<figure><img src="image_48.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.8: Basic phases of Design-Based Research</figcaption></figure>

* 4. Evaluate: reflection to produce design principles and enhance solution implementation.

All the authors also emphasize that DBR is **user-centered** and should take teachers into account, from the very beginning of the project and during each phase. Researchers and teachers need to be united as a team that shares the same praxeology (shared discourse on practice) (Aldon et al., 2013). The DBR theory also insists that the test (phase 3) should be carried out **in schools**, under real-life conditions.

However, no practical guidelines are provided to identify important work sessions or an indi-
cation of what should be produced or accomplished at each phase. The ideal number of teachers
and researchers or tests is not clear either even thought this could facilitate the entire process.
Without having the pretension of revolutionizing this method, we therefore propose the prag-
matic implementation of the DBR method we used and perfected during these seven projects.
This is presented as a set of recommendations that can be used for TEL projects. As you will
see in the following chapter, we will also propose four guidelines for designing authoring tools.

Pragmatic Implementation of Design-Based Research

First of all, let us set the perimeters of our proposal: the objective is to offer a practical implementation of DBR for TEL research that focuses on digital tools that are complex for teachers to grasp such as Mixed Reality or Virtual Reality. In accordance with Reeves' definition, we also believe that DBR is best suited for taking risks and discovering new ways of using technology for education (Reeves, 2006) rather than for testing existing theories. Finally, on a more controversial note, we also encourage developing several prototypes to lead comparative tests and evaluations. Most DBR definitions prone developing the design option that is favored by researches and teachers but understanding one option deeply will not allow the researcher to
know whether another option might be even better. If there is no other prototypes, the first option should, at least, be compared with the classic teaching method (Reeves, 2006).

<figure><img src="image_49.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.9: PI-DBR, a Pragmatic Implementation of the Design-Based Research method</figcaption></figure>

Our **Pragmatic Implementation of DBR** (PI-DBR) is presented in *Figure 2.9*. It is composed of the same phases as DBR but provides more details on the work sessions and productions expected for each phase. *Figure 2.10* also provides guidelines for the number of actors that should be implicated in each of these phases.

* **The project starts** with an observation session, in class, to help researchers understand the problem and the context in which the TEL system will be used.

* **Phase 1. Reflection** then starts with a *strategy meeting* during which the team needs to decide on the objectives of the project. This is when the project should be stopped if the researchers do not see any potential for an innovative TEL system to improve the given problem. In our experience, this is quite often the case. For example, teachers have sometimes come to us asking to create custom video games, even though it was clearly not adapted to the context or the educational objectives. Other times, we could provide them with perfectly adapted solutions that already existed but there is no need to continue if the situation is not research material.

* **Phase 2. Co-design** proceeds with a *state of the art* to find similar TEL systems but also to identify design principles that were found during other projects. Then comes several iterative cycles of *in-person* design sessions during which the researchers and the teachers try to find one or several ways of using technology for the given problem. We noted that it was very important to come to these sessions with *work prototypes* to help teachers grasp what could be done with the technology. This session should also definitely be done in-person so as to enable teachers to see and manipulate these prototypes, but also to encourage social
bonding. At the end of this phase, which can go on for 2 weeks to 5 months, one or more
*functional prototypes* are produced.

* **Phase 3. Test** starts with a *meeting to discuss* the experimentation. This is important to determine the dates, the people involved (just teachers or also their students and parents if the students are minors) and, of course, the *experiment protocol*. The latter should also be written down in a document and sent to the *ethics committee for approval*. The *experiment* then takes place, several times if there is more than one experiment terrains and *data* from the questionnaires, videos, usage tracks and interviews are collected. The duration of this phase depends on the nature of the *TEL* system but also on the nature of the experiment (short or long term), but it usually lasts from 1 to 4 months.

* **Phase 4. Evaluate** starts with a data analysis by the researches and teachers and everything is discussed during a *debriefing meeting* as soon as possible afterwards. The type of analysis depends on the research hypothesis at this point in the project and the collaboration dynamics between researchers (one potential tension presented in chapter 1). We suggest combining qualitative and quantitative analysis and even duplicating some measures if necessary so all the partners have data to process. This phase should take place no more than 2 weeks after the experiment so as not to forget any observations that could be relevant. Lengthy video analysis for example can be finished and discussed later.

* Finally, we get back to **phase 1. Reflect** during which the team takes time to reflect on their design process, the developed *TEL* systems and their impact on learning and teaching in order to write *data papers and research articles* that present the identified *design principles* during this first cycle. The team gets back together to start a new cycle with a strategy meeting to discuss the next moves that can be made given the funding and time left at their disposal.

You might have notices that we did slightly tweak the DBR: we added an iterative cycle to phase 2. Co-design. This seems important for two reasons. First of all, even if the use of the TEL system can be adjusted by teachers, our experience shows that it usually requires some redevelopment which is very difficult to do on the fly, during the test phase. The second reason is related to the fact that the test phase is, by far, the most complex to set up. The teachers need to be available physically and mentally, the timing needs to fit with the official class curriculum, the authorizations need to be signed and the experiment protocol validated by the ethics committee. These occasions are therefore rare and precious (no more than a few times a year), so it is more effective to do more preparatory iterative cycles during the previous co-design phase.

Gradually implicating actors in the iterative cycles of Design-Based Research

Collaborative work, especially complex design sessions to find original ideas, is best done in small groups of 6 to 9 (Hall et al., 2018). We therefore suggest starting with a small core group composed of researches and teachers (half of each if possible) for the first iteration of the DBR and then expanding to other researchers and teachers (Figure 2.10). The integrating of these new comers, especially teachers, is very valuable because they have a fresh insight on the problem and will spot obvious omissions and practical issues that are simply not visible to the core team anymore. We suggest implicating them during the test phase of the second or third iteration to measure if the way the TEL system is presented to a newbie is clear. If the TEL system is
intended to be used by teachers in autonomy, this is also a good way to test if the presentation
documents and the tutorials are clear.

Even though the end-users are the teachers, the learners also need to be taken into account
as soon as possible in the process. This will depend on their age and their capacity to make
abstraction of the non-finished parts of the prototype. For the TGRIS project, intended for adults,
we implicated them from the start. Howerer, for the SMART-Fractions projects, intended for
children, we waited for the 3rd iteration to have a game-looking presentable SG. We did implicate
them earlier on, in the choice of the storyline and character types, by presenting them with several
alternatives.

<figure><img src="image_50.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.10: Gradual implication of researchers and teachers in the design cycles</figcaption></figure>

**3.1.5 Discussion and positioning of the work**

Designing effective TEL systems has been the main preoccupation of the TEL community from
the beginning. Our approach is high-risk and exploratory in the sense that we look for new ways
of using technology for learning that have never been tried before. Of course, we try to reduce
these risks by learning from previous projects and design principles used in similar context. The
collaborative design method we chose to create these TEL systems is based on the DBR but
we chose to combine this method with qualitative and quantitative comparative studies that are
sometimes frowned upon by DBR purists. We argue that these methods are complementary: the
first to find innovative ways of using technology to its full educational potential and the second
to provide harder evidence of the effectiveness of the developed solutions.

**3.2 JEN-planet: A Serious Game catalogue to help teachers find suitable existing Serious Games**

The research presented in this section tackles:

- RQ3. What metadata schema is most suitable for educational SGs?

- RQ4. What models are needed to automatically extract information about SGs on the Internet?
- RQ5. What catalogue interface will best help teachers find existing SGs?

The research was lead in the context of Wielfrid MORIE's PhD (my second PhD student). The objective was to create a SG catalogue, for teachers, which updates automatically with the latest SGs found on the web. The goal is to help teachers access existing SGs, either to use them or simply to find inspiration in creating their own SGs. This catalogue is called *JEN-planet*. JEN stands for *Jeu Educatif Numérique*, which means “digital games for education” in French.

### 3.2.1 LGMD: an optimal metadata model for describing educational Serious Games

As presented in the introduction, current SG catalogues all use different description models and do not provide information about educational objectives and contexts, which are essential for teachers. On the other hand, researchers in TEL have proposed several metadata schemas to describe SGs (e.g., LOM, LOM-SG, MG, GPS), but these are usually extensions of the LOM standard that are composed of the 68 LOM fields plus an additional 10 to 20 fields. It is not realistic to ask SG editor to fill out all these fields, especially considering the fact that many are not relevant for SGs. We therefore defined the **LGMD (Learning Games Metadata Definition) schema** that contains only 23 description fields with a focus on the description of pedagogical features (Figure 2.11) (Morie et al., 2020b). These fields were obtained by combining several metadata schemas in the literature and by keeping only the fields relevant to educational SGs, with possible backward compatibility with the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard.

The proposed LGMD schema was validated at two levels. A first test verified that the 23 fields are sufficient to cover the information provided by SG publishers. The analysis of the information provided on 785 SG web pages showed that they only provide information for 17 fields out of the 78 or more provided by SG metadata in the literature and all of these fields are included in the 23 fields of LGMD. We made the decision to keep the addition 6 fields, for which information is never provided, because they are important to teachers and we wanted to encourage SG editors to fill them out. For example, none of the editors provide information for the knowledge validation field (list of competencies or skills that can be acquired by playing the SG). A second validation, with 17 teachers, verified that the fields are useful and sufficient to search for SGs that meet their pedagogical needs. This was done with co-design sessions and questionnaires in which they were asked to identify what information they needed to find and choose SGs for their class. These two validations show that LGMD offers an optimal number of fields: sufficiently numerous to cover the information relevant to teachers, yet not so many as to discourage SGs publishers from filling in this information.

### 3.2.2 ADEM: an automatic indexing model for Serious Games

In order to find and update the SG database automatically with new information, we have come up with the **ADEM (Automatic Description Extraction Metadata) model**. This is an automatic SG indexing model described in detail in Morie et al. (2020a). It collects information for each of the 23 fields of the previously presented LGMD metadata schema by scraping and analyzing the text on websites. The ADEM model consists of five major steps (Figure 2.12). The first step consists in collecting SGs through their web pages. Then, in the next two steps, the content in the HTML tags of the web pages is processed to select only the text blocks containing the SG description information and delete publicity and general information about
<figure><img src="image_51.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.11: Learning Games Metadata Definition (LGMD) model</figcaption></figure>

the SG publisher. Finally, the two last steps allow to extract the keywords describing the 23 metadata fields (i.e., title, language, location, public, domain, cost...) as well as the image of the SG. This information can then be modified by a human, in case the automatic extraction was not accurate or complete.

The ADEM model collected information on 785 web pages with SGs. The model's performance was evaluated with metrics such as precision, recall and F-Measure. The relevance of the information was also evaluated by 15 teachers on a representative selection of SGs. They compared a sample of websites to check whether the information automatically extracted by ADEM matched the information they were able to find by reading the pages. The evaluations resulted in an accuracy level of over 82% and a relevance score of over 4/5.

### 3.2.3 UDID: an interface design method by teachers

The JEN-Planet interface was designed with the assistance of 17 teachers, following the UDID (User-Driven Interface Design) method we proposed. Inspired by user-centered design (Dabbebi et al., 2019), this method proposes five steps with specific material (Morie et al., 2020c). This material consists of a white A3 sheet of paper, cards representing all available filters of the LGMD metadata schema in different formats (e.g., checkboxes, drop-down list) and empty post-its used to represent the thumbnails of the SGs found after the search. Following the steps of the UDID method, the teachers first decided where they wanted to put the main interface zones on the A3 sheet (search, sort and results zones). They then chose the filter cards to put on the interface. This step is particularly important as it involves identifying the most important of the 23 filters
<figure><img src="image_52.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.12: Steps of the ADEM (Automatic Description Extraction Metadata) model for SGs</figcaption></figure>

available and their formats. The size ratio between the cards and the sheet recreated the layout of a web interface. This helps to identify which filters are most important. In the next step, the teachers chose the layout of the search results and represented, on post-its, the information they found relevant to describe the SGs that were found after the search. A debriefing, concluded after the design session, allowed teachers to explain and discuss their choices. Thus, the UDID method allowed 17 teachers to design several mock-ups of SG catalogue interfaces (Figure 2.13). The paper Morie et al. (2020c) describes, in detail, how all these mock-ups were used to design the final interface (Figure 2.14).

When the user clicks on the title or image of the SG, the catalogue opens a detailed description page. This page repeats the information provided in the thumbnail and adds information about the additional filters. If the teachers wants to learn more or test the SG, they can click on the red link, at the bottom right, which leads to the original page where the information was collected. This link opens in a new tab to keep *JEN-Planet* open. The interfaces shown in *Figure 2.14* are from the current version of *JEN-Planet*, available at https://jen-planet.univ-lemans.fr.

### 3.2.4 Experimentation with teachers

The contributions presented above were put to the test with 50 volunteer teachers of various profiles. We set up a study to compare *JEN-Planet* with the two major catalogues in the literature,
<figure><img src="image_53.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.13: Interface mockups from the design sessions</figcaption></figure>

*SeriousGameClassification* and *MobyGames*, because they contain the largest number of SGs (420 and 310 respectively) and are results of research projects (Alvarez et al., 2017), (Palavitsinis et al., 2014). Each catalogue was evaluated according to three criteria. Firstly, we examined the **usability** of each catalogue to determine the level of ergonomics of the catalogue's interface. Then, we measured the **relevance** of the SG descriptions, to determine whether the information used to describe the SGs is understandable and complete for teachers. The third and last criteria was the **utility** of the catalogues, to find out whether teachers can find SGs that are suitable for their needs.

In terms of **usability**, the results show that *JEN-Planet* is better for finding SGs. The catalogue designed using the *UDID* method is ergonomic and intuitive for teachers (Figure 2.15). The scores of *JEN-Planet* range from "good" to "best possible" according to the *SUS* (System Usability Scale) interpretation. This user-friendliness was also emphasized by the participants during the debriefing. Nevertheless, teachers also raised some limitations. For example, several teachers noted that the keyword filter was not explicit enough. Others would have liked additional filters on the date or groupings by subject category for example. While we understand these requests, we feel that more filters would overload the interface. In addition, the catalogue allows you to add these criteria in the advanced search option. Finally, several teachers deplored the fact that the web page does not adapt well to smartphone screens. This would indeed be a useful improvement.

In terms of **relevance**, the results show that teachers found the information provided by *JEN-Planet* much more comprehensive and complete than the information provided by the other catalogues (Table 2.1). Let us restate the fact that *JEN-Planet* extracts data from the two other catalogues and several others so their databases are only partially the same. In addition, although
<figure><img src="image_54.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.14: Catalogue JEN-Planet homepage</figcaption></figure>

JEN-Planet scored average of 4.10/5 on completeness, its interpretation shows some downsides. Indeed, teachers indicated that information on "pedagogical objectives", "date ranges" or "language" was missing. As mentioned above, it is possible to search with these criteria in the advanced search options, but they are rarely provided by SG editors (less than 4% of the time). Therefore, adding these filters to the basic search options would not currently allow more SGs to be found.

<table><caption>Table 2.1: Average scores for the comprehensiveness and completeness of the information, provided by the SG catalogues</caption><thead><tr><th>Catalogues</th><th>Comprehensive (/5)</th><th>Completeness (/5)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>Jen-Planet</strong></td><td>4.68</td><td>4.10</td></tr><tr><td><em>SeriousGameClassification</em></td><td>2.43</td><td>2.12</td></tr><tr><td><em>MobyGames</em></td><td>2.03</td><td>1.32</td></tr></tbody></table>

Finally, in terms of **utility**, JEN-Planet scores much higher than the other two catalogues. In the allotted 10 minutes, 42 teachers found at least 1 relevant SG (i.e., a SG they wanted to test) compared to only 16 teachers using *SeriousGameClassification* and 10 teachers using *MobyGames* (Figure 2.16). Moreover, the percentage of relevant SGs found is higher with JEN-Planet. The teachers found almost 50% of the search results provided by JEN-Planet relevant, while the data shows 11% for the other two catalogues (only 1 relevant LG out of 8 to 10). Furthermore, these catalogues contain many old non-educational SGs which may be obsolete in view of current computer hardware, unlike JEN-Planet which only contains recent SGs (published since 2008). In addition, some of the SGs identified by teachers as relevant, from *SeriousGameClassification*
<figure><img src="image_55.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.15: Distribution of evaluations by catalogue in the SUS score grid with interpretation</figcaption></figure>

and *MobyGames*, are in fact non-educational games.

### 3.2.5 Discussion and positioning of the work

Sharing educational content is one of the main preoccupations of TEL research. The LOM was finally adopted as a standard (LOM, 2002) in 2002. Since then, countless LOM-extensions have covered the specificities and new types of learning materials (e.g., SGs), to include various countries (e.g., LOM-FR) or to take into account the lifeline (modification, sharing among teachers) of these learning materials (Broisin et al., 2005).

The problem with these extensions is that they only add more categories and description fields to an already very complicated LOM (68 fields) and let's face it, no one wants to fill in that many fields of information when they are depositing their learning content on a catalogue. Our approach is quite original as it aims at reducing fields to a reasonable number, one that editors will actually be willing to fill in (23 fields). The proposed extraction model can also help editors in the completion of these fields by automatically extracting the values from the text that describes a SG. We believe this proposition could also be used for other types of learning objects.

Nevertheless, the research carried out on *JEN-Planet* shows several limitations. First of all, the comparison of the catalogues is not as simple as it seems since the interface, the metadata and the database of SGs are different from one catalogue to another. However, with the information extracted from *SeriousGameClassification* and *MobyGames*, *JEN-Planet* still shows better results in terms of relevance, usability and utility. The second drawback is the fact that the catalogue does not provide teachers with the possibility of giving feedback on the SGs they have tested, nor does it allow them to add their own SGs. Ideally, such a catalogue should enable users to add not only the final SG but also the source codes and work documents so that other teachers can modify them. *DIY* kits and non-digital SG material should also be present in the catalogue. But, most importantly, *JEN-Planet* lacks a community to update the database, report SGs that do not work anymore, update the data or even work on improving the meta-data itself. Without a proper community to support its use, it is yet another abandoned research prototype.
<figure><img src="image_56.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.16: Proportion of the 50 participant teachers who found SGs and want to test them</figcaption></figure>

## 3.3 Support and follow-up method to help teachers create their own educational tools

The research presented in this section tackles:

- RQ6. What method is most efficient to help teachers create their own innovative educational tools with the available resources and staff?

- RQ7. What guidelines can we provide to encourage teachers to get started on a SG project?

This research was done in the context of a professional course, called Ludifik’action that we did not initially consider as a research project. After teaching this course for seven years, in various contexts, we identified a number of rules and guidelines that could be useful to the research community. These contributions are therefore more of a practical “return on experience” rather than findings on models and theories of SG design, even though some of the findings coincide.

### 3.3.1 Training and follow-up method

Ludifik’action is a professional course to help university teachers create custom-made SGs (digital or not) (examples in Figure 2.17). This course teaches them the basics of game design and puts them in contact with experts and resources that can help them in this adventure. We have conducted seven sessions of this course, with a total of 104 participants.

The complete 5-months training program consists of two full days of face-to-face training with all the teachers. Between these collective sessions, an individual follow-up session takes place
<figure><img src="image_57.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.17: Examples of Serious Games designed during Ludifik’action</figcaption></figure>

at the teacher’s school (this location has its importance) (Figure 2.18). If we look back on the DBR method presented in section 3.1.4, this corresponds to one and a half iterations. During the first day, trainees learn the basics of game-based learning theories, practice transforming existing games into SGs and discover as many games as possible. In fact, the course itself is gamified. Ideally, depending on where the training session takes place, they also visit a Fablab. Thanks to a brainstorming session with the trainers, at the end of the first day, the teachers leave with a good idea of what their SG will be like since they have identified the objectives of the future SG, its use and main game mechanics. The teachers must then design a first SG prototype. They benefit from a half-day of personalized follow-up during which one of the trainers comes to their school to test the prototype. The trainer takes on the role of a game designer and helps them find the right game mechanics to improve their SG. The trainer also helps them organize a test session with students if it has not yet been done. After the first test with students, the teachers improve their SG by creating a second prototype. During the last day, all the trainees test their new SGs and share feedback. They are also coached to defend their project when faced with criticism and are encouraged to communicate about their project, as widely as possible. The entire afternoon is dedicated to writing the SG rules, one of the trickiest parts of game design.

Concepts related to game-based learning such as flow, game mechanics and player profiles are distilled into the training session in light touches so as not to overwhelm the trainees. Some of these notions are even presented as “mini bonus information courses” they can “unlock” in exchange for objects they won during the first day of training (funny hats and necklaces). Remember, the training session is itself gamified. The teachers are therefore the ones asking for the information and giving something away to get it, which makes them much more inclined to listen and remember the content. A classic game mechanic! :)

During the entire training session, teachers also have template documents they need to hand in. The list of SG objectives is usually written during the first day of training and the SG description document should be finalized before the follow-up session. At the end of the training session, teachers need to hand in both updated documents as well as the feedback and results of the first tests.
<figure><img src="image_58.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.18: Ludifik’action training session</figcaption></figure>

As explained earlier, the merging of universities that led to the creation of Ludifik’action was dismantled a few months later. I therefore had to find other training centers to work with. It turned out that these centers (in different parts of France) had uneven human resources and cost constraints which implied that various organizational changes had to be made in the training session (e.g., duration, follow-up, number of trainees and accompanying staff, presence of a Fablab). These, at first frustrating constraints, turned out to be almost an advantage because they allowed for new configurations. We were able to scientifically compare their effectiveness with questionnaires and comparative statistics on the level of completion of the SG projects (i.e., no prototype, first prototype, testing with students, second prototype and more) (Marfisi-Schottman et al., 2022b).

First of all, we found that teachers who signed up for the training session alone were 33% more likely to not follow through. When teachers are accompanied by at least one colleague, that risk drops to less than 7%. A teacher paired with an educational designer is an ideal team, considering their complementary skill set, but a team of two teachers also works well.

Secondly, we found that the follow-up session was an important element to boost productivity. Groups without follow-up were 50% more likely to abandon. Teachers admitted they had worked hard and slept little the week before our visit to make sure they had a presentable SG. A follow-up session at the teacher’s school also seems to be more effective for two reasons: it creates a stronger bond between the trainer and trainee which is important for the constructive criticism they are bound to receive, and the trainer can take into account the physical context in which the SG will be used, and this can influence the game design.

Finally, we found that the more trainers, the better. The brainstorming sessions including larger groups gave teachers a wider range of choices to find a suitable SG scenario. The presence of a Fablab manager among the trainers also seems to increase the effectiveness of the training session. Teachers are more likely to return quickly to the Fablab if they have already met
the manager, and this initiates the prototyping phase much earlier. These findings and our
observations during the training sessions motivated us to write a series of simple guidelines to
help teachers get started on their adventure. These are presented in the next section.

3.3.2 Guidelines to help teachers get started on a Serious Game project

We express the lessons learned from the Ludifik’action training session in the form of 10 com-
mandments for Serious Game Padawans (Figure 2.19). A complete version is published in
Marfisi-Schottman et al. (2022b).

<figure><img src="image_59.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2.19: 10 commandments of the Serious Game Padawan</figcaption></figure>

* 1. **Think small, you must.** Teachers usually have unattainable goals for their SG. They are unfamiliar with the many professions at play in developing SGs, and unless they have the resources to hire a multidisciplinary team for a year, they are likely to exhaust themselves trying to take on all these roles, and eventually, will be disappointed with the partial result they have achieved. It is therefore important to start with a very small SG project that focuses on one specific part of their course that they want to change (Vanden Abeele et al., 2012). That way, the SG is almost sure to be an effective improvement.

* 2. **With other padawans, work you should.** Designing SGs is a long path paved with many obstacles such as redesigning course content, creating game material and communicating about the project to ludo-sceptic colleagues. It is therefore essential for teachers to be surrounded by people who can provide, at the very least, moral support. We encourage each teacher to team up with another teacher or to contact an educational designer, from their school or university, who can provide help.
* **With a master, succeed you shall.** Teachers will have a much higher rate of success in their project if they are accompanied by a professional who can overlook the entire process, provide guidance, encouragement and most importantly, enforce deadlines! We encourage teachers to seek out professional training, such as Ludifik’action, or university diplomas with a professional follow-up over several months.

* **In other games, inspiration you will find.** Commercial games are the product of years of development iterations, tests and improvements. It is therefore in the teacher’s best interest to draw inspiration from existing games (or parts of them) (Abbott, 2019), (Stanescu et al., 2016). Our experience in Ludifik’action shows that simple games such as *Time Line, Taggle, Concept, Who am I*, or even children’s versions of games are particularly of interest because they have very simple rules and can be complexified with educational content.

* **Like you, the game must be.** When a SG is intended to be used in class, teachers play a central role in facilitating the game (explicitly, if they are game masters or implicitly, if they are not). The teacher’s positive and engaging attitude is therefore essential for the SG to run smoothly. Consequently, teachers need to design a game that they are comfortable with (Sanchez et al., 2015).

* **Exploit your students, you can.** It is useful to involve learners, from the beginning of the design process, in the choice of game mechanics and game world to make sure it appeals to them (El-Nasr and Smith, 2006). They can also be asked to create parts of the SG during a project. Several studies show the positive educational effects of asking learners to design their own SGs (Švábenský et al., 2018), (Arnab et al., 2015).

* **Justify the game mechanics, you must.** Many SG design methods are proposed by researchers (Arnab et al., 2015), (Kelle et al., 2011), but none of them has full consensus in the community. The general rule, found in all methods, is that the choice of each game mechanic should be justified according to the pedagogical objectives (Graesser, 2017). Our experience shows that it is important that teachers take the time to justify the choice of game mechanics themselves, in writing, to help them build a solid argumentation and defend their project.

* **Introduce and debrief after the game, necessary it is.** The majority of teachers think that SGs are sufficient on their own, but this is not necessarily the case. Teachers must explain why they have chosen this unusual form of pedagogy and list the skills that will be used. If the SG involves an immersive imaginary world and game scenario, a debriefing phase is necessary after the game to recall the concepts and skills that have been used and to discuss how they can be applied in other contexts (Lederman, 1992).

* **Crucial, the design is.** The pleasure of play depends greatly on the graphics and the ergonomics of the game material (Marne and Labat, 2012). We encourage teachers to get in touch with a Fablab, use box and card templates and purchase game material (e.g., pawns, dice, tokens) from specialized sites. A well-proportioned box, with compartments, is particularly important as it is the first contact with the SG and will encourage learners to put the material away correctly at the end of the game.

* **Play, you will.** Most teachers only remember a few classic games they played as children (that sometimes left them with bad memories) such as *Monopoly, Scrabble* or *Trivial Pursuit*. Yet, thousands of new games are created every year, including collaborative games
that are much more suitable for classroom use. The best way to understand the tensions,
interactions, dilemmas and emotions triggered by a specific game mechanic is simply to try
it out in a game. It is therefore essential for teachers to play.

3.3.3 Discussion and positioning of the work

SG design is a main research topic in the field of SGs. Countless methods and models have been proposed, but none of them are totally satisfactory and therefore none have been given full consensus by the community.

There are three main types of SG design methods and models. The first type claims to work for any type of SG, educational content and context of use. This is the type I proposed during my PhD. They usually offer a method that identifies what and when the various actors (game designer, teachers) should do in addition to a complex model that represent the intertwined educational AND game scenario. The second type of SG design methods are focused on one type of SG such as educational escape games (Guigon et al., 2018) or collaborative educational games (Guigon et al., 2023). The third type focuses on modifying existing games. This is called “game modding” and basically consists in changing the content of a game while keeping the game mechanics and sometimes even the game material (El-Nasr and Smith, 2006), (Abbott, 2019).

In reality, none of these completely meets the needs of teachers. The first one is way too
complicated and usually involve actors, such as game designers, that teachers simply do not have
access to. The second and third type are much easier to use but they are restricted to one
specific type of game. It is very unlikely that teachers will stumble upon the right one for their
pedagogical needs and, even if they do, the models are so rigid that there is very little place for
trying out new game mechanics that could be much better for their content or simply adding a
personal touch, essential to help teachers really imagine themselves using it.

Our approach actually combines these three types of SG design methods. The trainers (colleagues and myself specialized in SG design) play the role of game designers, acting as middle-men between the teachers and other actors (i.e., Fablab managers, graphics designers, developers) or between teacher peers who have carried out similar projects. The first day, teachers perform several game modding sessions to help them understand that is it easy to do, but we always encourage them to think outside the box to find new game mechanics that could be better suited to their needs. Finally, after the teachers have decided on the outline of their SG, we provide them with specific tools and models that fit the type of game design they have selected (e.g., SG escape game models, tools to create branched storylines, tools to create geo-located treasure hunts).

One of the most interesting discoveries that we made during this project was the fact that creating SGs made some teachers “fall in love with teaching again”. It changed their frame of mind as a teacher and gave them more confidence and motivation in their work. And this is regardless of the quality of the SG produced. The teachers were equally ecstatic, whether they produced amazing SGs or mediocre trivial pursuits (even though we had firmly warned them against it). The point is, even if they created a SG that we did not consider fantastic, it was THEIR SG, they were happy and proud to use it and that just makes a huge difference.

Out of the 26 teachers who produced a SG prototype during the training session, nine continued to improved their SGs or created other SGs Several also helped colleagues create their own SG and when on selling their SG as learning material. Knowing that teachers have very
busy agendas, the fact that 35% pursued beyond the training session is very impressive! Two teachers were also interested in writing research papers about their SGs and the impact it had on the way they teach. I therefore wrote several scientific publications with Cindy FURNON (teacher) and Thomas LONGEON (educational designer), who participated in the 2020 edition of Ludifik'action (Furnon et al., 2022), (Longeon et al., 2023). These papers present their game *Wonder Seller* but also the way it can be integrated into the curriculum by varying the rules. We also wrote a paper with a group of educational designers who help a biology teacher create several game modules for her first year class on plant cellular biology (Liu et al., 2023). These modules have been integrated into the university's e-learning system. A statistical comparative analysis shows that the use of a SG significantly increased the grades of students, by almost two points out of 20. Even though the game was not strictly mandatory, 88 out of 117 students played it. We also found evidence of the usefulness of some of the game mechanics such as a non-player character named Blob and hidden bonus information modules.

The Ludifik’action training session has been quite successful. It won a national PEPS (Pasion Enseignement et Pédagogie dans le Supérieur) prize in 2018 and our article on the 10 commandments of the SG padawan, briefly presented above, won the best paper award of the 2022 Games and Learning Alliance Conference in Tampere, Finland. I have also presented several keynotes on the subject at conferences organized by Universities or schools to encourage teachers to create SGs. The 10 commandments are also available as a video capsule for an online course on pedagogy in higher education. The training session is now being duplicated in other universities such as Paris (2022), Nice (2023) and Le Mans (2023), with other trainers. We are working on an article that explains the method, from the trainer’s point of view, and have given access to the source documents to further promote Ludifik’action.

## 3.4 Conclusions

In this chapter, we present several of our contributions to advance scientific understanding of how game mechanics, ML and HCI can be used for education. We have carried out several research projects to design innovative TEL systems with teachers and have tested them in their classes to define design principles. However, these types of projects are costly, time consuming and sometime yield mediocre results. We therefore propose a pragmatic method to conduct these research projects to maximize productivity based on our experience of using the Design-Based Research method for seven projects. It is intended to help researchers, teachers and theirs learners work together. This is complementary to the seven facets of collaboration between researchers in social sciences and computer science proposed in the first chapter.

Research is largely build on previous experience. However, a large majority of SGs are designed by private companies and are therefore not present in the scientific literature. For this reason, we also propose a catalogue, a metadata schema and models to help teachers, but also researches, find existing SGs and share their own. This is a good start but such a system needs to be carried by a large community of teachers to have an impact. Yet, we believe this path should be pursued because there is a strong demand from teachers but also from universities to regroup all types of pedagogical innovations in a catalogue. To be truly useful, this catalogue needs to include the finished products (e.g., applications, SGs, non-digital SGs) but also the design material, which will enable teachers to reuse and share their Open Educational Resources (OER).

Finally, we propose a training method and guidelines to help teachers create their own SGs
or TEL systems with the available resources. We have obtained very positive results, not so much regarding the quality of the SGs produced, but rather the motivation and drive these SGs gave to their teacher/designers. The next chapter aims to pursue this objective by providing teachers with simple TEL authoring tools that integrate the design principles found in research, but that also give them a lot of creative leeway so they can create their own content and make the tools their own.
TAKE AWAY MESSAGE

This second chapter reports on our efforts to achieve our first researcher objective, RO
1: provide methods, models and tools to help all necessary actors design effective TEL.

We first propose **several design principles for using technology** for various educa-
tional objectives and in various contexts:

* **TurtleTable(t):** using collaborative game mechanics and tangible objects to teach middle school children the basics of computer programming

* SMART-Fractions: using game mechanics and Mixed Reality to teach children how to understand the notion of fractions on a number line.

* TGRIS: using a Virtual Reality simulator to help professionals deal with their emotions in complicated situations.

We also propose an **automatically-updating catalogue** (*JEN-Planet*) to help teach-
ers and researchers find existing SGs.

Finally, based on our experience, we propose:

* A pragmatic implementation of the Design-Based Method with gradual implication of researchers and teachers.

* Guidelines and a training method to help teachers create their own original educational tools such as SGs (digital and non-digital) with the available material resources and staff.
## 3.5 Related publications

Liu Y., Marne B., Marfisi-Schottman I., Galpin T., Caruso A., EscapeCell: Serious Game Integration to a University Biology Course on an E-learning Platform. Proceedings of the Games and Learning Alliance Conference (GALA), 2023, Dublin, Ireland, in press.

Marfisi-Schottman I., TGRIS, Professional Training with a Virtual Reality Interview Simulator, Configured and Piloted by Peers, International Journal of Learning Technology, 2023, in press.

Longeon T., Furnon C., Marfisi-Schottman I., Designing and Evaluating a SG for Learning: a Subtle Balance between Designers and Learners, Proceedings of the International Simulation and Gaming Association (ISAGA), 2023, La Rochelle, France, pp.450-459.

Marfisi-Schottman I., Vinatier I., TGRIS, dispositif de formation professionnelle, outillé d'un simulateur d'entretien en Réalité Virtuelle, paramétré et piloté par les pairs. Sciences et Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication pour l'Éducation et la Formation (STICEF), vol. 29, num. 1, 2022.

Furnon C., Longeon T., Marfisi-Schottman I., Le jeu, un développeur de compétences à prendre au sérieux. Actes de la conférence Internationale Game Evolution (CIGE). 2022. Online, France, 19p.

Marfisi-Schottman I., Longeon T., Furnon C., Marne B., 10 Commandments of the Serious Game Padawan: Lessons Learned After 4 Years of Professional Training. Proceedings of the Games and Learning Alliance Conference (GALA), 2022, Tampere, Finland, pp.63-73.

Marfisi-Schottman I., Touel S., George S., Designing a Mixed Reality Extension for an Educational Board Game on Fractions. International Journal of Virtual Reality, vol. 21, num. 1, IPI Press, 2021.

Morie W., Marfisi-Schottman I., Bi Tra G., Information Extraction Model to Improve Learning Game Metadata Indexing. International journal of Information Systems Engineering (Ingénierie des Systèmes d'Information), vol. 25, num. 1, Lavoisier, 2020, pp.11-19.

Touel S., Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Analysis of Mixed Reality Tools for Learning Math in Primary and Secondary School, Proceedings of the European conference of the Games and Learning Alliance (GALA), 2020, Laval, France, pp.112-121.

Morie W., Marfisi-Schottman I., Bi Tra G., User-Centred Design Method for Digital Catalogue Interfaces, Proceedings of the European conference of the Games and Learning Alliance (GALA), 2020, Laval, France, pp.34-44.

Morie W., Marfisi-Schottman I., Bi Tra G., LGMD: Optimal Lightweight Metadata Model for Indexing Learning Games. Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart Applications and Data Analysis for Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (SADASC), 2020, Marrakech, Morocco, pp.3-16.

Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Leconte M., TurtleTablet : un jeu collaboratif et tangible sur tablette pour l'initiation à la programmation. Actes de la conférence Didapro, 2020, Lille, France, 10p.

Marfisi-Schottman I., Vinatier I., Bevacqua E., TGRIS : Outil de simulation pour la gestion des émotions dans la formation à l'entretien des conseillers pédagogiques. Actes de la conférence sur les Environnements Informatiques pour l'Apprentissage Humain (EIAH), 2019, Paris, France.
pp.307-318.

Vinatier I., Marfisi-Schottman I., L'irruption des émotions entre conseillers pédagogiques et enseignants débutants : quelle conception de formation pour les mettre à distance ? L'analyse des interactions dans le travail, Vinatier I., Filiettaz L. et Laforest M., Raison et Passions, 2018, 26p.

Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Leconte M., TurtleTable: Learn the Basics of Computer Algorithms with Tangible Interactions. Proceedings of the European conference of the Games and Learning Alliance, (GALA), 2018, Palermo, Italy. pp.291-300.

Marfisi-Schottman I., Vinatier I., Bevacqua E., Kébé M., Enabling Teachers to Create Authentic Interview Simulations. Proceedings of the World Conference on Educational Media and Technology (EdMedia), 2018, Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp.1506-1511.

Vinatier I., Marfisi-Schottman I., Conception d'un outil de simulation d'entretien réaliste piloté en temps réel par un conseiller pédagogique », Actes de la rencontres internationales du réseau de recherche en éducation et en formation (RÉF), 2017, Paris, France, 12p.
<figure><img src="image_60.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_61.png" /></figure>

# CHAPTER 3

## Adaptable Models and Authoring tools

Enabling teachers to create technology-enhanced learning systems themselves
CHAPTER 3

ADAPTABLE MODELS AND AUTHORING
TOOLS

Enabling Teachers to Create Technology-Enhanced Learning Systems Themselves

Contents

<table><tr><td>1</td><td>Introduction</td><td>99</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Research context and questions</td><td>103</td></tr><tr><td>2.1</td><td>What models and authoring tools can enable teachers to use Mixed Reality?</td><td>103</td></tr><tr><td>2.2</td><td>What models and authoring tools can enable teachers to create Mobile Learning applications?</td><td>104</td></tr><tr><td>2.3</td><td>What design methods are used to create authoring tools?</td><td>105</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Contributions</td><td>105</td></tr><tr><td>3.1</td><td>Models and authoring tools for educational Mixed Reality</td><td>105</td></tr><tr><td>3.2</td><td>Models and authoring tools to create Mobile Applications for field trips</td><td>112</td></tr><tr><td>3.3</td><td>Design methods for creating authoring tools</td><td>126</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Conclusions</td><td>131</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Related publications</td><td>134</td></tr></table>

# 1 Introduction

This chapter focuses on the second research objective, which is to **provide adaptable models and authoring tools** to facilitate TEL development and thus increase their acceptability and use (Figure 3.1). This research objective addresses research challenges from our three main research branches. The challenge for Serious Games (SGs) is the very high production cost to hire an entire team of game designers, developers and graphic designers ($C^3^{SG}$). For innovative Human-Computer Interactions (CHI), the development is complex because it requires developers who are specialized in the chosen technology (e.g., Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality) ($C^2^{CHI}$). Acceptability and use is a challenge for pretty much all innovative TEL systems. SGs, ML and HCI are seldom used in schools, for professional training or even for educational tourism, even though they offer
numerous advantages (C4SG C3ML C3CHI). Finally, the integration of ML is complicated because
mobile devices are usually not allowed in schools (C2ML).

<figure><img src="image_62.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.1: Second research objective</figcaption></figure>

As explained in the introductory chapter, **authoring tools** are a promising solution to all
these challenges. They offer two main advantages (Figure 3.2):

* **Authoring tools cover a large variety of teachers’ needs:** Unlike usual TEL systems that are built for specific learning objectives, learner profiles and context of use, such as those presented in the last chapter, authoring tools cover a much larger variety of needs and can therefore be potentially used by a large number of teachers. Even though their design is quite complex, as we will explain later, the return on investment can therefore be much higher than that of classic TEL projects.

* **Authoring tools can encourage collaborative TEL systems design:** If the authoring tool offers collaboration functionalities or simply the possibility of copying another author's content, it gives teachers the possibility of collaboratively designing TEL systems. Communities of practice can evolve to help teachers get started with the tools and make the most out of its functionalities. The existence of such a community is an important factor in the decision to adopt a TEL system in the classroom (Rodríguez-Triana et al., 2020) and it constitutes a good way to encourage more teachers to use a system and improve the authoring tool.

These advantages encourage a wider use of authoring tools, which research directly benefits
from, as it can feed on the experience of many alternative versions of TEL systems or instructional
strategies that are created and tested with a large number of participants. This virtuous circle
is essential in identifying new design principles and finding hard evidence of the effectiveness of
TEL (Murray, 1999).

In addition to the advantages of the authoring tools themselves, the TEL systems they
produce also have three major advantages for teachers:

* **Authoring tools produce “ownable” TEL systems:** They allow teachers to create custom content which gives them a sense of ownership. It is their production, they have spent time creating the content, they know how it works and will therefore feel comfortable using it in the classroom. As we highlighted in the last chapter, this sense of ownership has
a positive impact on the teacher's attitude, their motivation to use the TEL system and its chances of being accepted in the long term. They become active agents which fosters a change in the learning paradigm (Mumtaz, 2000).

* **Authoring tools produce adaptable TEL systems:** Teachers can change the content whenever they want because the content is not hardwired into the code. This is a huge advantage because the system can be improved, adapted to new content or new students and reused, year after year.

* **Authoring tools produce low-cost TEL systems:** The third advantage is that these tools can reduce development time, effort and cost because they do not require the intervention of specialized developers or graphic designers (Murray et al., 2003). This is much more in line with the reality of teachers. They simply do not have the resources. Some teachers pay for their own computer, printer paper and scotch tape, even though these are basic work tools.

However, there is a catch.... It would be too easy otherwise. TEL authoring tools present us with two main design challenges (Figure 3.2):

* **Balancing power and usability:** Authoring tools need to be based on highly adaptable models that meet the needs of as many teachers as possible, while remaining as simple as possible. This balance is described by Murray (2004) as the product of design trade-offs between power/flexibility and usability. It is extremely difficult to achieve because authoring tools need to be simple and easy to use, yet allow teachers to create a wide variety of educational activities and scenarios. Those who design authoring tools must therefore make hard choices on what features to include in the tool, based on the most common teachers' needs. Similarly, teachers should be able to create their activities very quickly, by providing minimal information, even though the authoring tool needs a large amount of precise information to generate the code. This entails the use of simple template models with predefined values and complex implementation models (hidden from teachers) capable of transforming the template models into low-level code blocks. The design of such models is usually only possible in fields of TEL that have reached a certain maturity and have a set of well-proven design principles.

* **Helping teachers discover new ways of teaching:** In order to use authoring tools, teachers need to re-conceptualize their course content to fit the given model (Murray, 2004). But it is not enough to put existing educational content into the authoring tool. Or rather, we should say it is a shame not to think outside of the box. Indeed, we agree with Dias and Atkinson (2001) that authoring tools should ideally have a positive influence on teachers by providing them, for example, with the means to create original learning content that requires technology or game mechanics that they were previously unfamiliar with. This is the point of conducting experimental research such as that described in the previous chapter: to find new pedagogical design principles from which teachers can benefit. However, researchers have found that most TEL systems are used by teachers simply to replicate the same learning paradigm (Coomey and Stephenson, 2001), (Sheffield, 2011). For example, teachers mostly use e-learning platforms as a file repository! At our university, out of 974 teachers, only 2.36% use Moodle's interactive and gamification features, 2.15% use modules that encourage reflection, such as surveys and auto-graded MCQs and only 1.54% use features that encourage collaboration, such as peer evaluation or wikis (Bennacer, 2022). Authoring
tools therefore need to provide guides to help teachers make the most of the available
functionalities. The UX (User eXperience) design is also very important to help increase
the perceived affordance of authoring tools (Bower, 2008). The aim is to encourage teachers
to try out new features and use the authoring tool to its full potential. In short, teachers
need scaffolding to help them rethink their content.

A final challenge is the acceptance of authoring tools. As teachers spend a lot of time
using them to create their content, the robustness and the longevity of such tools is paramount.
Teachers will be reluctant to spend time learning how to use a new application if they are not
sure it will not crash or that the service will simply be discontinued. We will not talk about this
is this chapter because it will be covered in the next.

<figure><img src="image_63.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.2: Advantages and design challenges of TEL authoring tools</figcaption></figure>

In this chapter, we present the directions we have taken to address these design challenges for two specific types of TEL systems. The first type is **Mixed Reality (MR) educational activities**. The project we conducted with 20 pilot teachers allowed us to come up with original ways of using MR for learning. We also propose a very simple workflow for the authoring tool that allows teachers to create their activities in three to five steps. The second type of TEL system is **Mobile Learning (ML) applications for educational field trips**. The proposed model for this type of TEL covers a wide variety of outings such as treasure hunts, geocaching, orienteering races, museums visits or sightseeing. The last direction we have taken is to **propose guidelines (based on our experience above) for conducting research on authoring tools**.
# 2 Research context and questions

## 2.1 What models and authoring tools can enable teachers to use Mixed Reality?

Mixed Reality (MR) has been shown to have several advantages for formal and non-formal learning (Dengel et al., 2022). Because MR creates a multimodal playground for presenting and interacting with content in an immersive way (Roopa et al., 2021), learners can better interact and enact concepts through sound, sight, motion and haptics (Xiao et al., 2020). Such immersive modalities can support multisensory and experiential learning (Shams and Seitz, 2008) in many disciplines, including art, design, science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (Ibáñez and Delgado-Kloos, 2018). Research clearly argues that schools should integrate MR into their curricula to enable immersive learning that engages learners and facilitates understanding of content and phenomena (Billinghurst and Duenser, 2012). In France, the use of Augmented Reality (AR), which is one type of MR, is even officially recommended by the Ministry of Education. In July 2022, a post on the national Eduscol portal proclaimed that AR is a particularly suitable technology for use in schools, as it empowers students, links the digital world to the real world and enhances learning through information spacialization (Eduscol, 2022).

However, like the *Magic Cauldron* presented in the last chapter, **most MR applications are designed to meet a specific educational need** (e.g., learning fractions on a number line for children from 9 to 12 years old). Other MR applications offer impressive 3D models of the human body or natural phenomena such as a volcanic eruption or the rotation of the planets in the solar system. Although these applications clearly create an initial “wow effect”, teachers find it difficult to really integrate these tools into their course because the content is not perfectly adapted to their needs (too complicated or too simple and 90% of the time in English, which is a real problem for French teachers).

In addition, **authoring MR experiences requires considerable technical knowledge and skills** (Nebeling and Speicher, 2018). The vast majority of AR and MR applications are created using advanced programming and complex toolkits such as Unity3d, Unreal Engine, Vuforia, ARCore or Three.js, which require highly skilled and specialized developers. There is therefore a clear need for authoring tools that enable teachers to create their own content.

In fact, an impressive number of authoring tools already exist, but they are not being used by educators. In a recent state-of-the-art study, we analyzed 21 educational authoring tools from academia and industry to identify their authoring workflows, the types of MR educational activities that can be created with them and other functionalities. In parallel, we organized co-design sessions with 19 teachers to identify their real needs in relation to these four dimensions. The result of this study is clear: **existing authoring tools do not meet the real needs of teachers** (Ez-Zaouia et al., 2022). For example, 16 out of 21 tools require an Internet connection on the tablets, which is a deal-breaker in France because most schools simply do not have WIFI. Basically, the authoring tools that offer rich activity models and many functionalities are much too complex and require several hours of teacher training. This is the case with *MirageXR* (Masneri et al., 2020). And the authoring tools that are easy to use offer very limited activity models and functionalities. In this category we have *ARTutor* (Terzopoulos et al., 2021). Typically, this last type of authoring tool only allows the user to superimpose an AR image on top of another image (e.g. from a book or poster), which is quite limiting in terms of pedagogical potential. This is a clear illustration of the design trade-offs between power and usability explained in the
introduction to this chapter.

We therefore have two research questions:

- **RQ8. What adaptable models can be used to design educational Mixed Reality activities?**

- **RQ9. What authoring tool can enable teachers to create Mixed Reality applications for educational purposes?**

We use a bottom-up approach to address these issues. In the MIXAP project, we selected a representative group of pilot teachers, working from pre-school to the university level, to make sure we had a wide variety of educational domains. We asked them to create paper prototypes of the MR educational activities they would like to create for their class. We then analyzed their prototypes to find invariable activity models on which we built the MIXAP authoring tool. The interface, vocabulary and user guide for MIXAP were also designed with the pilot teachers.

## 2.2 What models and authoring tools can enable teachers to create Mobile Learning applications?

The situation for Mobile Learning (ML) is very similar to that for MR presented above and we have published several articles on the subject, so I will summarize it.

ML offers many advantages for teaching, especially for creating fun, geo-located mobile applications for educational field trips (e.g., visiting a museum, discovering a city, orienteering races) (Karoui et al., 2016), (Marfisi-Schottman and George, 2014). However, their design is technically complex and it is difficult for teachers to share scenarios, as the scenario is highly dependent on the location where the outing takes place. Therefore, there is a need for authoring tools.

Although authoring tools for ML exist, they are either too complicated (but powerful) or very limited in terms of functionality (but easy to use) (Karoui et al., 2016). In addition, all the authoring tools that offer geo-located activities require an internet connection, which is not compatible with the use of school tablet that are not set up with mobile phone plans to provide a data connection.

We therefore have two research questions:

- **RQ10. What adaptable mobile learning game model can be used for educational field trips?**

- **RQ11. What authoring tool can enable teachers to create their own mobile applications for their field trips?**

We have been working on these questions for almost 10 years. Working on three successive ML projects (JEM-Inventor, ReVeRIES and SituLearn) has given us the opportunity to perfect the models and authoring tools. As the field of ML is much more mature than MR, we were able to build on existing situated ML models and improve them with the help of pilot teachers. During these projects we also experimented with different authoring strategies. We focused on setting up scaffolding tools to help teachers use the authoring tools not only to recreate their current field trips, but to go beyond and incorporate new game mechanics and activities. In the last project, we also provided teachers with tools for the class debriefing session after the field trip. Such tools are often overlooked in similar research projects.
## 2.3 What design methods are used to create authoring tools?

By now, you are probably convinced that authoring tools are a very promising direction for TEL, not only for research (because they allow different learning strategies to be created and tested), but also for the use and acceptance of TEL systems in schools. However, to our knowledge, there is no clear design methodology for creating these authoring tools. Murray et al. (2003) insist that teachers need to be involved in the process, but there are no other specific recommendations. Of course, we can use the Design-Based Research (DBR) method presented in the previous chapter, which works for all types of TEL, but authoring tools have specificities that should be taken into account. For example, how should the pilot teachers be recruited to ensure that the authoring tools will meet the needs of as many teachers as possible? How do you decide on what to include in the generic model and what is too specific and should not be included because it would only complicate the authoring tool?

We therefore have two additional research questions:

- RQ12. What are the design principles for TEL authoring tools?

- RQ13. What guidelines can facilitate the management of authoring tool project?

We try to answer these questions based on our experience with the four authoring tools projects mentioned above: MIXAP, JEM-Inventor, ReVeRIES and SituLearn. This is presented at the end of the following contributions section.

# 3 Contributions

## 3.1 Models and authoring tools for educational Mixed Reality

The research presented in this section addresses the following two questions:

- RQ8. What adaptable models can be used to design educational Mixed Reality activities?

- RQ9. What authoring tool can enable teachers to create Mixed Reality applications for educational purposes?

The work presented in this section was carried out as part of the ongoing MIXAP project led in collaboration with 20 pilot teachers and Canopé, the national teacher training network. The aim of the project is to provide a simple authoring tool that can be used by teachers, from pre-school to university, to create their own educational MR applications using the equipment that they already have in their classroom. As shown in Figure 3.5, the teacher can use the school tablets or their computer to create the MR activities, and then the students can complete these activities using the school tablets or their smartphones.

To illustrate how our pilot teachers have used our authoring tools and the variety of educational activities they have created with them, we have included two testimonials in this chapter (Figure 3.3 and Figure 3.4). The others can be found in the appendix.

In this section, we will first present the MR pedagogical activity models designed with the pilot teachers. Then we will present the interface and main functionalities of the MIXAP authoring tool, which was built based on these models. Finally, we will present the first results
<figure><img src="image_64.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.3: Testimony of a pre-school teacher who used MIXAP</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_65.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.4: Testimony of a high-school teacher who used MIXAP</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_66.png" /></figure>

The teacher creates the educational Mixed Reality activities

<figure><img src="image_67.png" /></figure>

The creation is done with
the school tablets or their
computer.

<figure><img src="image_68.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_69.png" /></figure>

The Learners do the activities

<figure><img src="image_70.png" /></figure>

They use the school tablets
or their smartphones.

<caption>Figure 3.5: Steps for using the MIXAP authoring tool</caption>

of the experiments carried out in schools.

**3.1.1 Mixed Reality educational activity models**

As shown in *Figure 3.6*, MIXAP offers four types of MR pedagogical activities and two ways of organizing them. These were defined thanks to the design sessions that we held with the 20 pilot teachers (11 local teachers from Pays de la Loire and 9 from Futuna, an island in the middle of the Pacific). During these design sessions, the pilot teachers were asked to imagine the activities they wanted to design for their class and to formalize them with a paper prototype (Ez-Zaouia et al., 2023). The method used for this co-design session is presented at the end of this chapter, in the guidelines for designing authoring tools.

The analysis of these paper prototypes shows that the type of activity most needed by the
pilot teachers is **image augmentation**. This activity allows multimodal resources (text, image,
video, audio, 3D model and supplementary information sheets) to appear on an image marker
(e.g., poster, book, exercise sheet). For example, a primary school teacher wanted to add pictures
of animals and audio recordings of important vocabulary (e.g., "a reindeer has four hooves and
two antlers") to the pages of a book. Another high school teacher wanted to display 3D models
created by his students in the class yearbook. The analysis of the co-design sessions also revealed
other, more original types of activities, such as **image validation**. This allows for the creation of
autonomous activities in which MR automatically validates whether the chosen image is correct.
For example, a high school technology teacher wanted students to identify a specific part of a
machine (e.g., the engine). The third type of activity identified was **associating two images.**
This technique also allows teachers to create autonomous activities as it provides feedback so that
students know if they have correctly matched two associated images. For example, one pre-school
<figure><img src="image_71.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.6: Types of educational MR activities offered by MIXAP</figcaption></figure>

teacher said that she wanted the children to practice recognizing the same letter written in upper and lower case. Finally, the last type of activity is **image overlay**, which allows students to see transparent layers on top of an image. For example, a university geology professor wanted students to be able to turn on and off layers showing different types of rock on a picture of a mountain. Other teachers wanted to use this type of activity to show the answer to an exercise. Finally, the analysis of the paper prototypes showed that teachers wanted to combine the different activities presented above either into a group of **activities**, without a predefined order, or into an ordered **activity path**.

### 3.1.2 Educational Mixed Reality authoring tool

The *MIXAP* authoring tool can be used both by teachers, to create the four *MR* activities described above as well as by students to carry out their activities. It is a web application that can be used on different devices such as computers, tablets and smartphones. It is designed to work locally (progressive web app) and therefore does not require an internet connection, except for the initial connection to the application and when sharing activities from one device to another.

*MIXAP* provides a simple design workflow with steps to create an activity using visual and intuitive interactions. *Figure 3.7* shows the four steps for creating an image augmentation activity: naming the activity, taking a picture of the image marker, adding the augmentations and testing the activity. Once activities are created, teachers can share them with their students in read-only mode. Teachers can also share in editor mode so that other teachers can reuse and modify their activities.
<figure><img src="image_72.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.7: Simple four-step workflow offered by MIXAP</figcaption></figure>

### 3.1.3 Experiments with teachers

Several experiments were conducted on the first and second *MIXAP* prototypes. The first experiment focused on the authoring tool's usability (Is it easy to use?), utility (Is it useful?) and acceptability (Will it be accepted by teachers?). We asked pilot teachers and teachers who were discovering *MIXAP* for the first time, to create several activities and then fill out questionnaires. The results were very encouraging (Ez-Zaouia et al., 2023). In terms of usability, the average score for all the 39 participants was 73.91, which is above the standard SUS average of 68 points and is classified as “good”. Acceptability, especially in terms of low cognitive load, is also very good (average of 1.5 out of 5). In addition, we found no statistically significant differences between pilot and non-pilot teachers (p = 0.180), nor according to teachers’ profiles (p = 0.889 for the age and p = 0.520 for the teaching discipline). This means that *MIXAP* is very easy to use for all teachers, including those who have just discovered it. The only statistically significant difference was related to the perceived **utility** (p = 0.043): while the pilot teaches gave a high score (average of 4 out of 5), the others gave a score under the median (average of 2.5 out of 5), meaning that they did not see how *MIXAP* could really be useful for their courses. We intend to improve this during the next year of the project by providing more tutorials and examples of how *MIXAP* can be used, inspired by what the pilot teachers have done.

The second experiment focused on the impact of *MIXAP* in students and teachers. Ten experiments were conducted in the classrooms of the local pilot teachers. This was organized in three phases. In the first phase, we observed the pilot teacher creating the MR activities without any help. We noticed that the teacher's initial project (written on the paper prototype) often evolved into something more complex and rich, where the technology was only a small part of the activity. After testing *MIXAP*, two teachers found the tool so easy to use that they decided to ask the students to create the activities (in middle school and technical high school). In the
<figure><img src="image_73.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.8: First session of the MIXAP experiments in the classroom</figcaption></figure>

second phase, we observed how teachers and students used *MIXAP* in class (Figure 3.8, left). We noticed many interesting phenomena. For example, young children found it hard to hold the tablets still and click on the augmentations at the same time. This forced them to develop collaborative strategies, which were encouraged by the teachers. One of the teachers also used *MIXAP* to animate the portrait of Alfred WEGENER on the exercise sheet to make it look like he was reading the description of the exercises to the students. The last phase was a semi-directed interview with the teachers to get their feedback on the use of *MIXAP* and to understand if it met their expectations in terms of pedagogical benefits (Figure 3.8, right). The sessions, which are still being analyzed, were very interesting. For example, the teachers noticed that several students who usually have trouble concentrating or did not speak French were very well integrated into the group. In fact, these children were so well integrated that we did not even realize they had any particular difficulties! We even suspected that the teachers had deliberately selected a group of very bright and well-behaved students for the experiment. The first results are reported in (Mercier et al., 2023) and several other articles are in the writing or evaluation stage.

### 3.1.4 Discussion and positioning of the work

MR is still a very new technology in TEL and its potential for education has yet to be fully discovered. Interestingly, probably because of the marketing value of the “wow” effect it provides, most educational MR applications are being developed by private companies rather than by researchers. This has resulted in a large number of impressive-looking applications being created with very little thought given to their impact on learning. However, several major research projects are underway and should soon improve our understanding of how to use MR to its full educational potential.

As you may have noticed, our approach is again teacher-centered. Teachers provide the inspirational material from which we build the educational MR models. We believe this approach is very effective because the teachers see the technology from a different angle and find new ways to use it. For example, in this project, they have found three new ways to use MR for educational purposes (image validation, associating two images, and image overlay), even though, from a computer scientist perspective, they all use the same basic functionality of image recognition.

The MIXAP project is very young (started in January 2022) and modest (126 k€ funding),
but the first results, especially in terms of usability and the variety of educational activities created by the pilot teachers, have clearly exceeded our expectations.

## 3.2 Models and authoring tools to create Mobile Applications for field trips

The research presented in this section addresses the following questions:

- **RQ10. What adaptable mobile learning game model can be used for educational field trips?**

- **RQ11. What authoring tool can teachers use to create their own mobile applications for their field trips?**

As mentioned in the first part of this chapter, the work presented in this section has been carried out in three consecutive projects over almost 10 years.

The first project, called **JEM-Inventor**, was part of my installation project at LIUM in 2013. The goal was to enable teachers to create their own geo-located smartphone applications for their field trips and deploy them on available devices (school tablets or the students' smartphones). The idea was to provide teachers with an authoring tool and a set of activity models to take advantage of the positive interdependencies between collaboration, gaming, mobility, and learning (Marfisi-Schottman and George, 2014). Thus, the goal is to use the game mechanics and functionalities offered by modern smartphones and tablets to enhance situated learning. Thanks to the study led by my first Ph.D. student, Aous KAROUI, we proposed a geo-located activity model and developed the authoring tool *JEM-Inventor*. It offered an original nested design approach to help teachers gradually discover functionalities according to their profile and needs. This project was carried out in collaboration with seven pilot teachers.

The same model of geo-located activity was then perfected in the **ReVeRIES ANR** project, which focused on learning about plants and which involved three pilot teachers in botany. For this project, we developed another authoring tool, called *MOGGLE*, in order to experiment with the functionalities related to the collaborative design of field trips, which was one of the focuses of the project (Gicquel et al., 2017).

Finally, in the ongoing **SituLearn ANR** project which I am leading, we have once again improved the model by adding a collaborative learning scenario, but we have also developed a new authoring tool that combines the best of *JEM-Inventor* and *MOGGLE*. The *SituLearn* project is characterized by a broader scope, as it is intended to be used by teachers and by museums and cultural centers that cannot afford to develop custom applications. To facilitate the reading of this manuscript, we will refer to these mediators as “teachers” and to museum and cultural center visitors as “learners”. We have also added functionality for teachers to view learners’ progress and outcomes during and after field trips. Figure 3.9 summarizes the steps for using *SituLearn*: first the teachers create their smartphone application, then the students use this application during the outing and finally, the teachers can view their progress during and after the outing. This project was carried out in collaboration with ten pilot teachers and cultural mediators working in museums.

In this section, we will first examine the latest version of the ML game model which was perfected during the three projects. Then, we present the interfaces and main functionalities of the authoring tools *JEM-Inventor*, *MOGGLE* and *SituLearn*. Finally, we summarize the results of the experiments conducted during these projects.
<figure><img src="image_74.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.9: Steps for using the SituLearn authoring tool</figcaption></figure>

### 3.2.1 Mobile Learning Game Model

The proposed ML game model is shown in Figure 3.10. It is also presented in detail in (Marfisi-Schottman et al., 2016b) and (Marfisi-Schottman et al., 2022a).

A *Mobile Learning Game* is composed of several *Situated Game Units*, which are triggered when the players arrive at a *Point Of Interest (POI)* placed on a *Map*. During the game, players collect points that are stored in their *Score*. Teachers can also add a Timer that counts the time it takes players to complete the game and a *Time Lock* that shows how much time is left to complete the game. Players can also indicate that they **need help** at any time. A notification will be sent to all other students as well as the teacher.

Each *Situated Game Unit* is composed of:

- **Instructions to Find the POI**: This instruction can include resources (text, images and multimedia), and various guidance features, such as displaying the POI marker on the map or a GPS beeper that indicates if you are getting closer or further away.

- **Player at POI Validation**: This can be done by GPS (players must physically be in the geographic zone of the POI) (set by default if the field trip is outdoors), by scanning a QR code on the POI (recommended if the field trip is indoors), or manually by simply clicking on the button "I have arrived". Bear in mind that players can always force the validation in case of a technical problem (with the GPS or the QR code reader) or if the QR code has disappeared.

- **Information sheet**: Teachers can provide information about the POI or the object of interest when players arrive at the POI. This information sheet can be consulted at any time during and after the game.

- **On-Site Activities**: Teachers can propose several activities that need to be done at the POI. There are two types of activities. The first type is *Answering a question* (MCQ, picture MCQ
<figure><img src="image_75.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.10: Mobile Learning Game model</figcaption></figure>

or open-ended question). Players can earn points for answering correctly and they can also use
points to buy hints if they need help answering the question. The second type of activity is called
*Taking a sample* (photos, audio recordings or notes). These documents can be consulted at
any time during and after the game and can be used by teachers during the debriefing session
back in the classroom.

- *Pedagogical Conclusion:* Teachers can provide a take-away message with the important knowledge freshly acquired at each POI.

This model allows to create three different types of *ML Games*, each suited to different types
of outings:

- **Treasure Hunt**: The *Situated Game Units* are in a defined order, i.e. the completion of one game unit triggers the *Instructions to Find POI* of the next unit. This type is well suited to most educational field trips organized by teachers. For this type of game, we have added the possibility of having several itineraries, corresponding to several different set orders of Situated Game Units. This avoids putting all students on the same path and allows teachers to discretely create more or less difficult itineraries to better adapt to the students' level. Several teachers have also used this feature to create complementary itineraries to encourage student collaboration during the class debriefing session.

- **Activity Hub**: All the units are visible from the beginning of the game so players can choose the order in which they want to complete them. This is particularly well suited for museum visits, as it is similar to an interactive audio guide.

- **Interactive Walk**: Players receive a notification when they are physically near a POI, asking them if they want to do the activities associate with that POI. This is typically the best game type for exploring a city, park or an archaeological site.

In the latest SituLearn project, we have also added the possibility to create a fourth type of ML game: a **Collaborative Game**. This game model, represented by the green stripped boxes in Figure 3.10, includes several new concepts: students are grouped into **Teams** of 2 to 5 players and choose a name and a color. Each player's location is shown on the interactive map by a marker of their team's color. Each team has a **Base** camp from which they set out to gather information and then return. The game consists of several Milestones (3 to 5) related to one of the skills to be acquired during the field trip. Each milestone contains several Situated Game Units (4 to 10). The team members must coordinate their efforts to distribute these game units among themselves in order to win the most points in the allotted time. Students should use the strengths of each team member (i.e., speed and pedagogical skills) to decide who will complete which unit. Once all the game units are completed, team members must synchronize their return to the base camp. This unlocks the **Milestone Activity**. This activity consists of a broad question that requires team members to analyze all the information and samples collected at the POIs and take time to reflect. This is a key moment of collaboration as team members will need to share the complementary information they have collected and explain their observations, then debate and make decisions in order to answer this final, big question. Teachers can also make **team scores available to all teams** to encouraging competition or, if the common goal is for all the teams to achieve a minimum score, to encourage collaboration.

The proposed model can easily be **extended by adding domain-specific modules**. This was the case in the ReVeRIES project, which focused on learning about plants. A specific **Plant Recognition Activity** was created (sub-class of Activity). To complete this activity, the learner had to find a specific type of tree and take a picture of one of its leaves. We used the image recognition module provided by one of the project partners to analyze the photo and automatically validate the activity (Jendoubi et al., 2020). We used the same system to extend the *player At POI Validation* method. This opened up the possibility for creating field trips that could be used in any forest or park where several common tree species could be found. In fact, this new extension made it possible to trigger activities not with a specific location, but rather when the players found a specific type of tree (e.g., oak, birch, elm).

The model presented above also comes with a complex **implementation model** that automatically takes care of triggering the right objects (instances of the classes in the Mobile Learning Game model) and interfaces depending on the players' actions, position, and progress in the
game. This mechanism allows teachers to create geo-located smartphone applications without
any programming skills.

3.2.2 Authoring tool for geo-located ML application for field trips

Jem-Inventor

<figure><img src="image_76.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.11: JEM-Inventor authoring tool interface</figcaption></figure>

As explained above, the ML game model presented above was implemented in three differ-
ent authoring tools. The first one was *JEM-Inventor* (Figure 3.11). Besides providing a simple
WISIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) interface, its originality lies in its nested design
approach. At the top of the interface, three buttons trigger different visualization modes. The
*standard mode*, shown in Figure 3.11, provides a rather simple interface with only the most im-
portant functionalities. The *intermediate mode* adds more options and functionality to the panels
on the right side, allowing teachers to further customize their game. Finally, the *expert mode*
allows teachers to modify the core functionality of the game using visual block programming.
The intermediate, and especially the expert mode, offer much more functionality and freedom
but come with a much more complex interface. *JEM-Inventor* is entirely built on *App-Inventor*,
an authoring tool designed by MIT to allow non-developers to create their own smartphone ap-
plications using block programming. This complex block-programming interface is only revealed
in the last expert mode.

The experiments conducted with seven pilot teachers, three field trips, and more than 1
400 students (Karoui et al., 2020) show that the first two modes are very helpful for teachers
to get started with the authoring tool, but at the same time they benefit from more powerful
features when they need them. The third mode, on the other hand, was hardly used, although
it motivated two teachers to sign up for professional training sessions to learn how to code. The
WISIWIG interface was very useful for the teachers, although several of them expressed that they
would have liked to try out the game in a simulator to get a better feel for what their students
would see. They could do this on their phone, of course, but they insisted on the fact that this
functionality should be on the computer to facilitate quick adjustments. Although we focused
our efforts on the teachers, as we considered them to be the primary end-users of the application,
we gathered some very positive feedback for the players who enjoyed the geo-located activities,
the information provided when they arrived at the POIs, and the game mechanics.

MOGGLE

<figure><img src="image_77.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.12: *MOGGLE* authoring tool interface</figcaption></figure>

The model was then implemented in *MOGGLE*, an authoring tool specialized in *ML* games for learning about plants (Figure 3.12). One of the focuses of the *ReVeRIES* project was citizen science. The goal was to encourage all citizens to collect data about the plants around them, but also to contribute to the creation of fun and educational field tips. *MOGGLE* therefore implements several functionalities to allow teachers and botanical enthusiasts alike to create and share all or parts of their *ML* games. Thus, all elements presented in the model (Figure 3.10) can be shared, from the entire *MobileLearningGames*, to the *OnSiteActivities*, to the Information sheets, and even down to the image resources and POIs. As explained above, several specific botanical modules were also added to the model. Finally, we also implemented a preview of the activities, directly in the authoring tool, so that teachers could adjust the content on the fly.

As the end of the project coincided with the COVID pandemic, the large-scale experiments planned with 700 undergraduate biology students were cancelled. The four participating teachers had time to create the game scenarios for the Nantes botanical garden. We were also able to set up two smaller local experiments. One involved 10 participants in a local botanical garden, testing out the first prototype. And another, with 80 researchers, took place on our campus.
The goal was to get to know each other's labs and research topics to foster future collaboration. These experiments showed that the button-up design method we had chosen to facilitate resource sharing was frustrating. In fact, teachers had to create the resources, then the pages, then the situated activities, and combine them into a game unit that would eventually be integrated into the ML game. However, they appreciated the fact that they could share resources and preview the game.

## SituLearn

Lessons learned from the previous authoring tools *JEM-Inventor* and *MOOGLE* were taken into account in the development of *SituLearn*. The goal was to provide a tool that could be used beyond research experiments, so we found additional funding to pay an external contractor to develop a professional quality application. The current version of *SituLearn* implements all the elements of the ML game model, except for the collaborative game. In comparison, *JEM-Inventor* and *MOOGLE* only implemented simplified versions of the Treasure Hunt scenario.

*SituLearn* has a simple interface, inspired by *Jem-Inventor*, with a top-down design method (Figure 3.13). Teachers first create their map (*OpenStreetMap* by default, but they can upload a custom map) and define the POIs. The Situated Game unit for each of these POIs is automatically created and teachers simply have to provide the instructions for finding the POI. In fact, our experience with the previous projects and the co-design sessions conducted with seven new pilot teachers allowed us to identify default values for almost all of the elements in the model. In Figure 3.10, the seven mandatory items that teachers need to fill in are highlighted in blue: teachers only need to provide a *name*, a *map*, an *intro* and *conclusion* page for the ML game, and a *name and position* for each *POI* plus *instructions on how to find it*. That is all! As explained above, the authoring tool integrates a standard Mobile Learning Game model and an implementation model that automatically takes care of creating the smartphone application. As with *JEM-Inventor*, the default interface shows only the basic, simple functionalities, but the others can be accessed in the options buttons. Like *MOOGLE*, *SituLearn* offers an online simulation for teachers to pre-visualize their game, and they have the possibility to share their entire game or just a situated game unit with other teachers.

*SituLearn* offers several other functionalities that should increase its likelihood of acceptance in schools and museums and, to our knowledge, they are not offered by other ML authoring tools. For example, the ML game scenarios can be downloaded to tablets or smartphones for use without an internet connection. This is mandatory for the use of tablets in schools, but also very useful for museums which are often located in old castles and buildings with very thick walls that block the WIFI. *SituLearn* has also been developed as a *progressive web app*, which means that it does not require the installation of an application from an *App Store*. Again, this is very useful for schools and museums that have secure tablets and these devices require a significant amount of paperwork and time to install a new app. Finally, users can play a ML game without having to create an account with a valid email, as this is a major barrier to the adoption of digital tools for tourism.
<figure><img src="image_78.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.13: SituLearn authoring tool interface</figcaption></figure>

### 3.2.3 Helping teachers explore new teaching paradigms

As mentioned in the introduction, one of the main design challenges of authoring tools is to help teachers improve their teaching methods by exploring new paradigms. We propose several scaffolding techniques to encourage teachers in this direction.

First, we put a lot of effort into making *SituLearn* as easy to use as possible. The goal is to lower the height of the first rung of the ladder. This was done by providing simple interfaces that initially show only the basic functionalities, and by creating several tutorials and guides, available as videos on the project website but also embedded in the authoring tool, in the form of more than 40 information bubbles (“i” icons in Figure 3.13). In addition, the ML game model presented above is very well suited for easy implementation of field trips, just as they are currently carried out by teachers and cultural mediators. Research has shown that the most time-consuming aspect of using authoring tools is the creation of content. This poses a significant risk of abandonment, but can be circumvented by using content from other sources (Chakraborty et al., 2010). Teachers can therefore use existing educational material to easily create their first ML game with *SituLearn* and test the tool.

Once teachers have created their first ML game with pre-existing content, the next goal is to encourage them to improve their field trip. This process can be thought of as a ladder with
rungs placed at strategic intervals to help teachers progress at their own pace. The second rung
is very easy to reach because the default settings suggested in *SituLearn* automatically add game
mechanics. *SituLearn*'s nested design approach, which progressively reveals more functionality,
also encourages teachers to go further by including different types of activities, such as image
MCQs or Taking Samples that they might not have thought of otherwise. Finally, the model
is very flexible and adaptable, so teachers can easily add elements and improve their initial ML
game. The model can also be easily extended by computer scientists if the teachers are in need
of domain-specific activities or functionalities.

3.2.4 Experiments of SituLearn

More than 21 ML games have been created so far with *SituLearn* by the pilot teachers and
mediators of the project. Table 3.1 and 3.2 show their different profiles and educational domains
(science, history, geography, geology and sports). Figure 3.14 and Figure 3.15 also show two of
their testimonials (the others and in the Appendix). The educational objectives of these outings
ranged from learning how to find one's way on a map to more complex skills in geology and
botany. *SituLearn* can also be used to create scenarios for tourism and vocational training. The
1 356 players who have used *SituLearn* range in age from preschoolers to adults.
<table><caption>Table 3.1: Mobile Learning Games created by pilot teachers and mediators with SituLearn (first part)</caption><thead><tr><th> Creators of the ML games </th><th> Discipline and learner age </th><th> Educational goal </th><th> Name of the ML games </th><th> Nb. of learners </th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td> Two Pre-school teacher </td><td> Discovery, 3 to 5 years old </td><td> Learn how to orient oneself with a map and collaborate </td><td> Letter hunt in the humid zone </td><td> 18 </td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2"> Volunteer in a nature association and primary school teacher </td><td rowspan="2"> Natural sciences, 9 to 11 years old </td><td rowspan="2"> Discover and learn how to observe nature </td><td> Discover the Fougeray path in autumn </td><td> 46 </td></tr><tr><td> Discover the Fougeray path in winter </td><td> 45 </td></tr><tr><td rowspan="15"> Middle school teacher </td><td rowspan="15"> Natural sciences, 11 to 15 years old </td><td> Discover nature and traces of early human settlers </td><td> Science missions at Saulges </td><td> 48 </td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3"> Work-out and review basic notions about calories and sports </td><td> Row in fifth grade </td><td> 150 </td></tr><tr><td> In the heart of Christmas </td><td> 75 </td></tr><tr><td> Challenge: "My Olympic Body" </td><td> 150 </td></tr><tr><td> Study climate and weather </td><td> Climate and weather </td><td> 75 </td></tr><tr><td> Discover nature </td><td> The treasures of the Coupeau </td><td> 150 </td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3"> Learn how to recognize common tree species with a determination key </td><td> Aubepin path </td><td> 28 </td></tr><tr><td> Scots pine </td><td> 24 </td></tr><tr><td> Determination key </td><td> 24 </td></tr><tr><td> Test a new organization of the class </td><td> Natural sciences workshops </td><td> 75 </td></tr><tr><td> Discover and identify common natural materials </td><td> Game to discover natural materials </td><td> 75 </td></tr><tr><td> Parents of the students </td><td> Discover the teacher's original teaching method </td><td> Science at Jules Renard middle school </td><td> 30 </td></tr><tr><td> Adults training to be track jury members </td><td> Learn how to identify the parts of a stadium </td><td> Stadium and track jury </td><td> 4 </td></tr></tbody></table>
<table><caption>Table 3.2: Mobile Learning Games created by pilot teachers and mediators with SituLearn (second part)</caption><tr><td rowspan="2">University teacher</td><td>Graduate students in geology</td><td>Learn how to do on-site observations, identify rocks and create a geological map</td><td>Geological terrain of Saint Leonard des Bois</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>Introduction to Geology for adults</td><td>Learn how to identify common rocks and geological formations</td><td>In the steps of a geologist</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>One sports and one history/geography teacher at a teacher-training school</td><td>Future middle school and high school teachers</td><td>Discover the morphology of an urban space, locate and orient oneself in space, produce a cartographic map</td><td>Concept of “living” and orienteering race</td><td>72</td></tr><tr><td>Teacher in as specialized medical-education institute</td><td>Young adults with various physical and mental handicaps</td><td>Learn how to orient oneself in space using a digital tool</td><td>Orienteering race at the Monod park</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Mediator at the Departmental Archives of Mayenne</td><td>Families</td><td>Discover the archives, their mission, history and the original building</td><td>Discovery of the Archives on Heritage Day</td><td>240</td></tr><tr><td>10 pilot teachers and mediators</td><td>Various disciplines</td><td>Large variety of educational goals</td><td>21 Mobile Learning games</td><td>1356 learners</td></tr></table>
<figure><img src="image_79.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.14: Testimony of a middle-school teacher who used SituLearn</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_80.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.15: Testimony of a mediator who used SituLearn</figcaption></figure>
These first experiments, conducted this year, allowed us to verify the **usability** of *SituLearn* from the teachers' perspective, but also from the learners' perspective. The design sessions of all the pilot teachers were videotaped and analyzed. All pilot teachers then participated in self-confrontation interviews conducted by our social science colleagues. After several iterations of development and testing, the final interfaces were found to be **satisfactory in terms** of usability for both teachers and players. In addition, the *ML* games created are very different from each other. They cover all the types of *ML* games offered by *SituLearn* (treasure hunt, activity hub and interactive walk) and use a wide variety of functionalities. For example, some teachers used the timer lock to make sure the students would get back to class on time, some removed all points and scores because they did not want to encourage competition, some used QR codes and others only GPS validations for arriving at the POIs. After participating in these experiments, the pilot teachers requested some new functionalities that will be added to *SituLearn* in the coming months, but we can say that the tool seems to be **powerful** enough to cover all their different needs and contexts of use.

The **usefulness** of the tool also seems to be more than satisfactory, as several teachers have created more than one *ML* game, although they only agreed on one when they signed up as pilot teachers. All of them have also stated that they would reuse their *ML* game or create new ones for next year. The **impact** of *SituLearn* was analyzed by comparing field trips that were conducted with and without the tool. The entire field trips were videotapes, both from the teacher's and the learners' perspectives. The interactions, especially the way the teachers helped the learners, were annotated in detail. Video analysis takes a long time and has not been completed for this project, but the first results show that the use of *SituLearn* has an impact on the organization of the activity. Field trips organized without *SituLearn* were much more teacher-centered and had long periods of explanation, whereas those organized with *SituLearn* were learner-centered and the teacher would provide shorter explanation, as the knowledge was distilled through the *ML* game. The reactions of the teachers who created the *ML* games, and the other teachers who were simply accompanied the group of learners for safety reasons, seemed to be influenced by the use of the *ML* game. The teacher-authors tended to give much more freedom to the learners, whereas the chaperoning teachers tended to encourage the learners to carefully follow the instructions given by the application or provide information that was sometimes unrelated to the objectives of the *ML* game. These observations should help us provide guidelines for the use of *ML* games in educational field trips.

Finally, the **scaffolding techniques** cannot be experimented with the pilot teachers because they are too familiar with the model and the interface of the tool they have helped to design. This will be done next year with several new teachers. Fifteen teachers have already spontaneously signed-up and started creating *ML* games on *SituLearn*. We also intend to experiment with a class of novice teachers to compare how these teachers use the application compared to the first, more experienced and highly motivated teachers.

### 3.2.5 Discussion and positioning of the work

The experience gained in the course of three consecutive projects on *ML* game models and authoring tools has allowed us to reach a certain maturity in this area. This raises the question of what to do once a research branch is fully developed. Ideally, the results of our research should now be transferred to the community so that the tool can be widely adopted by teachers. However, this requires an application hosted on a large server, with technical maintenance and a
minimum of support service for users who have questions. This is clearly beyond research! The
application must therefore be transferred to an entity (association or company) that can provide
these services, while ideally staying in contact with the researchers in order to continue large-scale
and long-term research (the grail of TEL).

Our efforts to transfer *SituLearn* over the last year show that this is not so easy, especially if you have a utopian vision of making the results of public research (like *SituLearn*) available to the public free of charge. But I will not give away too much information here, because the next and final chapter develops several initiatives that, I am sure, you can hardly wait to read!

3.3 Design methods for creating authoring tools

The research presented in this section addresses the following research questions:

- RQ12. What design principles apply to TEL authoring tools?

- RQ13. What guidelines can facilitate the management of authoring tool project?

As explained in the introduction, we propose to use our experience in authoring tool design (four previously presented projects) to provide not only some design principles for authoring tools, but also guidelines for managing an authoring tool project.

3.3.1 Designing principles for TEL authoring tools

As with the TEL systems presented in *Chapter 2*, the experiments conducted with teachers and their learners allowed us to identify several functionalities that seem to be necessary for all types of TEL authoring tools. This list should not be considered as exhaustive. It is simply extracted from our experience with the four projects presented above.

* ** Preview functionality:** Teachers need to see what their students will see when they use the applications. Therefore, it is important to include a preview functionality to the authoring tool that shows the final results, especially if the designed TEL system is interactive. This functionality should also be directly in the application so that teachers can easily adjust the content and immediately view the repercussions.

* **Clear design steps:** It is important for teachers to have a clear design workflow with steps that are indicated or a gauge that tells them how far they are from the finish line. For authoring tools that are more complex, it is important to at least show all the mandatory information that needs to be completed.

* **Templates, examples and guides:** Teachers should be able to create their first activity or scenario as quickly as possible (the first rung of the ladder). The use of templates, predefined content, examples and guides can therefore be very useful.

* **Possibility of sharing content:** A new TEL system is more likely to be adopted if a community of teachers is working with it. It is therefore wise to encourage the creation of such a community by including tools for easy sharing of content. When the authoring tool is mature, setting up social media and training sessions is a good way to help this community grow.
* **Accessibility on as many devices as possible:** If the intention is for the authoring tool to be used as widely as possible in schools, it is essential to take into account the material currently used in these establishments and their constraints. In France, schools are equipped with a wide range of safe-guarded tablets (android, surface) and computers, some of which are very old, and there is not always a WIFI connection. We therefore decided to use progressive web applications that are accessible on any web browser (without installing an application from an App store), and that only require the Internet for the initial connection.

### 3.3.2 Guidelines for managing a project on authoring tools

The four guidelines for managing authoring tool research projects are summarized in Figure 3.16. Compared to the previous design principles, these focus on the partners that should be involved in the project and how they should interact, especially during the co-design sessions.

<figure><img src="image_81.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.16: Four guidelines for designing TEL authoring tools</figcaption></figure>

#### Guideline 1. Implicate a reasonable number of representative pilot teachers

Involving pilot teachers in the design process of authoring tools is one of the main guidelines provided in the literature (Murray et al., 2003), but our experience shows that they should not be recruited randomly or simply because they volunteered. In fact, it is important to have a representative selection of pilot teachers to insure that the authoring tool meets a **representative range of needs**. If possible, the group should also include an equal number of women and men, from novice to experienced teachers. It is also important to recruit teachers who consider themselves “uncomfortable” with technology. It may be harder to obtain the participation of this last category, as they tend not to volunteer for TEL projects, so one should consider recruiting using the snowball technique, i.e., by asking volunteer pilot teachers to recruit among their colleagues.

The group should also not be too large, in order to facilitate the organization of personal design sessions. Based on our experience, a minimum of six to a maximum of 20 teachers should be recruited at the beginning of the project. More pilot teachers can be added in subsequent iterations, but even working with 20 teachers during the design phases can be a challenge.
A **contract** is a good way to ensure that pilot teachers know what will be required of them, such as participating in several co-design sessions, using the authoring tool to create a learning session, and participating in several experiments with their students. We insist that **pilot teachers should plan to use the authoring tool with their students in one of their current classes**. This method is an effective way of getting them to feel involved in the project (Saar and Laanpere, 2022). It supports teachers in developing and improving their current practice based on their students' learning needs, their own learning needs, and the impact of their practice on student learning and achievement. The contract should also explain what they will get in return, and this is where it gets tricky because apart from citing them in academic papers, on the project website and expressing our eternal gratitude, there is not much we can offer! European research funding does not provide easy solutions to pay them. However, it is possible to lend them equipment (tablets, computers and smartphones). As we will discuss in the last guideline, teachers can sometimes count their participation as hours of professional training if their school or education district is involved in the project (Vanari et al., 2019). The only thing that can be promised is the creation of an authoring tool that will allow them to improve their teaching. However, in the context of a research project, we are never sure of the final outcome and the tool may not meet their expectations. Therefore, it is important to **promote the research process** rather than the result, and the completion of each model, prototype, and research paper should be celebrated together as another step toward a common goal.

**Guideline 2. Collect a large variety of practices.**

When designing authoring tools, the first iteration of the design session aims to collect a wide **variety of practices** (compared to other TEL systems where one or two practices are enough). These practices can be collected in different ways, such as observing or asking the pilot teachers what they already do and what tools they use. Usually, however, the aim is to create new practices, otherwise it would not be research. Pilot teachers therefore need to imagine what they would ideally like to do. As presented in the last chapter, we strongly recommend the use of prototypes and application examples to help teachers test out the technology and understand what it can offer. The use of paper prototypes combined with a video of the pilot teachers explaining their idea is a good way to understand the functionalities that might interest them.

**This complex design session can be supported by several tools and methods.** For example, in the MIXAP project, we suggest the use of specific materials and notations to create paper prototypes that are easier to understand and compare (Ez-Zaouia et al., 2022). We also used a four-step method to encourage collaborative thinking. Each pilot teacher was required to:
- Step1. Test a variety of MR tools to see what this technology could do.

- Step2. Design a paper prototype of the desired TEL system for their class.

- Step3. Walk around the room to read each other's paper prototypes design and add comments, using post-it notes, if something seemed unclear or to make suggestions.

- Step4. Draw up the final version of the paper prototype, taking into account the comments of their peers.

In the ReVeRIES project, we did not have a large number of pilot teachers (only three). We therefore proposed a brainstorming method to encourage the pilot teachers and researchers to imagine new educational situations and ML scenarios that could be proposed. To make this design process more fun and productive, we turned it into a board game with a board that represented a real park and its trees and the designers drew a card that defined their learner profile persona (Marfisi-Schottman et al., 2016a). The dice were also used to determine the movements
of the players (some slower than others, depending on their profile) to help the designers imagine
the most appropriate scenario.

Guideline 3. Co-design the generic models with the pilot teachers

The paper prototypes produced and the ideas collected during the design session need to be analyzed to find common functionalities or patterns to build the generic model. Even if this part needs to be done by computer scientists who are used to factorizing everything (occupational hazard), the generic model still needs to be validated and refined with the help of the social science researchers and pilot teachers in the project.

This can be done by explaining the UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagram, but it is tricky. We tried this technique in the *ReVeRIES* and *SituLearn* projects by building the diagram step-by-step with post-it notes on the board, but this was still difficult for teachers to relate to. Ideally, this should be combined with an explanation of how the model implements each of the teacher's paper prototypes. This improved technique, used for *MIXAP*, proved to be much clearer for the pilot teachers and also richer in terms of discussion.

And discussion is key to **reaching a consensus on the model**. This is crucial because the authoring tool will be built on this model, and redefining the model at a later stage could result in months of redevelopment and delay. In particular, the team must decide which functionalities are generic enough to be included in the model and which are too specific and should not be included because they would unnecessarily complicate the authoring tool. For our four projects, we decided on the following rules: If the functionality is needed by more than one pilot teacher, then it should be included in the model. And if the functionality is needed by only one of the pilot teachers, it should be discussed with the group. Either it is considered too specific and the pilot teacher in question agrees to drop it, or another teacher finds it interesting and it is included in the model.

We insist on the importance of face-to-face design sessions for this critical phase. We were not able to gather all teachers at the same time for the *SituLearn* project, for example, and this resulted in us having two sessions that did not reach the same consensus, leading to several iterations of the design and considerable frustration.

Guideline 4. Team up with a teacher training institution

Finally, the last recommendation is to work with a teacher training institution. They can be very helpful in the six most critical moments of the project. First, they can help recruit pilot teachers, since they are in contact with many teachers of different profiles. Second, they are familiar with local, practical constraints and institutional personalities that could participate in the project. This can help to build long-term partnerships for the development and dissemination of the tool, but it can also make it easier to give teachers credit for their participation in the project so that it counts as part of their professional training. Third, they have experience and resources to help communicate about the project. They can help write documents and create videos to promote the project to school principals and parents, and this plays an important role in the adoption of TEL (Dias and Atkinson, 2001). Fourth, they are used to talking to teachers and understanding how they work, and they have also worked with researchers, which makes them the perfect candidate for the role of **broker**. This figure represents someone in between two worlds who can facilitate the creation of a shared praxeology (Aldon et al., 2013). Recall that we mentioned this in *Chapter 2* regarding DBR. Fifth, they usually have spacious rooms with
paper boards and all kinds of equipment for their teacher training programs, which is perfect
for organizing the co-design sessions. And sixth, if you are still not convinced, they can help
design tutorials and videos when the authoring tool is ready to be released into the wild for other
teachers to use.

For the *MIXAP* project, we partnered with *Canope*, a national teacher training institution. Their help greatly facilitated the organization of the project and accelerated the production of the authoring tool. In addition, they will use the *MIXAP* authoring tool in several of their teacher training programs in France next year, and this will be a great opportunity to continue the research on a larger scale. They have also led the way to future collaborations with the department of the Mayenne and, on a larger scale, with the Brittany and Pays de la Loire educational region.

3.3.3 Discussion and positioning of the work

Authoring tools are still quite rare in TEL projects. This is quite understandable, since they are
substantially more complicated to create than custom TEL tools for one context. They require
the involvement of a large team of pilot teachers, which imposes many organizational constraints.
They also need to be built on solid design principles that typically take years of research to mature,
and they require the effort to create simple, intuitive interfaces and user guides. Authoring tools
are also harder to evaluate than other TEL tools because there is no guarantee that teachers will
use the model to its full potential. This can be quite frustrating (true story).

However, I believe that authoring tools are the future of TEL research because they put
teachers at the center of the design by allowing them to update and reuse TEL systems.
Authoring tools can also play an important role in the social relationship between TEL re-
searchers and a potentially very large community of teachers to create meaningful tools
and increase their effective use in schools. These claims are supported by a very recent com-
parative study we conducted with researchers working on instructional design projects. These
are exclusive results you are about to read! We used a questionnaire based on the Knowledge
Appropriation Model (KAM), an instrument capable of predicting the intended adoption of new
learning practices by measuring several social constructs, such as a the teachers' intrinsic moti-
vation to use this new learning practice or their sense of ownership and belonging to the project
(Ley et al., 2020). For example, the sense of ownership is measured by the response to several
statements such as "I feel the need to defend the [method, innovation] if it would be criticized"
and belongingness is measured by statements such as "I feel I am a part of the learning com-
munity consisting of teachers and researchers working on the [method, innovation]" (Ley et al.,
2022). Information was collected through questionnaires completed by more than 112 teachers
who had participated in instructional design projects. Three groups of projects were compared:
the French authoring tool projects (MIXAP and SituLearn), the Innolab projects, and the School
University Partnership projects (Arhar et al., 2013). The main difference is that the latter two
categories of projects did not focus on one authoring tool, or even on technology, whereas teach-
ers participating in MIXAP and SituLearn were limited to using the co-designed authoring tools.
For example, several projects addressed the use of robots in middle school and pre-school but did
not target a specific type of robot or activity. Other projects did not emphasize technology at
all. The other difference is that, unlike MIXAP and SituLearn, which include a wide variety of
teacher profiles, the other projects targeted teachers working in the same school and discipline.

However, as shown in *Figure 3.17*, the scores for these three types of projects are all very
good. After running a Kruskal-Wallis test and an Anova test, the only statistically significant
differences found between the School University Partnership projects and the French authoring
tool projects were in *Intrinsic Motivation* (p = 0.014) and *Knowledge appropriation* (p = 0.024).
The French projects were slightly lower on these two constructs. Nevertheless, these results
are very encouraging. They could show that authoring tools are capable of creating a sense of
community and acceptance within a potentially very large community of teachers, and that these
feelings are almost as strong as those created by custom instructional design projects that target
specific teacher profiles and include a wide range of digital and paper-based tools. More research
needs to be led to verify this.

KAM results

<figure><img src="image_82.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3.17: Comparison of teacher involvement between three types of research projects</figcaption></figure>

Finally, the creation of authoring tools also has a philosophical implication. Murray argues that “we should consider ourselves promoters of educational reform and transformation since these tools are not so much helping teachers and educational developers more easily or cost effectively do something that they already do, rather, we are offering them the possibility of creating something entirely new” (Murray, 2004).

4 Conclusions

In this chapter, we review several contributions related to **adaptable models and authoring tools** for TEL. First, we present the main advantages of authoring tools: teachers create their own content that is adapted to their needs, they can easily update this content to reuse the TEL system, and they do not need any resources to do so. However, **authoring tools also raise major design challenges**. First, it is very difficult to design an authoring tool that is powerful enough to meet the needs of a large number of teachers while keeping the interface and the design workflow very simple and easy to adopt. The second challenge is to provide optimal **UX** design,
guidance modules and scaffolding to increase the perceived affordance of the authoring tool and
to encourage teachers to try out new teaching techniques that are made available.

We attempted to address these design challenges through four research projects. With the help of pilot teachers, we were able to provide adaptable models and authoring tools that help teachers create their own original TEL systems in two domains.

In the domain of HCI for education, we have developed original, powerful MR educa-
tional activity models (Ez-Zaouia et al., 2022) and a very simple authoring tool (Ez-Zaouia et al.,
2023) that allows teachers to use MR to enhance their courses from preschool to university.

In the domain of ML and SGs, we have developed a comprehensive adaptable model for ML games that has been progressively improved, over a ten year research period, involving more than 21 pilot teachers (Marfisi-Schottman et al., 2022a). We have developed several authoring tools with this model to test out different design strategies and scaffolding techniques to help teachers use the ML and game mechanics embedded in the model, to their full pedagogical potential. The final authoring tool, called SituLearn, is more than a research prototype and is ready for being used by the general public.

Based on our experience with these projects, we also propose a set of design principles
for TEL authoring tools and practical guidelines for managing research projects on
authoring tools.
TAKE AWAY MESSAGE

This third chapter reports on our efforts to achieve our second researcher objective (RO 2): provide adaptable models and authoring tools to facilitate TEL development and increase their acceptability and use.

We first point out the five major advantages of authoring tools:

* They cover a wide range of needs and can therefore be used by a large number of teachers.

* They allow collaborative design of TEL systems and the creation of a community of users.

* They produce ownable TEL systems (sense of ownership) as teachers create their own custom content.

* They produce reusable TEL systems as teachers can modify and update the content.

* They produce cheap TEL systems since teachers do not need any other resources or staff.

And their two design challenges:

* It is difficult to create authoring tools that are powerful AND easy to use.

* It is difficult to encourage teachers to try out new teaching methods and use the tools to their full potential.

For the domain of HCI for education, we propose:

* Original Mixed Reality educational activity models suitable for preschool to university.

* A very simple authoring tool (*MIXAP*).

For the domain of ML and SGs, we propose:

* An extensive ML game model for situated learning.

* A powerful, robust and user-friendly authoring tool that enables teachers to create their custom geo-located applications for field trips and is also adapted to museums and tourist offices (*SituLearn*).

Finally, we propose design principles for TEL authoring tools and guidelines to manage such research projects.
5 Related publications

Mercier C., Marfisi-Schottman I., Ez-Zaouia M. La réalité augmentée en classe au service des apprentissages des élèves. Médiations et médiatisations - Revue internationale sur le numérique en éducation et communication, vol. 15, 2023, in press.

Ez-Zaouia M., Marfisi-Schottman I., Mercier C., MIXAP : Un outil auteur d'activités éd-
ucatives en réalité augmentée, Actes de la conférence sur les Environnements Informatiques pour
l'Apprentissage Humain (EIAH), 2023, Brest, France, pp.100-111.

Ez-Zaouia M., Marfisi-Schottman I., Mercier C., Authoring Tools: The Road To Democratizing Augmented Reality For Education, Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU), 2023, Prague, Check Republic, pp.115-127.

Marfisi-Schottman I., Laine A., Laforcade, P., George, S., Simon, S., May, M., Zammit, M., Blin, L., Towards an Authoring Tool to Help Teachers Create Mobile Collaborative Learning Games for Field Trips. Proceedings of the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL), 2022, Toulouse, France, pp.550-557.

Marfisi-Schottman I., Vinatier I., TGRIS, dispositif de formation professionnelle, outillé d'un simulateur d'entretien en Réalité Virtuelle, paramétré et piloté par les pairs. Sciences et Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication pour l'Éducation et la Formation (STICEF), vol. 29, num. 1, 2022.

Ez-Zaouia M., Marfisi-Schottman I., Oueslati M., Mercier C., Karoui A., George S., A Design Space of Educational Authoring Tools for Augmented Reality. Proceedings of the Games and Learning Alliance Conference (GALA), 2022, Tampere, Finland, pp.258-268.

Karoui A., Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., JEM Inventor: A Mobile Learning Game Authoring Tool Based on a Nested Design Approach, Journal of Interactive Learning Environments, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2020, pp.1851-1878.

Gicquel P.Y., Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Lessons Learned from the Development of a Mobile Learning Game Authoring Tool. Proceedings of the European conference of the Games and Learning Alliance (GALA), 2019, Athens, Greece. pp.201-210.

Gicquel P.Y., George S., Laforcade P., Marfisi-Schottman I., Design of a Component-Based Mobile Learning Game Authoring Tool, Proceedings of the European conference of the Games and Learning Alliance (GALA), 2017, Lisbon, Portugal, pp.281-291.

Karoui A, Marfisi-Schottman I. George S., JEM iNVENTOR: a Mobile Learning Game Authoring Tool based on a Nested Design Approach. Proceedings of the World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (mLearn), 2017, Larnaca, Cyprus, 4p.

Karoui A, Marfisi-Schottman I, George S., A Nested Design Approach for Mobile Learning Games. Proceedings of the European conference of the Games and Learning Alliance (GALA), 2017, Lisbonne, Portugal, pp.1-4.

Gicquel P.Y., Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Meta Serious Game: Supporting Creativity Sessions for Mobile Serious Games, Proceedings of the European Conference on Game Based Learning (ECGBL), 2016, Peisly, Scotland, pp.407-415.

Karoui A, Marfisi-Schottman I, George S., Mobile Learning Game Authoring Tools: Assessment, Synthesis and Proposals, Proceedings of the European conference of the Games and Learning Alliance (GALA), 2016, Utrecht, Netherlands, pp.281-291.
Gicquel P.Y., George S., Marfisi-Schottman I., « Technologies sémantiques pour l'apprentissage de la botanique en mobilité ». Actes de la conférence SemWebPro, 2016, Paris, France, 6p.

Marfisi-Schottman I, Gicquel P.Y., Karoui A., George S., Idea to Reality: Extensive and Executable Modelling Language for Mobile Learning Games, Proceedings of the European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL), 2016, Lyon, France, pp.428-433.

Karoui A., Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Towards an Efficient Mobile Learning Games Design Model, Proceedings of the European Conference on Game Based Learning (ECGBL), 2015, Steinkjer, Norway. pp.276-285.

Karoui A., Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Éléments pour la conception de Jeux Éducatifs sur Mobile, Actes de la conférence sur les Environnements Informatiques pour l’Apprentissage Humain (EIAH), 2015, Agadir, Maroc, pp.312-323.

Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Modèles de jeux sérieux collaboratifs et mobiles, Actes de la conférence Environnements Informatiques pour l’Apprentissage Humain (EIAH), 2015, Agadir, Maroc, pp.306-311.

Marfisi-Schottman I., George S., Supporting Teachers to Design and Use Mobile Collaborative Learning Games, Proceedings of the Mobile Learning International Conference (mLearn), 2014, Madrid, Spain, pp.3-10.
<figure><img src="image_83.png" /></figure>

# CHAPTER 4

## Conclusion and Research Perspectives

Bridging the gap between technology-enhanced learning research and society
CHAPTER 4

CONCLUSION AND RESEARCH
PERSPECTIVES

Bridging the Gap between Research in Technology-Enhanced Learning and Society

This chapter briefly reviews our main research contributions before focusing on my research perspectives for the upcoming years.

Contents

<table><tr><td>1</td><td>Review of contributions</td><td>137</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Research program</td><td>140</td></tr><tr><td>2.1</td><td>Short-term research program: tools and frameworks to foster collaborative learning</td><td>140</td></tr><tr><td>2.2</td><td>Medium-term research program: authoring tools to empower teachers</td><td>143</td></tr><tr><td>2.3</td><td>Long-term research program</td><td>147</td></tr><tr><td>2.4</td><td>Very long-term research program and vision of research</td><td>155</td></tr></table>

# 1 Review of contributions

All of our contributions, presented in this manuscript, articulate around two main research objectives (Figure 4.1):

* RO 1: Provide methods, models and tools to help all the necessary actors design effective TEL systems.

* RO 2: Provide adaptable models and authoring tools to facilitate the development of TEL systems, and thus increase their acceptability and use by teachers.

Several contributions are proposed to achieve the first objective. First, we propose a number of **design principles** for using game mechanics, ML and HCI for various educational objectives and contexts. In the TurtleTable(t) project, we explored the use of collaborative game mechanics and tangible objects to teach middle school children the basics of computer programming. In
<figure><img src="image_84.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.1: Overview of contributions</figcaption></figure>

the SMART-Fractions project, we used game mechanics and Mixed Reality to teach children how to understand the notion of fractions on a number line. And in TGRIS, we used Virtual Reality to help professionals deal with their emotions in complicated situations. Based on our experience, we also propose PI-DBR, a pragmatic implementation of the Design-Based Method (DBR), with gradual implication of researchers and teachers, for conducting such research projects. In the same chapter, we also propose an automatically-updating catalogue, called JEN-Planet, which currently contains more than 800 SGs. The objective is to help teachers and researchers find existing SGs either to use them or for inspiration and analysis. To create this catalogue, we defined the LGMD metadata schema which describes the educational properties of SGs with an optimal number of description fields, the ADEM indexing model which is capable of automatically scraping the information for these fields on web sites and the UDID interface design method, which we used to design the catalogue's interface with teachers. Finally, we propose guidelines and a training method to help teachers create their own original educational tools, including SGs (digital and non-digital). The objective was to take advantage of the available resources and staff. This method was developed over a seven-year period of leading the Ludifik'action professional training course and has produced more than 32 educational tools that are currently used in universities and schools all over France.

Several contributions are also proposed to achieve the second research objective which is to provide adaptable models and authoring tools to facilitate the development of TEL systems, and thus increase their acceptability and use by teachers. First, we clearly identify the advantages of authoring tools and argue that these tools are a good solution to advance TEL research, but also to democratize the use of TEL in schools. We also identify two main challenges that need to be dealt with when creating such authoring tools. First of all, it is very difficult to create authoring tools that are powerful and, at the same time, simple and easy-to use. Secondly, teachers naturally tend to use technology to simply recreate their current learning paradigms and
it is very challenging to get them to try new teaching methods and use these tools to their full potential. We propose to tackle these design challenges for two specific types of TEL. Our first contribution is an original **Mixed Reality educational activity model**, suitable for use in preschool to university with its **very simple authoring tool**, called *MIXAP*. It was designed and tested with the help of 20 pilot teachers and the *Canopé* teacher training network. Our second contribution is an **extensive ML game model** for situated learning and a **powerful, robust and user-friendly authoring tool**, called *SituLearn* that enables teachers to create their custom geo-located applications for field trips. This tool uses a nested design approach that enables teachers to easily get started with the tool, by designing a simple scenario, and then gradually refining and customizing it with more options and functionalities that are progressively revealed when the teachers need then. The ML game model was refined and improved through three consecutive research projects (that went on for ten years in all). Three versions of the authoring tool were also developed and tested with more than 21 teachers and 2 000 learners to determine the best design workflow, scaffolding techniques and UX-design to encourage teachers to innovate. *SituLearn* is now more than a research prototype and is ready to be transferred not only to the teacher community, but also to museums and tourist offices. Finally, our last contribution is a set of **design principles for TEL authoring tools** and **guidelines to manage such research projects**, based on our experience.

As shown in *Figure 4.1*, I will pursue three main directions during my future research program. These will be presented in detail in the next section of this chapter.

**In the short-term**, I intend to find more design principles for using game mechanics and HCI to encourage collaborative situated learning. Actually, this work has already started with my last PhD student, Sebastian SIMON, currently in his third year of PhD.

**In the medium-term**, I will continue my work with authoring tools. First, I would like to pursue the MIXAP project at a European level. Second, I would also like to create a new authoring tool for using Virtual/Augmented Reality for training situations since this does not yet exist. Indeed, there is a great demand for such tool and Virtual/Augmented Reality headsets will soon become sophisticated and affordable enough to be used in school settings.

**Finally, in the long-term**, I would like to pursue a wider challenge related to how research in TEL impacts the real world. This will be done by proposing open-source software and collaborative architectures to encourage collaboration among researchers, Edtech (Education Technology) companies and teachers. Currently, there is a serious gap between our research projects and the use of technology in French schools. According to the traditional view of science, this is the way research works and the findings may take years or even decades to be used in everyday life (Roll-Hansen, 2009). But I believe that this gap must be substantially narrowed, particularly in my field of research, because of the applied nature of TEL and the rapid progress in technology. If we wait 10 years, not much will be left to use! I have started pursuing several directions to reduce this gap with my recent contacts at the Ministry of Education, notably efforts related to open source software and a shared national FORGE code repository. Finally, the access to our research papers and data also needs to be revolutionized since the situation with commercial publishers such as Elsevier and Springer has been slowly and surely deteriorating over the last decade. They have clearly found a very profitable system that they have no interest in changing, so the revolution needs to come from us. You will have to read the next part to find out more...
# 2 Research program

## 2.1 Short-term research program: tools and frameworks to foster collaborative learning

Many research projects, including *TurtleTable(t)* presented in the second chapter of this manuscript, have shown that computer-supported collaboration can positively impact learning (Dillenbourg, 1999). **Interactive tabletops**, in particular, are one of the technologies that have been proven to effectively encourage several learners to collaboration synchronously (Cress et al., 2021), (Ma-teescu et al., 2019). However, this type of equipment, and the collaborative applications designed for it, are rarely used in educational contexts. As the pilot teachers in the *TurtleTable(t)* project pointed out, they are too expensive (2 000 € and up) and bulky (weighing more than 80 kg) for use in the classroom. Given the investment, it also would be practical to be able to move these tabletops around not only within the school, but also outside for use during field trips for example. There are many occasions and locations that could potentially benefit from a collaborative learning tool. The objective of my fourth PhD student, Sebastian SIMON, is therefore to find a way to recreate the optimal collaboration conditions of interactive tabletops, but with a much more affordable, DIY (Do It Yourself) system. This is in line with our first research objective and, in particular, with finding new design principles to create collaborative TEL. It is also coherent with our second research objective, which is to increase TEL's acceptability and use in schools. In the two next sections, we will present our first results and perspectives. The first result is a technical alternative to interactive tabletops. The second result, more conceptual, is a framework to help researchers develop and compare collaborative learning environments.

### 2.1.1 SPART: on-Surface Positioning for Augmented RealiTy

Creating a tool to replace interactive tabletops is a major technical challenge because no such technology has yet been produced. One could use Augmented Reality, with smartphones or tablets, to display digital information on surfaces (such as traditional tables). However, classic, camera-based Augmented Reality technology is not ideal, especially for collaborative use. Firstly, if an image is augmented (e.g., a map of the world), the camera has to capture the whole image used as an Augmented Reality marker, which requires users to stand at a sufficient distance and hold the device appropriately. This is not feasible over a long period of time with large smartphones or tablets, due to muscle fatigue (Pereira et al., 2013). Holding the device (with two hands for children) also makes interactions with virtual or physical objects difficult. Another issue is its use within a group: if only one person is holding the device, the other group members have to huddle around this person to see the augmentations, and if each member of the group has their own device, they will not interact with each other.

With my PhD student, Sebastian SIMON, we therefore came up with a new configuration that should prevent these issues: **the mobile device is directly placed on the to-be-augmented surface** (e.g., map, image) and learners can **slide it on this surface** to see and interact with augmentations beyond the device's display. We call it **SPART** for on-Surface Positioning for Augmented RealiTy. As shown in *Figure 4.2*, this configuration is very similar to that of an interactive tabletop. It provides a common focal point for group attention and allows all group members to view augmentations, while maintaining awareness of other group members' actions and keeping hands free. Furthermore, the mobile device serves as a convenient input
method, since its horizontal position on the surface allows for stability and is accessible from all angles. In addition, based on research on the ideal screen size to support collaboration, it seems likely that a tablet-sized display, combined with this sliding method, is superior to a tabletop, as the learner's gaze is only attracted to the device when used, whereas with a tabletop, the large screen size seems to attract the learner's gaze constantly, at the expense of a gaze directed at other members of the group (Zagermann et al., 2016).

<figure><img src="image_85.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.2: SPART: on-Surface Positioning for Augmented Reality</figcaption></figure>

As depicted on the right of *Figure 4.2*, we explored several location methods that could be used to implement *SPART*, using external equipment and internal sensors available on mobile devices (e.g., magnetometer, accelerometer, camera, NFT reader, microphones) before producing one solution that costs less than 10 Euros and that fits in a pocket! As depicted in *Figure 4.3*, this prototype, called *SPART-Mem* (Mechanical and mobile) works with a string that is attached to the device with a small magnet. Sebastian SIMON developed a spring retraction mechanism that calculates the distance between *SPART* and the device, and a rotary encoder that provides the precise angle. These two values are sufficient to find the precise position of the device on an A2-size surface. A dozen other prototypes, with various localization techniques, and their evaluation according to criteria such as cost, precision and portability are detailed in two research articles that are currently in the review process.

A first version of *SPART* has already been tested with a class of middle school students, but more evaluations are necessary to evaluate its potential for supporting collaborative learning. *SPART* is actually a sub-project of the SituLearn project, so several experiments are planned outdoors, during field trips. The idea is to use *SPART* during or after the SituLearn scenarios so learners can view the information (photos, notes and audio recordings collected during the activities) directly on a shared map. The team's goal is to explain and analyze this data in order to collectively produce knowledge. For example, the first experiment is planned with students that need to identify trees by taking photos of their leaves, bark and other organs.
<figure><img src="image_86.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.3: SPART-Mem (Mechanic and mobile)</figcaption></figure>

After observing different trees, the learners then collectively analyze the photos and produce a
botanical determination key with the help of *SPART*.

Furthermore, the prototypes have opened new perspectives such as a vertical version of *SPART* that can augment large wall-mounted maps. It can also be used as an input device, in conjunction with a video-projector, to create an affordable smartboard. Instead of springs, the device shown in *Figure 4.4* uses weights to retract the strings with should reduce muscle fatigue and fear of breaking the device. We also thought of another version of *SPART*, with two rotary encoders, which would allow an object (e.g., hand, pen) to be precisely located in 3D space.

2.1.2 Collaborative learning framework

In parallel to the development of *SPART*, another of Sebastian SIMON's objectives is to come
up with a framework for designing collaborative learning environments. One of the difficulties
with research in collaborative *TEL* (also called *CSCL* for Computer-Supported Collaborative
Learning), is the fact that researchers have developed a great number of tools, tested in various
learning contexts and for a large variety of learning goals, without a common evaluation protocol
or even common evaluation criteria to measure collaboration. In addition, the tools are evaluated
as a whole, even though they are almost always composed of several collaboration functionalities
(e.g., voting system, parallel input, shared and individual devices). In an attempt to clarify the
situation and help researchers identify which collaboration functionalities seem most effective for
a specific type of collaboration and learning context, we have carried out an extensive meta-
analysis of 49 studies. This has allowed us to identify 20 tool functionalities and detail their
potential impact on collaboration. The resulting map (*Figure 4.5*) is a first, tentative step
towards a better understanding of the interplay between tools and collaboration (Simon et al.,
<figure><img src="image_87.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.4: *SPART-ME Vertical*</figcaption></figure>

2023).

The next objective is to provide a technical framework to help researchers implement and test these functionalities to compare them. The aim is to develop interoperable open source code blocs for each functionality that can be reused and combined. This will represent a gain of time for the research community, but it will also allow us to understand the collaboration mechanism better if we all have comparable and replicable scientific experiments. Since this is a colossal endeavor, the objective of my PhD student is to develop two or three of these blocs, at most, but he is already in contact with several other research laboratories of the CSCL community to pursue this long-term objective.

## 2.2 Medium-term research program: authoring tools to empower teachers

My second objective is to continue research related to authoring tools. In particular, I intend to continue the MIXAP project with European partners. We intend to write two proposals for an ERASMUS+ grant in March 2024. Another direction I would like to pursue is the creation of an authoring tool for Virtual/Augmented Reality training situations. Two projects have been initiated in this direction, one with another computer science laboratory and several French hospitals and another with a research laboratory in Canada.

### 2.2.1 Further investigation on Mixed Reality for education

In order to continue research involving MIXAP, we are currently working on submitting an ERASMUS+ project, a European program to support education and training. This project will be led by researchers from the IMTEL group in Norway. They have been working on *MirageXR*, presented in chapter 3. This is a very rich open source Mixed Reality authoring tool with many functionalities (Fominykh et al., 2020), (WEKIT-ECS, 2023). *MirageXR* enables teachers to create complex learning scenarios that are location-based (unlike MIXAP, which creates simple activities on image-markers). The originality of *MirageXR* is the possibility for teachers to record “ghosts” of themselves to show important objects or do movements while they record audio explanations.
<figure><img src="image_88.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.5: 20 collaboration functionalities and their impact on collaboration dimensions</figcaption></figure>

MirageXR also allows teachers to add 3D AI conversational agents who can answer open questions. All these functionalities require very efficient tablets and high-speed internet. The second partners are from the International Hellenic University in Greece. They have designed ARTutor, a very simple AR authoring tool that only allows teachers to upload a PDF file of a book for example and place image augmentations on top of the images in this book (Terzopoulos et al., 2021). These two authoring tools are complementary to MIXAP since MirageXR is much more complex and better suited to professional training and ARTutor is, on the contrary, very simple and well adapted to augment only school books. MIXAP can be positioned between these two tools, since it offers several simple MR educational activities for books but also other educational materials (e.g., posters, cards, objects) (Figure 4.6). The objective of our ERASMUS+ project is to explore several transversal research questions to these three tools such as **How to design AR/MR authoring tools for education?** **How to integrate these tools in education?** **What functionalities should these tools offer?** **How do teachers actually use these tools?** **And how to train teachers to use them?** Our research contributions will therefore include new models of MR educational activities, methods to co-design authoring tools with teachers and teacher training methods to help them take full advantage of the tools. Studies on the impact of MR could also be done by comparing and finding similarities between the tools.

A second project idea is starting to form with researchers from the Technical University of Denmark and Bahcesehir University in Turkey. We currently have two research objectives. The first is to investigate **how to support the creation of a user community and the emergence of shared practices** around MIXAP. The tool will be deployed in several European countries to test out various strategies and tools to promote user communities. MIXAP will be hosted on the servers of La Digitale<fnref n="1" />, a free and open source educational tool platform that is one of the main platforms used by teachers in France. The French Canopé network, and the

<footnote n="1">¹https://ladigitale.dev/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_89.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.6: Three complementary AR/MR authoring tools</figcaption></figure>

equivalent organizations from the other countries, will also play an important role in the teacher training. Our research contributions will include communication strategies for this specific type of community management as well as platforms and functionalities built into the authoring tool to help teachers share their experience and MR activities. The second objective is to **explore the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a means of assisting teachers** to design learning content. The use of AI, and especially generative AI, based on machine learning techniques, is exploding in TEL. AI is used for many different purposes, such as data mining for learning analytics, to create conversational agents who will help learners, to create learning content and even to grade (Chen et al., 2020). However, I agree with Tan (2020) that one needs to be very cautious about the use of AI when it comes to education because of the societal implications that it can have. As you have understood, the objective of my research is not to replace teachers but rather to empower them with tools they can use to improve their teaching methods. In this sense, I believe teachers could benefit from the use of AI to help them create learning content that they cannot create on their own or without a great deal of training and time. For example, AI could help teachers generate custom 3D models or images for *MIXAP* by entering a text prompt or another image. Systems such as *DALL.E22* or *Midjourney*³, that provide such functionalities, are already used in art education and have shown to enhance students’ ideation process (Hutson and Cotroneo, 2023). One of the main difficulties with these systems remains prompt engineering (Liu and Chilton, 2022). Users need to master specific terminology, rules and syntax to get the desired type of image, much like computer programming. I have to admit I used *Midjourney* to generate the images for the four chapters of my manuscript. This helped me to find a style I liked and new ideas but, no matter how hard I tried, I was not able to get exactly what I wanted or a coherent style. I therefore worked with a graphic artist, who produced the final versions. Despite being a computer scientist, I guess I am better at communicating with humans. In order to reduce this difficulty, we could therefore offer prompt guidelines or a set of predefined styles to facilitate the use of such tools by teachers. AI could also be used as a scaffolding mechanism to automatically generate sample activities, based on activities created by other teachers and a few keywords. However, I believe AI needs to remain a complementary tool that is manually triggered by teachers and never one that is used automatically. It should also provide links to the resources it used to generate the content in order to help teachers understand where they come from. The fact that results of generative AI is difficult to explain is one of its major issues

<footnote n="2">²https://openai.com/dall-e-2/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023
³https://www.midjourney.com/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>
for education (Sun et al., 2022). Teachers should also have the possibility of saying they do not want their educational content processed by AI, just as they can decide to share their content with other teachers or not.

Finally, on a smaller scale, we also intend to propose a Léa (Lieux d'Éducation Associés) project built around the use of MIXAP in three local schools. This type of financing is provided by the French national institute of education (IFÉ) and the principles are the same as the School University Partnership projects presented in chapter 3. These projects aim at co-designing research objectives and hypotheses with teachers in order to find new teaching methods. This project would be led by my colleagues in Social Sciences. We intend to explore the various uses of Mixed Reality for education and its impact on teachers and learners. MIXAP could be just one of several tools used. A focus on children with difficulties could be explored since the selected schools are part of a priority education network and have several specialized classes that are interested in the tool.

### 2.2.2 Authoring tools for Virtual Reality

Similarly to Mixed Reality or ML applications for education, the large majority of Virtual Reality applications are custom designed for one educational setting and a set of educational goals. Companies who develop these have set up technical frameworks and libraries and sometimes even scenario editors to help them create this custom content in a more cost-effective way (Bouville et al., 2015). However, these tools are still intended to be used by professional developers and not teachers. In the TGRIS project, we started working on a very simple Virtual Reality authoring tool because teachers could add sentences to the simulation by editing a text file. This is very restrictive, but it still made a huge difference for the users and the acceptability of the tool. I intend to pursue this direction of Virtual Reality authoring tools in two projects.

The first project is called RACOON and is developed with anesthetists from Le Mans and Nantes hospitals, colleagues from the CREN educational science lab we worked with on TGRIS, and a computer science lab in Nantes that works on generating virtual patients, based on real data collected during procedures. Anesthetists currently use full-scale simulations with realistic manikins that are controlled, in real time, by a trainer (Figure 4.7). These simulations are custom designed and followed by several debriefing sessions in order to analyze the technical mistakes, but also to identify the coordination problems within the team. In our opinion, a digital tool cannot do better than these extremely realistic and custom-tailored simulations. However, they are very expensive and time consuming and practitioners only do them, at best, once every two years. My objective, in this project, is to work with CREN colleagues and medical practitioners to provide them with a simple, yet powerful authoring tool to create digital simulations that would be complementary to their current training. The research questions aim at identifying tools that could help anesthetists continue their professional training, in autonomy or with peers, between the full-scale manikin simulations. This could be done with lightweight simulations they could do on their phones or personal computers, but also with pervasive simulations they could work on, as a team, in the break room. Voting and game mechanics could be included to decide on the best action to take next. We also believe that, as for TGRIS, a Virtual Reality simulation could help practitioners not only prepare for being confronted with difficult situations, but also help them modify their relations with the nurses and other staff members that work in the operation room. We intend to change their point of view literally, by changing their position in the virtual environment. This project passed the first round of the ANR 2023 projects selection process, but
not the second. We have therefore planned in improving the project description and resubmit it
this year.

<figure><img src="image_90.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.7: Anesthetist training with complementary tools and simulations</figcaption></figure>

The second project is led in collaboration with the DOMUS lab in Sherbrook (Canada) and financed by VMWare. My objective in this project is to work, with a PhD student, on an authoring tool that will allow for the creation of custom learning activities based on object manipulation. The teachers will do part of the authoring while wearing MR smart glasses in order to train the system how to recognize the precise tools that are manipulated and the correct movements that should be done in order to use them. This system will use AI object tracking algorithms that have already been developed by DOMUS (Yaddaden et al., 2022) (Figure 4.8). We also intend to reuse and refine several models that have been developed in our lab, such as a descriptive model for designing multimodal feedback for gesture learning (Djadja et al., 2023b) and a model for gesture evaluation (Djadja et al., 2023a). These are currently used for the Evago project which provides a simulator for training dentists. Other models and scenario building methods are proposed in the Virtual3R project, a VR environment for training students before they operate on live lab mice (Oubahssi and Mahdi, 2021).

The new training tool proposed in this project will involve MR smart glasses. We intend to co-design and test it with teachers in Sherbrook and at Le Mans University working at a professional training center for non-destructive testing. This technique allows one to examine the structural solidity of an object (e.g., airplane, bridge, manufactured item) without invading its integrity (i.e., without cutting it to look inside). Non-destructive testing requires specialized training as it involves handling delicate equipment and subjective interpretation (Cartz, 1995). Our research contributions will include models and authoring tools that assist teachers in creating their scenario while they are wearing the glasses, models for new object recognition, models for movement evaluation and models for educational feedback, based on the comparison of the actions done by the learner and the expert teacher.

## 2.3 Long-term research program

My long-term goal is to facilitate the adoption of TEL in schools by bridging the gap between
the TEL research community, schools and Edtech.

Currently, researchers in TEL are not really part of the Edtech and school ecosystem. Researchers sometimes work with pilot teachers to create and test their prototypes, but based on my 15 years of experience in the field, it appears that these prototypes are rarely used by more than 20 teachers. After the project has been completed, researchers usually simply give free access
<figure><img src="image_91.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.8: Non-destructive testing training system with smart glasses</figcaption></figure>

to their prototype online or put it on an app store. At best, they write a few posts on social media to encourage other teachers to use it, but that is it. As explained in chapter 3, research laboratories are just not equipped to do more. Their skills and the funding they get exclusively cover their research objectives, and the final quantifiable result is expressed in number of scientific articles published. The prototypes are merely side products of research and nothing encourages researchers to maintain them or transform them into robust tools that could be used by teachers. Most prototypes therefore end up in the drawer of a dusty server and become obsolete at the following major update of one of the technologies or libraries they depend on. If the prototype is developed as a web technology or a mobile application, this can happen in just a few months! To sum up the situation: these prototypes, co-designed with teachers, and for which the educational value has been scientifically proven with several experiments, simply die away without any immediate benefit for society or the pilot teachers who participated in the project. What a waste!

On the other end, in the “field”, teachers are submerged by digital tools provided by Edtech companies. These companies strike deals with representatives of the Ministry of Education at various levels. For example, a deal can be made with one or all rectors, each one representing an entire regional education authority (18 in all France) or, on a smaller scale, with regions, departments, cities or schools. The production and maintenance of educational digital tools in France are increasingly delegated to private Edtech companies. After the COVID pandemic, the government set up the apps.education<fnref n="4" /> centralized platform, with basic tools to facilitate class organization such as video conferencing, file storage on a cloud and collaborative note taking. However, the maintenance of TEL applications that provide learning content and activities was decentralized to the regional level (académies) or handed to the national Canopé teacher training network and both of these tend to, in turn, outsource the responsibility to Edtech companies. The access to TEL tools is therefore very inequitable from one area to another and absolutely not sustainable, since the deals only last for several years (maximum five). Teachers therefore regularly lose the educational activities and content they create or put on these tools, because those responsible for the tools have no obligation to make them compatible with each other or with a given format. In addition, because the market is very competitive, Edtech companies seem to massively invest in communication, branding and lobbying and rarely have the means to analyze the use of their tools with scientific standards. Some Edtech companies, such as Lalilo, still invest a lot of time in UX design to create simple and useful tools with the help of teachers. Nevertheless, the lack of long-term vision and quality of service that characterizes the majority

<footnote n="4">⁴https://projet.apps.education.fr/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>
of Edtech companies incites teachers to use TEL tools found on Internet, which at least provide some free content and functionalities. However, teachers have no guarantee that these tools will not become paying or simply be shut down, possibly the very next day. This is what happened, for example, with Aurasma, a free Augmented Reality authoring tool that was used by thousands of teachers in France and that suddenly disappeared without warning.

With this situation, how can teachers have enough faith in digital tools to spend their precious time understanding how they work and creating new content with them? As a matter of fact, it is a wonder researchers still manage to recruit pilot teachers. After all, from their point of view, we want to create yet another digital tool for which we cannot even guarantee its robustness or its sustainability after the end of the research project (at best three years)! Why should they help us out for free?

Of course, the situation is not all that sinister and researchers do, on rare occasions, work with Edtech companies. For example CIFRE research contracts, co-financed by the government, allow PhD students to work in a laboratory and a private company at the same time. Research projects financed by the French national research agency (ANR) can also be led with a private company as a partner, but this is far from being mainstream. Researchers also work with teachers and schools. Usually this is done at a very small scale, by contacting local teachers. But some specific project funding organizations, such as GTNum, Léa or E-FRAN, also encourage collaboration with several schools or entire regional education districts but, to be honest, these types of projects require a large amount of work for a very limited budget, which is not very motivating for researchers. Larger funding programs, such as PIA, also exists but for mature projects that involve entire education regions and a large number of researchers and companies. The current situation generates a huge waste of good-quality, original TEL applications developed by researchers. These applications could be taken over by Edtech companies, who have the infrastructure to make them more robust, improve their design and functionalities and provide a minimal support service for teachers that need help using them. This would benefit the Edtech companies because they would be able to use the scientific results to promote the tool, and it would also be a great opportunity for researchers to test their tools with a larger panel of teachers. These long-term experiments with hundreds of teachers are very rare in TEL and yet, they provide much more information than the one-hour experiments we usually manage to set up. I have described the situation in France, but it is similar in other European countries. The situation in North America and Canada seems slightly better since research labs invest a great deal in communication and in finding private funding or donations. The schools are also better equipped in tablets, computers and Wi-Fi and teachers are in the habit of using digital tools.

As depicted in Figure 4.9, the ideal life-cycle for TEL research is to continue beyond the first phase, carried out with pilot teachers. The pilot prototype could be transferred to an Edtech partner company, capable of transforming it into a stable application and providing all the packaging and support services, such as professional tutorials for teachers. The project could then undergo a second phase of Design-Based Research, but with a much larger selection of teachers and over a longer period. This “scaling up” process could, of course, be another, larger research project and other spin-off projects could be created after that to test variations of new tool functionalities.

However, as we have noticed with the SituLearn and the MIXAP projects, there are several dynamics at stake that make it very challenging to find an Edtech partner, especially when you have ethical principles about what public research should be. My utopian vision is that public research should be for the greater good of humanity. In more practical terms, I believe the
<figure><img src="image_92.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.9: Optimal life-cycle of a TEL research project</figcaption></figure>

articles we write and the tools we produce should be accessible to all, for free. After all, our research is paid for with public taxes so it makes sense to give back the products of our research to the people. However, maintaining digital tools and support services costs money and Edtech companies need to make a living.

The first solution is to find an alternative economic model that will ensure teachers can access the main functionalities of the tool, but that still guarantees enough income for the company. This can be done by selling additional functionalities, content or teacher training sessions. If it is possible, the company could also make a living by selling the tool to professionals in other sectors. The second solution is to find external funding from regional education authorities, cities or schools who would be willing to pay a subscription. This solution is financially more advantageous for Edtech companies but requires a non-negligible investment on their part to make sure teachers can create an account on their tool, with the national GAR authentication system. However, both of these solutions are very hard to set up because they rely on the researcher's capacity to be very convincing about their tool and its benefits, even though they do not have the means to carry out a proper communication campaign or the network to find potential financiers. In addition, these solutions are not completely satisfactory because none of them guarantees the tool's sustainability and, depending on the source of financing, the tool could only be accessible to a small selection of teachers for whom the subscription was paid. The situation is very complex. In the next sections, we present an alternative organization that could be a game changer, but that is still at its premises.

### 2.3.1 Open source software: the way to sustainable TEL systems?

Open source software is software that is released under a license which grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose without any fee (Laurent, 2004). Some prominent examples of open source software include GNU/Linux, Firefox, Moodle, WordPress, OpenStreetMap, MySQL and VLC media player. There are many different types and licenses such as MIT License, the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) (Sen et al., 2008).

Before we continue, it is important to point out the fact that the term “open source” has
known several interpretations and philosophies in its history. In the beginning of computer science, all software was open source. Then, companies realized they could make money by selling the code. At that point, offering open source software became a philosophical stance to keep software open. In 1998, the Open Source Initiative (OSI) proposed a definition of the term (Initiative, 2007). This initiative was carried forward by companies who wanted to make this term their own again. They viewed open source software as beneficial for companies, because their codes could be improved by users, for free. In order to counterbalance this profit-centered vision, the American activist Richard Stallman started using the term **Libre software** (yes, in French). He likes describing his philosophy as '*Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité*' (the motto of the French republic) to show that the objective is to give the power back to the people, and that we should be able to do what we want with the software we use. You can probably see, from my research work, that I can relate more to this last philosophy. However, the fundamental rights, listed at the beginning of this section, remain the same and the term "open source" is used in all the documents related to open science so I will continue using it in this manuscript. By the way, if you are running out of documentary films to watch, I strongly recommend '*LOL – Logiciel Libre une affaire sérieuse*'<fnref n="5" />, that explains the history of open source software.

It is also important to distinguish “open source” from “free” software. The two do not necessarily go together. For example, quite a few TEL systems are free but are not open source, meaning that you cannot have access to the code or modify it. On the other hand, it is possible to download the code of open source software for free but, for certain types of software to work, you need to set up servers and data bases. These services are not included in the free code and therefore require some technical setting-up to be done on your servers or paying a company to do this for you.

**Open source offers several advantages for TEL research.** First of all, the users are treated like co-developers and are encouraged to submit new functionalities, code fixes, bug reports and documentation. This is completely in line with the Design-Based Research method that implicated the teachers in the design process. Secondly, because it can implicate a large community of developers and testers, open source helps produce reliable, high-quality software quickly and inexpensively (Reynolds and Wyatt, 2011). Finally, and this is very important in our case, open source makes it possible to produce sustainable software. Indeed, the software is not dependent on the company or author that originally created it. Even if the company collapses or, in our case, the researchers go on to another project, the code can continue to exist and be developed by its users. Also, open source uses open standards accessible to everyone. Thus, it facilitates interoperability between software. This is essential when it comes to TEL, because this means teachers do not have to lose all their content when they switch from one software to another. However, interoperability is complex and progress still needs to be made toward finding simplified open standards and pivot formats (Almeida et al., 2011). In France, promoting open source software is officially one of the main axes of the digital strategy of the Ministry of Education for the next five years (MENJ, 2023) even though the conviction with which this strategy is enforced depends on the Minister of Education and his/her counselor, and these political figures typically change very often. For example, the last minister, Pap Ndaiye, only stayed for a year.

However, **open source does have a few disadvantages**. First of all, from the researcher's perspective, it limits the choice of libraries and software they can use because open source software

<footnote n="5">⁵https://www.imagotv.fr/documentaires/lol-logiciel-libre-une-affaire-serieuse, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>
needs to be completely open source, all the way through. This forces researchers to double check
the licenses of the bits of code they are using and sometimes give up on proprietary libraries that
would sometimes be better suited to their needs. Another drawback is the fact that open source
code is also made to be read by other developers, and extra effort is therefore required to make
it well organized, clean and documented. Let us be honest, this is clearly not the priority for
researchers, who are usually trying to finish the prototype in time for the next experiment. In
addition, the effort might not be worth it for all research projects. For short-term exploratory
projects, with minimal funding, hiring interns to develop one-shot proof of concepts (PoCs)
might be a better alternative. However, for long-term projects, this initial effort of creating
good-quality documented open source code is beneficial for everyone because it can be reused
for other projects and even by other researchers. For example, *MirageXR*, cited earlier in this
chapter, is an open source tool that has been continually improved through several European
projects. This ideally requires having a long-term research engineer who understands the code
and can maintain it throughout the projects, and this is not often the case in French labs. Open
source projects also work best if there is a large community of users willing to make the effort of
providing feedback and funding to maintain the tool and help it evolve. This requires setting up
community management and communication strategies.

However, the main difficulty with open source is to convince Edtech companies. As we have noticed when approaching companies for SituLearn and MIXAP, this concept threatens their usual economic model that is based on proprietary software. In 2001, Microsoft executive Jim Allchin publicly stated that "open source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business." (Charny, 2001). Yet, companies could very well benefit from maintaining and improving open source software, as well as selling their support services, and mentalities are slowly changing. For example, in 2010, Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, announced that now "Microsoft loved Linux" and, Microsoft has since initiated several open source projects (Microsoft Windows Server Team, 2015). A shift in mentality is taking place, but the entire Edtech market still needs to evolve in order to give companies enough financial incentives to change their habits. In the next part, we present a setup that could encourage them to adopt the open source philosophy.

2.3.2 Forges: this is the way

In 2023, Alexis Kauffmann, the head of the digital department of the Ministry of Education, set
up a sovereign open source code repository called the FORGE<fnref n="6" />. Currently, this forge, which is
managed by the AEIF (association of computer science teachers in France), is presented as a place
for computer science teachers to deposit and share code, but I believe it could be the keystone
of an ecosystem favorable for researchers, Edtech companies and teachers from all disciplines.
Actually, there are many other forges that coexist. Researchers, for example, use forges that
are often restricted to one laboratory or the commercial Github<fnref n="7" /> repository that they connect to
with their name, without identifying their affiliation to a lab (Berre et al., 2023). The ministry's
sub-management branch, called SOCLE, also manages a forge with all the important tools of
apps.education. This forge is quite different from the FORGE presented in the beginning because
it integrates several tools for test and quality control and is intended for large scale, professional
deployment. This national forge is managed by the educational district of Brittany, but all the

<footnote n="6">⁶https://forge.aeif.fr/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷https://github.com/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>
education districts, teacher training networks and associations financed by the government also have their own forges. Rather than one forge, it is more accurate to picture a group of forges that have various functionalities and purposes. Even if this is not yet the case, these forges could be federated. Several recent projects<fnref n="8" /> have shown this is possible. For example, the FORGE, managed by the AEIF, could allow its users to contribute directly to the forge of a research lab or that of an Edtech company, and vice versa. As is the case for Fediverse (a federation of open source social media tools) (La Cava et al., 2021), this should overcome the obstacles preventing several categories of users, such as researchers, people working for Edtech companies and teachers, from working together (no authentication problems, no moderation problems).

As depicted in Figure 4.10, this **federation of forges**, could create a favorable ecosystem between researchers, Edtech companies and teachers. It offers functionalities to deposit code but also to **manage and federate a community of users and contributors** (not necessarily only teachers, researchers and Edtech companies). In Figure 4.10, this is pictured as people following Komit<fnref n="9" />, the beaver mascot we proposed for the FORGE. Researchers and teachers could **co-design** good quality, innovative TEL system prototypes with teachers which would be deposited in a forge. These prototypes could then be **up-scaled to professional robust tools** by Edtech companies who have the skills to maintain TEL systems and provide support services. They could also add improvements that would benefit to all, because the updated source code would be uploaded back on the open-source forge. The Edtech companies play an important role in this ecosystem as they ensure maximum **appropriation** of these systems by improving the UX design and teacher's acceptability. Let us present the point of view of each of the actors.

TEL researchers can benefit from the help of Canopé, DAN (the digital service of the regional education authority) and the teacher training INSPE schools to get in contact with pilot teachers. Once the project is mature enough, they deposit the open source code for their prototypes on one of the forges. They could also take code from a forge to improve or build on other TEL systems.

Teachers, or the school's IT department, could access these applications and install private instances on their servers. This could also be done by digital experts that are nominated, among the teachers, at various levels (ERUN, IAN). Teachers could innovate and provide feedback on these applications by posting comments and bug reports on the forges and maybe even ideas on how to use these applications. If they have computer programming skills, they can also modify the code and deposit this new version on the forge as a new branch. If the community of developers and users believe this new version is a valid improvement on the former version, it would be merged with the main branch as the official latest version. But let's face it, teachers and school IT departments rarely have time to develop code. This is when the Edtech companies come into the picture.

Edtech companies could be mandated by schools to install and maintain a TEL application taken from a forge and provide support services for teachers. With this new setup around an open-source forge federation, teachers would be certain to have a sustainable application with their educational content (even if the company changes). Ideally, the contract should be signed by the Ministry of Education so that all teachers could benefit from these services and not just those in wealthy schools and regions. Financing sources for this already exist, such as Edu-up<fnref n="10" />, which

<footnote n="8">⁸https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-/-/issues/6468 and https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/issues/59, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹Komit refers to the git commit – a command used in forges to save modifications made in a file</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰https://eduscol.education.fr/1603/le-dispositif-edu, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>
encourages open source projects. The companies could also be asked to modify the applications by adding extra functionalities, for example. In this case, they would be required to put the updated source code back in the forge so that everyone can benefit from it, including teachers and researchers.

<figure><img src="image_93.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4.10: A federation of forges to unite researchers, Edtech companies and teachers</figcaption></figure>

The choice of the TEL systems to be financed is delicate. The teacher training centers, such as INSPE, Canopé or EAFC, would be ideal agents for promoting new TEL systems that have been co-designed by teachers and have proven satisfactory. The local and regional digital experts could also report the most useful TEL systems to the ministry. But this method will never allow teachers who have a specific need to be satisfied. A more direct solution is therefore needed. A system of resource checkbook was recently announced, on the 4th of July 2023, during the national digital strategy seminar. The objective is to provide each teacher with 200 Euros per year to buy digital resources or services. This could be used to have access to an Edtech tool, install an application on the local school server or even finance an upgrade of the tool. Even though this system seems ideal, it will be important to carefully design the catalogue from which the teachers will be able to select the TEL tools and resources. Open source systems should be recommended or at least clearly identified so that teachers know that, by financing these systems, they are contributing to the production and maintenance of long-lasting, good-quality tools for the entire community. The national and local representatives of the Ministry of Education (DAN and DNE) already finance the upscaling of research prototypes by funding projects. However, this financing should clearly require that the TEL systems produced be open source, in order to ensure the Ministry is contributing to the creation of long-lasting software and not just financing private companies. Hugues LABARTHE, one partner from our education district, who participated in such a project, called CNEC (Carnet numérique de l'Elève Chercheur) and financed by PIA3 grant (E-FRAN project), was very frustrated not to be able to use the resources and TEL tools produced during the project. According to him, one of the reasons is the fact that they did not
manage to agree on open source productions and the economic model with the Edtech partners from the beginning of the project. Finally, the last source of financing, that could encourage Edtech companies to embrace open source, would come from the SATT societies. These societies are financed by the French government to help transfer the results of research to society by putting researchers in contact with companies and depositing patents, for example. They could therefore pay Edtech companies to improve TEL prototypes, created by researchers, to enhance their chances of being used by the community. This was the case for SituLearn and MIXAP. The SATT societies can then reimburse this initial investment by making companies pay for software licenses or royalties and the surplus goes back to the researchers.

This reflection is still at its premises and a lot still needs to be done to create this ecosystem. In March 2023, I organized the LIUM Edtech Day<fnref n="11" />, with workshops in the morning and conferences, demos and a round table in the afternoon to initiate reflection on this topic. This event brought together more than a hundred teachers, researchers, Edtech companies and representatives of the Ministry of Educational at the local and national level. The reflection initiated during the round table of the conference was continued during a workshop on open source TEL<fnref n="12" />. This workshop was organized by colleagues at the national TEL conference in June 2023 (EIAH 2023). The discussions held during these events highlighted two main research axes that can be pursued in parallel.

The first axis is quite political. It aims at **federating the TEL community around several forges**, which also implies improving our communication with schools and Edtech companies that are simply not aware of our existence. Of course, there are some local initiatives, such as the conferences organized by Élise LAVOUÉ in Lyon, which aim to inform teachers and representatives of the regional education authority of the latest scientific projects and findings. To my knowledge, three such conferences have been organized in 2019, 2021 and 2022 on specific topics (Moodle and gamification) with workshops and round tables. But this should be done by all the TEL labs in France, in all regions. In addition, researchers are very rarely present at the main Edtech events such as Ludovia<fnref n="13" />, Educ@tech<fnref n="14" /> or the Learning show<fnref n="15" />.

The second axis aims at answering various research questions related to computer science, educational science and information science. **How can teachers be more implicated in the lifecycle process of TEL?** In particular, can we provide design models and authoring tools to help teachers customize TEL tools to their needs and share these new versions with other teachers (Marne, 2014)? The idea is to support a meta-design process in which teachers play a central role throughout the design process and evolution of the TEL tool (Fischer et al., 2004). The objective is to rethink the interface of software forges to encourage all teachers to contribute, and not just teachers who know how to program. These questions are part our project that was very recently accepted and my next PhD student's subject.

## 2.4 Very long-term research program and vision of research

If you have made it this far in this manuscript, you now know my research program for the next few years. However, I have an even crazier, long-term vision for research that I want to share

<footnote n="11">¹¹https://lium.univ-lemans.fr/en/journee-\gls{Edtech}/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²https://lium.univ-lemans.fr/atelier-logiciels-libres/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³https://www.ludovia.fr/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴https://www.educatech-expo.com/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵https://www-learning-show.com/, consulted on the 5th of September 2023</footnote>
with you. It has to do with Open Science and the fact that we have to take control of our own
destiny if we want to change the way things are done. This is a bit political and controversial,
so feel free to stop reading at any time.

**Open Science** is a set of recommendations aimed at “making science more accessible, inclusive and equitable for the benefit of all” (Director-General, 2022). It was defined by UNESCO in 2021 as an inclusive construct that combines various movements and practices. Among them, Open Science advocates the **importance of ‘opening up’ three types of scientific production**:

* Source software

* Educational resources and data (reports, presentations and data sets)

* Publications (peer-reviewed journal articles, books, reports, conference proceedings)

Even if this is not yet the norm in France, it will probably be in a few years, since research projects funded by Europe and the National Research Agency (ANR) must all comply with these recommendations. Let us analyze how things are evolving in terms of access for these three types of scientific productions.

**2.4.1 Open software and source code**

Open Science clearly advocates the production of **open source software**. This is very much in line with my long-term research perspectives outlined above. Although this is not yet common practice in the **TEL** community, I am confident that it will develop in the next few years because of its benefits for education and research.

**2.4.2 Open Educational Resources and Open data**

Open Science promotes the production of **Open Educational Resources (OER) and research data**. This movement aims to reduce barriers to access and is often motivated by a desire to provide an alternative or improve educational paradigm (Peters, 2008). Such resources are typically licensed under Creative Commons which can be configured to allow various degrees of freedom such as adaptation, translation, remix, reuse and redistribution. This type of license can be used for many types of educational resources, such as texts, worksheets or illustrations. I encourage teachers participating in my Ludifik’action professional training course to publish their game materials and rules under a Creative Common license.

Open Educational Resources can be shared online, on websites, specialized forums, and even on the **FORGE**. A small, yet very active, community of teachers share their exercises and course plans on this forge although it is initially intended for software. It gives them good visibility and they can use the functionalities of versioning, commenting and collaborative editing that are offered on a software forge. This is a phenomenon we want to analyze with our future PhD student and in our **GTNum** project.

Furthermore, the producing of Open Educational Resources and data involves the **use of open source software**. In fact, one of the guidelines states that educational resources should be released under an open license that allows free access, use, adaptation and redistribution