Support to the specification of observation needs Boubekeur Zendagui, Vincent Barré and Pierre Laforcade LIUM/IUT de Laval – Dépt. SRC 52 rue des Docteurs Calmette et Guérin 53020 LAVAL - FRANCE FirstName.LastName@lium.univ-lemans.fr Abstract Many researches are done in the learning-situation observation field. Within a re-engineering context, the observation can be useful to facilitate the pedagogical scenario improvement. We aim to support the pedagogical scenario designer to define his observation needs. In this paper we present both an observation needs model and a 3-step process for the specification of observation needs. 1. Introduction The very nature of learning and distance teaching applications brings about de-synchronization of teachers' two major roles: the instructional designer who sets up learning goals and learning situations and the tutor who regulates the learning process [1]. Within this context, the teacher a as tutor needs to understand students' activities to assist them, whereas the teacher as an instructional designer needs to analyze their activity to evaluate the proposed pedagogical scenario's quality. Within a classic face-to-face pedagogical context, the teacher can continuously evaluate course progress with direct learner observation [2]. Within a distance learning context, observation is based on the analysis of data collected during or after the learning session, reflecting actors' effective activity. Few studies deal with supporting the designers to help them to express their observation needs, especially in a re-engineering process [1]. The REDiM project (French acronym for Model Driven Re-engineering of a TEL system) [1] tackles this topic by refocusing TEL system tracking and usage analysis modeling on pedagogical scenario designers. Within this project, re-engineering is defined as a set of steps that form a cycle where the main actor is a teacher designing his pedagogical scenario, focused on pedagogical scenario. In this paper, we will focus on supporting teachers in their instructional designers role, to help them to specify their observation needs based on the pedagogical scenario under construction and the educational modeling language used . We will first discuss our research context, particularly the REDiM approach of learning situation observation. We will then present a learning situation observation both in a classic face-to-face situation and in a distance learning context. In a third part, we will present our process and propose an observation needs model. We will then show how this model can be used in a concrete example. 2. Research context The set of steps of pedagogical scenario re- engineering forms a cycle (see figure 1).The first step, pedagogical scenario design, gets the designer to define his pedagogical scenario. The next step, learning situation use by students, leads students, tutors and other associated actors to use the designer's pedagogical scenario. In this step, data regarding effective use of the learning situation is collected either by the learning system or by other means. In order to be used in pedagogical scenario re-engineering process, this data must be analyzed to abstract it from system that produced it and to facilitate its interpretation by the analyst, who is usually a teacher. In the REDiM project, the learning situation observation activity preparation is regarded as a pedagogical scenario designing task [1]. Designers can define, during the pedagogical scenario elaboration phase, what is important to observe. This process can Pedagogical scenario design Learning situation progress Data from the learning session Results analyze Implementation Collection/ generation Modification of the pedagogical scenario Data processing Figure 1: Pedagogical scenario re-engineering cycle Eighth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies 978-0-7695-3167-0/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICALT.2008.250 793