille Betrancourt is professor in Information Technologies and Learning Processes in the Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences. Graduated in Psychology, she received a PhD. in Cognitive Sciences in 1996. Her main research topics are multimedia learning, cognitive usability of complex information systems, and computer tools to support metacognitive activities and their effect on conceptual learning. She is the head of TECFA unit since October 2003. Her publication list includes over 40 English and French papers.

Daniel K. Schneider is a senior lecturer and researcher since 2003. Holding a PhD in political science, he has been working in educational technology as a technical designer (TECFA’s systems specialist) and lecturer since 1988. He participated in various innovative pedagogical and technological projects and has been a prime mover towards the introduction of creative pedagogical strategies and ICT technologies. His current R&D interests focus on modular, flexible and open Internet architectures supporting rich and effective educational designs. Within TECFA's “blended” master program in educational technology, he teaches educational information and communication systems, virtual environments and some technical training courses.

6.1.4 ISPFP (Institut Suisse de Pédagogie pour la Formation Professionnelle).

The Institute is directly affiliated to OFFT. It is in charge of organizing and conducting courses for teachers involved in professional education. It also conducts or assures the supervision of several research projects related to various topics related to vocational education. One of these topics is the use of ICT.

Dr Berno Stoffel holds the responsibility for the whole R&D resort of the Western Switzerland component of the institution; his collaborator Markus Sanz is in charge of the ICT project.

6.2 Partnership

The Leading House has already secured number of important contacts and agreements with schools, professional associations and other important offices involved with vocational education.

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Project 1 will take advantage of on-going contacts with :

• CIFOM, the Centre Intercommunal de Formation des Montagnes Neuchâteloises and with his director, M. Jean-Pierre Brügger.

• EIAF, Ecole d’ingénieurs et d’architectes de Fribourg, its director, M. Michel Rast and its section Telecommunication (Prof. Antoine Delley).

• IIMT, international institute of management in telecommunications of the University of Fribourg and its director Mrs Prof. Dr Stephanie Teufel.

• EMF, Ecole des métiers de Fribourg and his director M. Georges Vial.

For project 2 representatives of meaningful organizations and school in the field of health have been contacted. In-depth interviews have been conducted with the following persons and all expressed interest in the research project and our global research questions and agreed in principle to participate in one or another way.

• Monique Gerdil, directrice du Centre de formation professionnelle santé-social (CEFOPS). CEFOPS is the umbrella organization of Geneva’s schools in the health sector.

• Dr. Marc Jeanneret, Director dental assistant training at CEFOPS and also in charge of training in behalf of the Association des Médecins-Dentistes de Genève (section genevoise de la SSO)

• Alain Grasset, (OFPC - Office pour l'orientation, la formation professionnelle et continue)

• Sandrine Collet, Association Genevoise des Assistantes Médicales

Work related to project 3 will start out with at the Ecole Professionnelle du Nord Vaudois (EPNV – director M. Tatti). This school gathers campuses in Yverdon, Sainte-Croix and Payerne. EPNV has about 2000 students and 220 staff, distributed over 3 cities and 7 buildings. EPNV is per se a network of schools which augments the potential relevance of our main hypothesis: networking the actors of vocational training. This school has launched an initiative called "Carrefour du futur" in order to develop a strategic reflection and a vision for the future that are aligned with our research objectives. EPNV is directed by Michel Tatti. The daily contact will be with Jacques Kurzo or André Ryser, who are teaching for logistics there.

This project will also involve all the main partners active in the training of apprentices in logistics, namely:

• ASFL is the "Association Suisse pour la formation professionnelle en Logistique". His director, M. Bruno Artmann, has approved their participation. The contact will be the director of the "Centre de formation en Logistique" ( Marly) Jean-Bernard Collaud.

• "La Poste" is one of the major employers in this domain. Pierre Marville, head of the training of apprentices at La Poste, has approved their participation in this Leading House. The daily contacts will be with Daniel Cornu (Director, Centre de tri de la Poste), Sven Rieder and Patrick Pellet.

The daily coordination of this project at CRAFT will be done by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Haué.

Two other schools, the Ecole Professionelle Commercialle de Lausanne (director G. Curtet) and the Ecole Professionelle Commerciale de Nyon (director R. de Pury), have expressed their interest for a partnership on this project and could be associated from the second year of this project if our initial results are relevant for them.

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6.3 International scientific board

We suggest to nominate the experts mandated for reports with one or two exceptions for whom we are searching replacements.

• A representative from France (under discussion)

• A representative from Germany (under discussion)

• Prof. Christian Depover (Université de Mons-Hainaut, Belgium)

• Prof. Dieter Euler (Institut für Wirtschaftpädagogik, Universität St-Gallen, Switzerland)

• Prof. P. Robert-Jan Simons (Center for ICT in Education, Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

• Prof. Sanna Järvelä (University of Oulu, Finland)

• Well known scientists from the US, such as Drs E. Wenger or J. Roschelle should also be invited to sit on this board.

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Ludwig-Hardman, S., & Dunlap, J.C. (2003). Learner Support Services for Online Students: Scaffolding for Success. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. (April - 2003). ISSN: 1492-3831.

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Paavola, S., Lipponen, L., & Hakkarainen, K. (2002). Epistemological foundations for CSCL: A comparison of three models of innovative knowledge communities. In G. Stahl (Ed.), Computer- supported collaborative learning: Foundations for a CSCL community. Proceedings of the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 2002 Conference (pp. 24–32). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Pätzold, G. (2003). Lernfelder – Lernortkooperation. Neugestaltung beruflicher Bildung. 2. Auflage, Bochum: Projekt Verlag.

Pätzold, G. & Stender, J., (2004). Lernortkooperation und Bildungsnetzwerke. München: Bertelsmann.

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Person, N.K., Graesser, A.C, Magliano, J.P & Kreuz, R.J. (1994) Inferring what the student knows in one-to-one tutoring: the role of student questions and answers. Learning and Individual Differences, 6 (2), pp. 205-229.

Pfister, H.-R. (to appear). How to support synchronous net-based learning discourses: principles and perspectives. In R. Bromme, H. Spada and F. Hesse (Eds) Barriers and biases in computer- mediated knowledge communication - and how they may be overcome. Kluwer. CSCL book series.

Prante,T,. Röcker C., Streitz, N.A., Stenzel, R., Magerkurth, C., van Alphen,D. and Plewe D.A.(2003). Hello.Wall – Beyond Ambient Displays. In: Peter Ljungstrand, Jason Brotherton (Eds.): Video Track and Adjunct Proceedings of the 5th Intern. Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UBICOMP'03), Seattle, Wash., USA, Oct. 12-15, 2003.

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Reiserer, M., Ertl, B., & Mandl, H. (2002) Fostering Collaborative Knowledge Construction in Desktop Videconferencing. Effects of Content Schemes and Cooperation Scripts in Peer-Teaching Settings. In G. Stahl (Ed.), Computer support for collaborative learning: foundations for a CSCL community (pp. 379-388). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Rieber, L. P., Smith, M., Al-Ghafry, S., Strickland, W., Chu, G., & Spahi, F. (1996). The role of meaning in interpreting graphical and textual feedback during a computer-based simulation. Computers and Education, 27(1),45–58.

Rieber, L.P. (1990). Using computer animated graphics in science instruction with children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82, 135-140.

Roschelle, J. & Teasley S.D. (1995). The construction of shared knowledge in collaborative problem solving. In C.E. O'Malley (Ed), Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. (pp. 69-197). Berlin: Springer-Verlag

Ryan, A. & Pintrich, P. (1997). “Should I ask for help?” The role of motivation and attitudes in adolescents’ help seeking in math classes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 329-341.

Salomon, G. (1993). No distribution without individual's cognition: a dynamic interactional view. In G. Salomon. (Ed). Distributed cognitions. Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 111- 138). Cambridge, USA: Cambridge University Press.

Scardamalia, M. (2001). Big change question. Will educational institutions, within their present structures, be able to adapt sufficiently to meet the needs of the information age?, Journal of Educational Change, 2, 171-176.

Scardamalia, M. (2003). Knowledge Forum (Advances beyond CSILE). Journal of Distance Education, 17 (Suppl. 3, Learning Technology Innovation in Canada), 23-28.

Scardamalia, M. (2004a). CSILE/Knowledge Forum. In Education and technology: An Encyclopedia (pp. 183-192). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

Scardamalia, M. (2004b). Knowledge technologies in education: Beyond learning environments. In Education and technology: An Encyclopedia (pp. 393-400). Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (1994). The CSILE project: Trying to bring the classroom into world 3. In K. McGilly, ed., Classroom Lessons: Integrating Cognitive Theory and Classroom Practice (pp. 201–228). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.

Schober, M.F. (1993). Spatial perspective-taking in conversation. Cognition, 47, 1-24.

Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Franscisco: Jossey-Bass.

Schwartz, D.L. (1995). The emergence of abstract dyad representations in dyad problem solving. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4 (3), pp. 321-354.

Schwartz, D.L. (1999). The productive agency that drives collaborative learning. In P. Dillenbourg (Ed) Collaborative learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches (pp. 197 - 218). Oxford: Pergamon.

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Scribner, S. (1997). Mental and manual work: An activity theory orientation. In E. Tobah, R. J. Falmagne, M. B. Parlee, L. M. Martin & A. S. Kapelman (Eds.), Mind and Social Practice: Selected Writings of Sylvia Scribner (pp 367-374).Cambridge: CUP

Seufert, S. & Mayr. P. (2002). Fachlexikon e-le@rning. Wegweiser durch das e-Vokabular, managerSeminare.

Slavin, R.E. (1983). Cooperative learning. New York: Longman.

Slugoski, B.R., Lalljee, M., Lamb, R. & Ginsburg, G.P. (1993) Attribution in conversational context: Effect of mutual knowledghe on explanation giving. European Journal of Social Psychology, 23, 219-238.

Snyder, W. and E. Wenger (2003), Our world as a learning system. A community of practice approach. in Clawson, J. and Conner, M. (eds.) Creating a Learning Culture: Strategy, Practice, and Technology. New York: Cambridge University Press

Soller, A. (2002). Computational  analysis  of  knowledge  sharing  in  collaborative distance  learning. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of Pittsburgh, PA.

Spiro, Rand J., Paul J. Feltovich, Michael J. Jacobson and Richard L. Coulson (1991). Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism, and Hypertext: Random Access Instruction for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition in Ill-Structured Domains, Educational Technology, 24-33.

Stahl G. (2002) “Contributions to a theoretical framework for CSCL” in G. Stahl (Ed.), (2002) Computer support for collaborative learning: foundations for a CSCL community, (Cscl 2002 Proceedings), Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Stahl, G. (2000). Collaborative information environments to support knowledge construction by communities. AI & Society, 14, 1-27.

Stahl, G. (2003). Building collaborative knowing: Elements of a social theory of learning. In J.-W. Strijbos, P. Kirschner & R. Martens (Eds.), What we know about CSCL in higher education. Amsterdam, NL: Kluwer.

Stefik, M., Bobrow, D.G., Foster, G., Lanning, S. & Tatart, D. (1987). WYSIWIS Revised: Early Experiences with Multiuser Interfaces. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 5(2), 147-167, April.

Stevenson, J. (ed.) (1994). Cognition at Work: The Development of Vocational Expertise, Leabrook, SA: National Centre for Vocational Education Research.

Strahler, B. (2003). Informationstechnik zur Förderung der internen und externen Zusammenarbeit nutzen, in B. Strahler, E. Tiemeyer, & K. Wilbers (Eds.), Bildungsnetzwerke in der Praxis, Erfolgsfacktoren, Konzepte, Lösungen. (pp. 63-75). München: Bertelsmann.

Strahler, B. Tiemeyer, E., Wilbers, K. (2003). Bildungsnetzwerke in der Praxis, Erfolgsfacktoren, Konzepte, Lösungen, Bertelsmann, 63-75. URL: http://www.anuba-online.de/

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Suthers, D., Weiner, A. Connelly J. & Paolucci, M. (1995). Belvedere: Engaging students in critical discussion of science and public policy issues. In. J. Greer (Ed). Proceedings of the International Conference in Artificial Intelligence in Education, Washington, August 16-19, pp. 266-273.

Terveen L.G., Wroblewski, D.A. & Tighe S.N. (1991). Intelligence Assistance through Collaborative Manipulation, Proceedings of IJCAI 91.

Tewissen, F., Lingnau, A., Hoppe, U., Mannhaupt, G., & Nischk, D. (2001). Collaborative Writing in a Computer-integrated Classroom for Early Learning. In P. Dillenbourg, A. Eurelings, & Kai Hakkarainen (editors) Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (Euro-CSCL 2001). pp. 593-600. Maastricht, The Netherlands, March.

Thomas, J. W., Mergendoller, J.R., & Michaelson, A. (1999). Project-based learning: A handbook for middle and high school teachers. Novato, CA: The Buck Institute for Education.

Thorndike, E.L. (1912, published 1923). Education: A First Book. New York: Macmillan Co.

Tiemeyer, E. (2003). Kooperative Entwicklung und Anwendung von Lernmodulen - Erfolgsfaktoren zur Umsetzung lernfeldorientierter Lehrpläne in B. Strahler, E. Tiemeyer, & K. Wilbers (Eds.), Bildungsnetzwerke in der Praxis, Erfolgsfaktoren, Konzepte, Lösungen, München: Bertelsmann, 88-101.

Tiemeyer, E. (2005). E-Learning in der beruflichen Bildung - Technologien, Einsatzszenarien, E-Learning-Didaktik. Berlin: Winklers Verlag.

Underkoffler, J. & Ishii, H. (1998). Illuminating Light: An Optical Design Tool with a Luminous-Tangible Interface Published in the Proceedings of CHI ‘98, April 18-23, ACM.

Veerman, A.L. & Treasure-Jones, T. (1999). Software for problem solving through collaborative argumentation. In P. Poirier & J. Andriessen (Eds.), Foundations of argumentative test processing (pp. 203-230). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

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Weinberger, A., Reiserer, M., Ertl, B., Fischer, F, & Mandl, H. (to appear). Facilitating collaborative knowledge construction in computer-mediated learning environments with cooperation scripts. In R. Bromme, H. Spada And F. Hesse (Eds) Barriers and biases in computer-mediated knowledge communication - and how they may be overcome. Kluwer. CSCL book series.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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7.2 Laws, ordinances and other official documents

BBG, Bundesgesetz vom 13. Dezember 2002 über die Berufsbildung (Berufsbildungsgesetz).

Conseil fédéral (2000). Message relatif à une nouvelle loi sur la formation professionnelle du 6 septembre 2000.

LFPr, Loi fédérale sur la formation professionnelle, 412-10, 13 décembre 2002, Entrée en vigueur: 1er janvier 2004.

Office fédéral de la statistique (2005). Statistique des contrats d’apprentissage et des examens de fin d’apprentissage en 2004, Actualités OFS, Education et science 15, Neuchâtel, Mars 2005.

OFFT (2001), Office fédéral de la formation professionnelle. Directives pour les travaux pratiques individuels (TPI) à l’examen de fin d’apprentissage du 27 août 2001.

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OFFT (2005), Office fédéral de la formation professionnelle. Manuel relatif aux ordonnances (Elaboration par étapes d’une ordonnance sur la formation professionnelle initiale, OFFT, 2ème édition 2005.

OFPr, Ordonnance sur la formation professionnelle, 412.101, 19 novembre 2003, Entrée en vigueur: 1er janvier 2004.

Règlements d’apprentissage et d’examen de fin d’apprentissage et Programmes d’enseignement professionnel

Training ordinances and curricula examined: • Assistant(e)s médicales (86907 du 12 septembre 1994, Modification du 27 octobre 2003)

• Assistant(e)s dentaires (86905 du 21 novembre 1997)

• Assistant-e en soins et santé communautaires (Ordonnance et plan de formation 6 Juin 2002/ 3 juillet 2003, Croix Rouge)

• Employé de commerce (68300 et 68200 du 24 janvier 2003)

• Assistante en pharmacie (70402 du 22 juin 1990, Etat le 10 Mai 2000)

• Polymécanicien(ne) (45702, 45703, 45704 du 21 août 1997)

• Gestionnaire en logistique (95503 du 12 janvier 2001)

7.3 References to the applicants' publications

Berger, A., Moretti, R., Chastonay, P., Dillenbourg, P., Bchir, A., Baddoura, R., Bengondo, C., Scherly, D., Ndumbe, P., Farah, P. & Kayser, B. (2001). Teaching community health by exploiting international socio-cultural and economical differences. In P.Dillenbourg, A. Eurelings & K. Hakkarainen (Eds). Proceedings of the first European Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning ( pp. 97-105) Maastricht, March 2001.

Betrancourt, M. & Tversky, B. (submitted). Simple animations for organizing diagrams. submitted to International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.

Betrancourt, M., Bisseret, A. & Faure, A. (2001). Sequential display of pictures and its effect on mental representations. in J.-F. Rouet, J. J. Levonen and A. Biardeau (eds.), Multimedia learning: cognitive and instructional issues. (pp 112-118), EARLI Series "Advances in Learning and Instruction", Elsiever : The Netherlands.

Betrancourt, M., Dillenbourg, P. & Montarnal, C. (2003). Computer Technologies in Powerful Learning Environments: The Case of Using Animated and Interactive Graphics for Teaching Financial Concepts. In E. De Corte, L. Verschaffel, N, Entwistle & J. Van Merriënboer (Eds), Powerful Learning Environments: Unravelling basic components and dimensions (pp. 143-157). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Dillenbourg P. & Traum, D. (submitted). The complementarity of a whiteboard and a chat in building a shared solution. Journal of Learning Sciences.

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Dillenbourg, P. & Self, J.A. (1992). A framework for learner modelling. Interactive Learning Environments. vol. 2, nº 2, pp. 111-137.

Dillenbourg, P. & Schneider, D. (1995). “Collaborative learning and the Internet”, Proceedings of ICCAI 95.

Dillenbourg, P., Baker, M., Blaye, A. & O'Malley, C. (1996). The evolution of research on collaborative learning. In E. Spada & P. Reiman (Eds) Learning in Humans and Machine: Towards an interdisciplinary learning science (pp. 189-211). Oxford: Elsevier.

Dillenbourg, P. & Traum, P. (1999). Does a shared screen make a shared understanding ? C. Hoadley et J. Roschelle (Eds.), Proceedings of the Third Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, pp. 127-135, Stanford.

Dillenbourg, P. (Ed)(1999). Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches. Oxford: Pergamon.

Dillenbourg, P. (2002). Over-scripting CSCL: The risks of blending collaborative learning with instructional design. In P. A. Kirschner (Ed.), Three worlds of CSCL. Can we support CSCL (pp. 61- 91). Heerlen, Open Universiteit Nederland.

Dillenbourg, P., Ott, D., Wehrle, T., Bourquin, Y., Jermann, P., Corti, D. & Salo, P. (2002). The socio- cognitive functions of community mirrors. In F. Flückiger, C. Jutz, P. Schulz and L. Cantoni (Eds). Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on New Educational Environments. Lugano, May 8-11, 2002.

Dillenbourg, P. & Jermann, P. (2003). Elaborating new arguments through a CSCL scenario. In. G. Andriessen, M. Baker & D. Suthers. (Eds). Arguing to Learn: Confronting Cognitions in Computer- Supported Collaborative Learning environments. (pp. 205-226) CSCL Series. Amsterdam: Kluwer.

Dillenbourg, P., Poirier, L. & Carles, L. (2003). Communautés virtuelles d'apprentissage: e-jargon ou nouveau paradigm. In A. Taurisson & A. Sentini, Pédagogies.Net. L'essor des communautés virtuelles d'apprentissage. (pp. 11-48). Presses Universitaires du Québec.

Gagnière, L. Betrancourt, M., Détienne F. & Chabert, G. (2004). Developing a reflective incentive to encourage metacognitive activities in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment, Communication to the first EARLI - SIG Meeting on metacognition, July 2004.

Gurtner, J.-L., Flückiger, F., Müller, L., Rueger, D. & Zahnd, J.(1998). Nuevas technologias, educacion y formacion. Un esfuerzo necessario de adaptacion a los cambios sociales. Revista Española de Educacion Comparada, 4, 51-67.

Gurtner J.-L., Monnard I. & Genoud P. (2001). Towards a Multilayer Model of Context and its Impact on Motivation. In S. Volet & S. Järvelä (Eds), Motivation in Learning Contexts, (pp. 189-208). London: Pergamon.

Gurtner, J. (2001). Trouver la bonne distance : les nouvelles technologies, facteur de rapprochement Nord-Sud, mais à quelles conditions. In A. Akkari, R. Sultana, & J.-L. Gurtner (Eds.), Politiques

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et stratégies éducatives. Termes de l’échange et nouveaux enjeux Nord-Sud (pp. 139-156). Berne: Peter Lang.

Gurtner, J.-L. (forthcoming). Des technologies éducatives aux technologies de l’apprentissage. In B. Charlier & D. Peraya, D. (Eds.), Regards croisés sur la recherche en technologie de l’éducation. De Boeck.

Gurtner, J.-L. & Zahnd, J. (2003). L'accompagnement pédagogique. Un incontournable de la formation professionnelle continue à distance. Distances et Savoirs, 4, 459-470.

Gurtner, J.-L., Monbaron, J., Platteaux, H., Touvet, D., & Zahnd, J. (2004). Dynamique de l'évolution des institutions de formation tertiaire suscitée par l'introduction des TIC. Synthesis 15, NFPNR 43. (aussi disponible à l'adresse http://www.nfp43.unibe.ch/documentation/synthesis.htm).

Gurtner, J-L. & Oser, F. (forthcoming). Self-esteem, self-concepts, personal goals and motivation :Are there age and subjects’ differences ? To appear in Proceedings of SELF Research Conference.

Hakkinen, P., Jarvela, S. & Dillenbourg, P. (2000). Group Reflection Tools for Virtual Expert Community- Reflex Project. In B. Fischman & S. O'Connor (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of The Learning Sciences (pp. 203-204). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Jermann P, & Dillenbourg, P. (to appear). Elaborating new arguments through a cscl scenario. In. G. Andriessen, M. Baker & D. Suthers. (Eds). Arguing to Learn: Confronting Cognitions in Computer- Supported Collaborative Learning environments. CSCL Series. Amsterdam: Kluwer.

Jermann, P. & Schneider, D. (1997). "Semi-structured interface in collaborative problem-solving". First swiss worshop on distributed and parallel systems, Lausanne. http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/publicat/jermann- papers/lsnne97/lsne-97-1.html.

Jermann, P. (2002). Task and Interaction Regulation in Controlling a Traffic Simulation. In G. Stahl (Ed.) Computer Support for Collaborative Learning. Proceedings of CSCL2002, Boulder, Colorado. (pp. 301-302), Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Lepper, M.R., Woolverton, M., Mumme, D. & Gurtner, J. (1993). Motivational Techniques of Expert Human Tutors: Lessons for the Design of Computer-Based Tutors. In: S.P. Lajoie and S.J. Derry (Eds.), Computers as Cognitive Tools. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Hillsdale, NJ.

Mondoux, J. & Auderset, P.-B. & Dillenbourg, P., (2004). Abstraction and Transfer in Collaborative Learning. Sixth International Conference for the Learning Sciences. UCLA, June 2004.

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8 Funding (provisional)

Central budget of the Leading House

Secretariat 75000 Intern. workshops and scientific board 40000 Practionners days 15000 Doctoral programme 60000 Total 190000

Budget per project 1 2 3 4 (called)

Salaries 240000 330000 360000 180000 Equipment 20000 20000 20000 10000 General expenses (incl. travel costs) 10000 10000 10000 5000 Partnership with schools 30000 40000 10000 5000 Total per project 300000 400000 400000 200000 1300000 Global Cost of the Leading House 1490000 Annual global cost Salaries Other costs year 1 450000 360000 90000 year 2 520000 440000 80000 year 3 520000 450000 70000

Total per category 1490000 1250000 240000