Damien Cram, Denis Jouvin and Alain Mille

1
Visualizing Interaction Traces to Improve
Reflexivity in Synchronous Collaborative
e-Learning Activities

• Damien Cram, Denis Jouvin and Alain Mille
• University of Claude Bernard Lyon 1
• LIRIS laboratory (Nautibus)
• 43 bd du 11 Novembre 1918
• 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex
• France
• E-mail First.Last_at_liris.cnrs.fr
• 4th October 2007, ECEL 2007, Copenhagen

2
Context

• eLycée company http//www.elycee.com
• Provides French lessons to young french-speacking
  high-school students in virtual classroom
  environment
• An e-learning platform has been developed
  eMediatheque.
• eLycée research project objectives
• Tracing collaborative activities
• Providing the learner with an interactive
  visualization of his interaction traces
• Studying the impact of the trace visualization
  on the learners activity.

3
Outline

• Overview of the e-learning platform eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing technique of eMediatheque
• Interactive trace visualization in eMediatheque
• Possible applications reflexivity and experience
  sharing
• Conclusion and future work

4
eMediatheque (1/2)

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• Virtual classrooms
• The platform is synchronous and collaborative, it
  supports
• Chat
• Shared web sessions (Web push and co-browsing)
• Shared whiteboards
• Shared and synchronous multimedia players
• Full multi-party videoconference (using
  Marratech, http//www.marratech.fr/).
• Content neutral
• Can display any web content
• Can play any common multimedia clip (audio,
  video, flash...).

5
eMediatheque (2/2)

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

6
Why reusing experience ?

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• Two main motivations
• Analysis
• Researchers or teachers trying to infer a
  posteriori the behaviour of the learner from his
  traces.
• Assistance
• Real-time experience reusing to assist a specific
  task
• Task prediction (e.g. auto-completion)
• Navigation history IE history, Firefox history,
  Google history, etc.
• Our goal making the trace fully available to the
  learner
• Make traces become a part of the learning
  environment
• Improve the reflexivity process of the learner.

7
Trace-Based Systems (TBS)

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• The Trace-Based System is an abstract model of
  system enabling traces collection, processing and
  exploitation
• A trace is anything that remains after an
  activity and that contains information about the
  activity Audio/video records, logs, audit
  trails, UI events, requests, surveys, etc.

Trace-Based System
Request System
Visualization System
Transformation System
Tracing System
Tracing System
logs
audio/video records
tracing source 3
tracing source n
Architecture of a Trace Based System (Settouti et
al., 2006)
8
Tracing technique of eMediatheque

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

Action-centred design
Action

• Date Date
• shared boolean

Controller
Shared events
Primary trace
Interpreter
A1
A2
A3
A2
A3
A1
if shared
Notify user action
Document Action
notify
update
change
Connect
Connect to the classroom
Write sth in the shared whiteboard
Close the tab
internet
Model
View (UI)
Observable entities
dispatch
E1
Close
Open
Collaborative server
E3
E2
User
The primary trace model
9
Experience reusing through the primary trace

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• Problems with the primary trace
• Too technical
• Too verbose
• Not related to the semantics of the pedagogical
  activity (neutral).
• The primary trace has to be transformed.

A primary trace sample
10
Primary trace transformation

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• Transformation in 2 steps
• 1 - Abstract the primary trace to include the
  semantics of one given pedagogical activity
• 2 - Make basic transformations available
• Filtering,
• Sorting,
• Grouping, etc.

Dynamic transformation
Viewed trace
filtering, sorting, grouping, etc.
Student
Static transformation
Specialized trace
semantic abstraction
Activity designer
Primary trace
11
Architecture of the interactive trace
visualization

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

Sees
Configured by the learner
Viewed trace
Modifies
Learner
Calculates
Interactions
Configuration
Observes
Visualizer
(1)
(2)
Observes
Specific to pedagogical activities
Observes
Specialized trace 1
Specialized trace 2
Static transformer 1
Static transformer 2
eMediatheque
Tracing system
Observe
Content neutral Technical Verbose
Creates
Primary trace
12
Example (1/2) choosing an activity to trace

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

12

• The pedagogical activity of  co-translation of
  comics 
• 2 students per group
• Comics in English to be translated in French
• Whiteboards.
• Meaningful entity classes and action classes
• Action classes read a resource, edit a balloon,
  search a word in a dictionary, send a message to
  the contributor
• Entity classes dictionary, comics in English,
  translated comics, resource, chat.

13
Example (2/2) defining the static
transformations

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

13
Primary trace
Specialized trace
Navigate
url http//dictionnaire.tv5.org/dictionnaires.asp
?Action5paramche1
Search word
Interpretation
word journey
Activity designer
Navigate
url http//dictionnaire.tv5.org/dictionnaires.asp
?Action5paramjourneyche1
Specialized trace
Primary trace
14
Learner trace interface

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

15
Possible applications (1/2) trace-based
reflexivity

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• Towards a reflexive assistance tool
•  Real-time  reflexivity
• Recalls to the learner his own actions
• Gives a temporal structure to the learner
  activity
• Gives a temporal dimension to his resources
• Makes trace-based commands possible
• Post-reflexivity
• Provides the teachers with a support for
  feed-backs
• Group reflexivity
• Gives an awareness of others actions and
  contributions to the common task.

16
Possible applications (2/2) experience sharing

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• Trace episode saving and configuration saving
• Documentarization of the primary trace
• Reloading a saved trace episode
• In the trace view
• As a full session replay (for full trace only)
• Through an advanced documentarization

Configuration


Specialized trace
Viewed trace
Static transformer


Specialized trace
Primary trace
17
Conclusion

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• eMediatheque uses an Action-centred design
• Making use of the core model of the platform as a
  tracing source ensures that the trace covers all
  available learner actions.
• eMediatheque is a collaborative platform that is
  trace-enabled it supports
• Primary trace production
• Activity-level trace generation from the primary
  trace
• Interactive trace visualization and trace
  reusing
• Application in learners reflexivity and
  experience sharing.

18
Future work

• eMediatheque
• Experience reusing problematic
• Real-time tracing eMediatheque

• Interactive trace visualization
• Possible applications reflexivity and sharing
• Conclusion and future work

• Setting an experimentation in a real situation to
  observe any kind of interest in the trace view,
  with real students.
• First results with the primary trace
  visualization in production observation of some
  basic trace-based experience reusing like url
  reloading.
• Extending the interaction possibilities
• Defining a trace query language (graphical and
  intuitive if possible)
• Embedding trace mining techniques to support
  trace episodes remembering.
• Facilitating the trace model edition and the
  static transformation edition

19
Thank you ! Any questions ?

• Our research team http//liris.cnrs.fr/silex
• eLycée company www.elycée.com
• eMediatheque developer Denis Jouvin,
  denis.jouvin_at_liris.cnrs.fr