An Open Architecture for Usage Analysis in a E-Learning Context Sébastien Iksal & Christophe Choquet University of Maine – LIUM – CNRS FRE 2730 IUT de Laval – Dépt. SRC 52 rue des Docteurs Calmette et Guérin 53020 LAVAL – FRANCE Abstract In the context of distance learning and teaching, a re-engineering process needs a feedback on the learners' uses of the learning system. The feedback could be given by interviews, questionnaires, but in many systems, it is also provided by the analysis of log files. Our works on the re-engineering driven by models of e-learning systems, propose an architecture for usage analysis and a meta-language for describing the tracks’ semantic and for linking them to observation needs defined in the predictive scenario. This architecture wants to be a collaborative cluster of services available for and designed by a community of practices on usage analysis. Concerning our meta- langage UTL, we consider that it is important to interpret tracks in order to compare the designer’s intentions with the learners’ activities during a session. 1. Introduction The very nature of e-learning and distance teaching applications brings about a de-synchronization of teaching’s two major roles: course designer and course tutor. The result of this is the specialization of the protagonists involved in the teaching process as well as a sort of compartmentalization of their activities. If a face-to-face course is often taught by its designer, most of the existing e-learning systems are mainly based on an asynchronous organization. This leads to specialize actors in the training process. Basically, a course is conceived by a designer — or a pool of them, and is deployed in an existing social and technical environment (the training structure, the team of tutors, the software) without taking into account, systematically and exhaustively, the uses for a re- engineering purpose. This practice limits the learning quality optimization. Recent technological and methodological developments lead e-learning application designers to adapt to a pre-existing social and technical context that often necessitates both the uses of development and distribution platforms, and existing applications. The difficulties that ensue for the teaching professional are those of mastering the quality of the predictive learning scenario as well as understanding the pedagogical implications of the technical choices. Moreover, teaching experience in a specific context (subject, students, teaching organization) is generally acquired by taking into account learners feedback during a face-to-face session in order to (i) adapt dynamically the didactic method in session and/or (ii) modify contents, resources and scenario after the session to prepare the next. Because distance learning modalities are different to classic (i.e. face-to-face) modalities [1], the specific technical and teaching skills needed for the design of an e-learning system have to be acquired by most designers, who are, especially in academic fields, usually experienced teachers but neophytes in the e-learning design. All of this hinders the reverse engineering and re- engineering [2] of e-learning systems. Like [3], we think it is necessary to design distance teaching courses in a global and prototypal way; they should integrate the analysis, the design and the re- engineering of learning activities to further improve their quality. Over three consecutive years, around fifty learners have used each year our learning device within a two- hour session dedicated to improve HTTP Server programming learners skills [4]. At each cycle, the observations on the course training session increase our expertise on the architecture representation and on the descriptive scenario (e.g. effective uses of our system). We adhered to the open source software Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’05) 0-7695-2338-2/05 $20.00 © 2005 IEEE