Learning activity modelling and management

In this paper, the authors present the first results of our work which aims of building a new generation of learning management system. More precisely, they concentrate their effort on the support of learning activities either individual or collective. The delineation of their work, is followed by a presentation of the user needs examined from Activity Theory viewpoint. Several principles emerge: tutors prepare a learning scenario covering short periods, typically 5 to 10 hours of work, the learners must be able to get a global view on the actions they must or should do, tutors are able to track the learner progress, and all users are able to revise the plan of actions. The service proposed by the system maintains the execution context of the actions and the action status. To increase the user understanding of the work to conduct, the system proposes adapted usage profiles of the tools. The flexibility is reached by using a declarative method mastered by the end-users. The teachers produce a pedagogical scenario from the elements proposed by Usage-Action-Scenario model (UAS model) which is instantiated and runs on PLACE, an Enterprise JavaBeans platform, which is the technical heart of our system. A presentation of UAS model followed by a description of PLACE is proposed before ending the paper by a short discussion about the positioning of their work referring to other Activity Theory based approaches and Education Modelling Languages (EML).