Title:	TO UNDERSTAND THE PRODUCT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT THANKS TO A SERIOUS GAME ENVIRONMENT
Author(s):	Thibault Carron, Philippe Pernelle, Jean-Charles Marty
ISBN:	978-989-8533-04-3
Editors:	Demetrios G Sampson, J. Michael Spector, Dirk Ifenthaler and Pedro Isaías
Year:	2011
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Serious Game, Trace observation, PLM, collaborative activity
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	161
Last Page:	172
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	Our research work deals with the development of new learning environments, and we are particularly interested in studying the different aspects linked to users’ collaboration in these environments. We believe that Games-based Learning can significantly enhance learning. That is why we have developed learning environments grounded on graphical representations of a course. These environments allow us to set up experiments with students in our university. The emergence of online multiplayer games led us to apply the metaphor of exploring a virtual 3D world, where each student embarks on a quest in order to collect knowledge related to a learning activity. In the environment, each part of the world represents a place, sometimes a collaborative place, where students are supposed to acquire a particular concept. Learning objects, artefacts or collaborative tools may be present in each location and a correct answer to specific exercises gives a key to the students, allowing them to access other activities. Although the students appreciate this approach, there is an obvious need for information about students’ skills, especially for the teacher. Indeed, the teacher needs to adapt his/her pedagogical session according to what is going on during the collaborative activity. But, this adaptation only becomes possible when s/he has particular information concerning the users in the environment. In our approach, the users may interact directly with each other and in the game with a professional business tool. These tools are equipped to be traced and we can thus update the user model of the students when particular events occur, by using both data collected from traces resulting from the collaborative learning activity and information collected from the specific business tool integrated in the game. In this paper, we focus on the teacher’s need for information when the students are using a specific but external professional business tool in the Product Lifecycle Management domain. First, we describe briefly the “Learning Adventure” environment: a generic game-based platform. Then, we explain how we are able to setup a collaborative learning session and next the observation facilities of the system. The third part concerns the application to a concrete problem: to understand Product Lifecycle Management. From this statement, it became crucial to propose a very realistic environment and have indicators concerning both the knowledge (success and failure for sub activities) and the behaviour (chatterer, cooperative, resource investigator) of the different students during the pedagogical session. These indicators help us to propose and to take the right decisions to enhance learning aspects. We also propose innovative solution in order to practice a professional PLM system via the real web interface directly in the game, making a more complete immersion possible. A real experiment has been made at our university in the PLM domain with the help of a company validating the feasibility of the approach.
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