Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
script. Once, we did the debriefing activity one week after the argumentation phase
instead of right after, and all energy had disappeared from this debriefing session.
The time flexibility (factor 2) was crucial in ArgueGraph. We had bad experi-
ences with an early version of the environment in which all students were expected
to provide their individual answers before moving to the group formation. The
whole class was stuck if one student left the room or lost the Internet connexion.
Now, ManyScripts offers the possibility to move on to phase 2 even if all answers
from phase 1 have not been provided. In terms of timing, teachers actually make sure
that the delay between the first student who completes the questionnaire and the last
one is not too high. If many students have to wait for other, it quickly generates all
sorts of undesirable behaviour (factor 3: Control).
Since ConceptGrid has a duration of several weeks, we had to implement flex-
ibility (factor 2) in terms of group formation. Once a group of students is formed,
what happens if a student drops out the class? If the teacher decides to make groups
of four, what happens if the number of students in the class is not a multiple of
4? ManyScripts implements two functionalities for coping with these accidents
(Dillenbourg & Tchounikine, 2007). If a student is missing in a group, the teacher
may turn on the “SPY” feature which enables the group in which role X is miss-
ing to borrow the definitions produced by the students who play role X in any other
group of the class. This makes sure that all students have the same workload (factors
12 and 14). Conversely, if the group has for instance five students for four roles, the
teacher may activate the “JOKER” function: a “joker” student may provide a defi-
nition that belongs to any other role. These functionalities are not perfect solutions
but ways to carry on the script despite an imperfect situation. A method that “works
well” should survive to these common accidents in everyday classroom life. Finally,
ConceptGrid pays attention to factor 12 (assessment relevance) by connecting the
script to the course exam: the environment includes a button to print all the work
produced by a team so that they could use it during the exam.
The “Erfahrraum” Model and the TinkerLamp Environment
The “Erfahrraum” Model
The initial vocational education is structured as a dual system in Switzerland and
other German-speaking countries: students spend about 4 days per week in a com-
pany and 1 day per week at school. These apprentices are between 16 and 20 years
old and represent 69% of the teenagers in the educational system.
1
Vocational edu-
cation constitutes a specific ecosystem, with its culture, its laws, its actors (e.g. the
companies, the corporate associations), quite different from general education. Our
main research hypothesis was that technologies may play a specific role in a dual
system as a bridge between what apprentices do at their workplace and what they
1
http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/fr/index/themen/15/04/00/blank/uebersicht.html
