WHO AM I

Full-time Professor in Computer Science at Institute of Technology (IUT) Nancy-Charlemagne, part of Nancy 2 University.

Senior Researcher at LORIA Lab (CNRS, INRIA, Nancy University), in the INRIA ECOO team (1999-2009) and in the SCORE team (2009->).

Teaching/administration:
Head of CS Department at Institute of Technology (1995-2001).
Head of CS Department at CRA CNAM Nancy (1994-2003).
Responsible for the "Designer-integrator of Internet/intranet systems" Licence, at IUT and Mathematics and CS Faculty at Nancy 2 University (2000-2005).
Responsible for the "Administrator of open source systems, networks and applications" Licence, at IUT and Mathematics and CS Faculty at Nancy 2 University (2005-).
Chairman of teacher recruitment committee at Nancy 2 University.
Elected member of the Board of Directors of University Nancy 2.
Elected member of the Board of Directors of IUT.

Research:
Responsible/Member of several European projects: Promoter2, Promoter, Nature, Alf, ...
PC member:
- IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT'09, ICALT'10)
- International Conference on Web-based Education (WBE'07, WBE'08, WBE'09, WBE'10)
- International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL'09, ICWL'10)
- International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU'09)
- International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (COOP'04, COOP'06)
- International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering (IKE'02)
Journal reviewing committees:
- International Journal of Comuter-Supported Collaborative Learning (ijCSCL)
- Computers & Education
- Interacting With Computers
- International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (special number)
International conferences reviewing: CSCL (07, 09), ICLS (08, 10) ...

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MY RESEARCH

Objectives
To study the concepts, theories, models, methods and technologies related to the design, implementation, and evaluation of a specific class of computerized environments for human learning, that is synchronous collaborative learning systems for small groups of distributed or colocated learners ("same time/same place" or "same time/different places").
The research field is CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning).

Motivations
The research is motivated by the fact that building a dedicated tool for each learning situation is not a realistic solution. It is important to define concepts, theories, models, methods, and technologies that make possible to design, implement, and evaluate GENERIC environments that can support a large range of learning situations.

Theories
In the learning perspective, the general conceptual framework of the research is constructivism and more precisely all theories dealing with collaborative knowledge building, tool and artifact mediation, tool and artifact affordances, distributed scaffolding and also all theories related to the co-construction of the learning activity and its support.

Design approach
The approach is to model at an operational level all the facets of a learning situation and to parameterize a generic environment kernel by all these sub models:

• the process sub model which mainly specifies the activities, their sequencing, and their resources (tools, artifacts) (often called "macro script" in the CSCL field),
• the interaction sub model which mainly specifies the roles, the message types, and their organization (adjacency pairs) (often called "micro script") in the CSCL field),
• the artifact sub model which specifies the organization of structured graphical artifacts,
• the "effects sub model" which specifies how to monitor the learning process for the learners (self-regulation) and possibly for the tutor (coaching).

These sub models can be defined at design time (definitional malleability) and, in part, can be changed at execution time (operational malleability). The kernel interprets these sub models in order to support and guide learners and tutors for performing their activities. This multi dimensional approach provides adaptation means adapted to users with different skills and knowledge. They can:

• only reuse predefined combinations of sub models,
• build new combinations of existing sub-models, that is following a very high level configuration process,
• define or adapt sub models thanks to high level visual languages,
• fully specify new sub models with a low level specification language (including the use of the java programming language for some specific aspects).

At the interface level, the clients manipulated by learners follows the "dual interaction space" paradigm with a shared work space for manipulating the artifacts and a synchronous communication space for more or less structured interaction. Several additional parameterized mechanisms are provided to the users for:

• controling the access to the resources in both spaces,
• facilitating designation and linking of contributions within a space or between the two spaces,
• browsing the session history in a collaborative way,
• beeing aware of what happens in both spaces.

The user interface during a structured design task of a problem with the UML language.


Main results
1) The theoretical foundations.
They are described in (IN TECH 09 et STICEF 2008 – see "Publications").
2) Modeling aspects and architectural issues of the generic system called Omega+.
They are described in (ijCSCL 2006).
3) Access control mechansims for dual interaction spaces.
They are described in (WEBIST 2007bis).
4) Designation and linking mechanisms within and between spaces.
They are described in (WEBIST 2007): persistent pointers (PP), sticky notes (SN), and sticky annotated snapshots (SAS).
5) Aspects related to self regulation and coaching.
They are described in (ECTEL 2008): simple indicators and generic indicators based on collaboration pattern recognition and automatic message classification (Naive Bayes Classifier).
6) Aspects related to evaluation.
They are described in (ijCSCL 2009).
A generic three-levels analysis method is proposed.
At the first level a dialogical model independent of the task is proposed. It aims at analyzing interaction traces (actions+messages) like "generalized conversations" thanks to "generalized adjacency pairs" or GAPs (see the typology below). A graphical notation is defined for facilitating the visual analysis of the syntactical characteristics of the collaborative sessions.
At the second level, by taking a collaborative knowledge building perspective, a typology of task independent episodes that can be found durring the collaborative sessions is proposed. Thanks to this analysis grid, recurrent meaningful elements that structure the low level traces can be detected and characterised. These regularities help for passing from local interpretations to a global interpretation of the whole process at the last level.
At the third level, a task dependent socio-cognitive interpretation of why the collaborative process unfolds as observed may be proposed. That interpretation can constitute a solid basis for improving the customization of the generic environmentin order to support learners more efficiently.
7) Integration of Omega+ in a cooperative web platform devoted to the design, practice and dissemination of collaborative learning.
It is outlined in (JCP 2007). A prototype, called escole+, is described.
8) Aspects related to unforeseen events management.
They are described in (submitted paper).


Older works (< 2004)
1) Coordination of distributed teams around a distributed production space. The FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) development case.
Journals: SPM'05, IP'04
Conferences: CRAI'04

2) A generic infrastructure for collaborating (DOTS, CPCE).
Key ideas: direct argumentative communication; issue resolution; "collaboration flow management" paradigm.
Journals: JDS'99
Conferences: DEXA'02, OOIS'02, HPCN'01, I2CS'01, CE'00, SEKE'97, Euro'97, COOP'96, SEE'95, TOOLS'95, CAISE'94, EWSPT'95

3) A process model-sensitive software engineering environment (ALF).
Journals/books: SPPMT'99, TSI'92, IST'91
Conferences: SPT'94, ICSP'93, EWSPT'92, ICSI'92
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PUBLICATIONS

See the list

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CONTACT INFOS

Postal address: LORIA, ECOO, BP 239, 54506, Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy Cedex France
Phone number: 33 3 83 59 30 98
Fax number: 33 3 83 41 30 79
E-mail: jloncham'at'loria.fr

Postal address: IUT, Département Informatique, 2ter Boulevard Charlemagne, 54000 Nancy France
Phone number: 33 3 54 50 38 26
Fax number: 33 3 54 50 38 21
E-mail : Jacques.Lonchamp'at'univ-nancy2.fr

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