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International audience; Collective learning has been advocated to be at the source for innovation, particularly as serendipity seems historically to have been the driving force not only behind innovation, but also behind scientific discovery and artistic creation. Informal learning is well known to represent the most significant learning effects in humans, far better than its complement: formal learning with predefined objectives. We have designed an approach—ViewpointS—based on a digital medium—the ViewpointS Web Application—that enables and enhances the processes for sharing knowledge within a group and is equipped with metrics aimed at assessing collective and informal learning. In this article, we introduce by giving a brief state of the art about collective and informal learning, then outline our approach and medium, and finally, present and exploit a real-life experiment aimed at evaluating the ViewpointS approach and metrics.

International audience; Understanding and forecasting brain functions is the major challenge of our times. The focus of this endeavor is understanding and forecasting learning events, such as the dynamic adaptation of beams connecting neuronal cards in Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS). We have conceived, designed and evaluated a new paradigm for constructing and using collective knowledge by Web interactions that we called ViewpointS. By exploiting the similarity with the TNGS we conjecture that it may be metaphorically considered a Collective Brain, especially effective in the case of trans-disciplinary representations. Far from being without doubts, in the paper we present the reasons (and the limits) of our proposal that aims to become a useful integrating tool for future quantitative explorations of individual brain functions as well as of collective wisdom at different degrees of granularity. We are therefore challenging each of the current approaches: the logical one in the semantic Web, the statistical one in mining and deep learning, the social one in recommender systems based on authority and trust; not in each of their own preferred field of operation, rather in their integration weaknesses far from the holistic and dynamic behavior of the human brain.

International audience; Tracing knowledge acquisition and linking learning events to interaction between peers is a major challenge of our times. We have conceived, designed and evaluated a new paradigm for constructing and using collective knowledge by Web interactions that we called ViewpointS. By exploiting the similarity with Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), we conjecture that it may be metaphorically considered a Collective Brain, especially effective in the case of trans-disciplinary representations. Far from being without doubts, in the paper we present the reasons (and the limits) of our proposal that aims to become a useful integrating tool for future quantitative explorations of individual as well as collective learning at different degrees of granu-larity. We are therefore challenging each of the current approaches: the logical one in the semantic Web, the statistical one in mining and deep learning, the social one in recommender systems based on authority and trust; not in each of their own preferred field of operation, rather in their integration weaknesses far from the holistic and dynamic behavior of the human brain.

International audience; Formal data is supported by means of specific languages from which the syntax and semantics have to be mastered, which represents an obstacle for collective intelligence. In contrast, informal knowledge relies on weak/ambiguous contributions e.g., I like. Reconciling the two forms of knowledge is a big challenge. We propose a brain-inspired knowledge representation approach called ViewpointS where formal data and informal contributions are merged into an adaptive knowledge graph which is then topologically, rather than logically, explored and assessed. We firstly illustrate within a mock-up simulation, where the hypothesis of knowledge emerging from preference dissemination is positively tested. Then we use a real-life web dataset (MovieLens) that mixes formal data about movies with user ratings. Our results show that ViewpointS is a relevant, generic and powerful innovative approach to capture and reconcile formal and informal knowledge and enable collective intelligence.

International audience; This is a position paper describing the author's views on a potential new research direction for assessing, constructing and exploiting brain-founded models of learning of individual as well as collective humans. The recent approach – called ViewpointS – aiming to unify the Semantic and the Social Web, data mining included, by means of a simple " subjective " primitive – the viewpoint-denoting proximity among elements of the world, seems to offer a promising context of innovative empirical research in modeling human learning less constrained with respect to the previous three other ones. Within this context, a few phenomena of serendipitous learning have been simulated, showing that the process of collective construction of knowledge during free navigation may offer interesting side effects of informal, serendipitous knowledge acquisition and learning. We envision therefore an extension of the modeling functions within ViewpointS by adding measures of the emotions and mental states as acquired during experimental sessions. These brain-related components may in a first phase allow to describe and classify models in order to understand the relations among knowledge structures and mental states. Subsequently , more predictive experiments may be envisaged. These may allow to forecast the acquisition of knowledge as well as sentiment from previous events during interactions. We are convinced that useful applications may range, for instance, from Tutoring, to Health, to consensus formation in Politics at very low investment costs as the experimental set up consists of minimal extensions of the Web.

International audience; The success of online communities depends on different aspects and has been subject of several evaluation works. Most of the existing works in this scope are not generalizable due to their strong dependence to the considered community characteristics. Face to this finding, our aim is to propose a generic approach to evaluate and to improve the success of online communities. This paper starts by an identification of the success determinants of online communities including the participants, the technology as well as the common goal. After that, we propose a generic evaluation approach based on two levels. The first level consists in a failure detection based on a quantification of the success determinants. The second level focuses on a failure explanation and an identification of the most plausible causes of the detected failures. This approach was applied to evaluate the success of a social network-based community; it gave reliable results.

International audience; ViewpointS enables representation and storage of individual viewpoints in a shared knowledge graph. Knowledge providers (i.e., agents) express their individual opinions by emitting viewpoints on the semantic similarity or proximity between resources of the knowledge graph which can either be agents, documents (i.e., knowledge supports) or concepts (i.e., descriptors). We first briefly recall the ViewpointS knowledge representation formalism and discuss the genericity it enables in terms of semantic distance computation. In this paper, we benchmark the ViewpointS approach against other classic semantic distances (graph based or information content based) on a WordNet experiment. Our goal is to demonstrate the value of keeping the subjectivity of the represented knowledge, while having a generic approach that can handle any kind of knowledge and compute similarity between any kinds of objects.

IC3K 2015 will be held in conjunction with IJCCI 2015; International audience; The Web currently stores two types of content. These contents include linked data from the semantic Web and user contributions from the social Web. Our aim is to represent simplified aspects of these contents within a unified topological model and to harvest the benefits of integrating both content types in order to prompt collective learning and knowledge discovery. In particular, we wish to capture the phenomenon of Serendipity (i.e., incidental learning) using a subjective knowledge representation formalism, in which several " viewpoints " are individually interpretable from a knowledge graph. We prove our own Viewpoints approach by evidencing the collective learning capacity enabled by our approach. To that effect, we build a simulation that disseminates knowledge with linked data and user contributions, similar to the way the Web is formed. Using a behavioral model configured to represent various Web navigation strategies, we seek to optimize the distribution of preference systems. Our results outline the most appropriate strategies for incidental learning, bringing us closer to understanding and modeling the processes involved in Serendipity. An implementation of the Viewpoints formalism kernel is available. The underlying Viewpoints model allows us to abstract and generalize our current proof of concept for the indexing of any type of data set.

International audience; In the last few years, a growing interest has been devoted to improve rehabilitation strategies by including serious games in the therapy process. Adaptive serious games seek to provide the patients with an individualized rehabilitation environment that meets their training needs. In this paper, a dynamic difficulty adaptation (DDA) technique is suggested. This technique focuses on the online adaptation of the game difficulty by taking into account patients' abilities and motivation. The results of the experiment show that the adaptation technique increases the number of tasks, number of successful tasks as well as the movement amplitude during a game session. The technique positively effects the training outcomes of stroke patients, which can help them to recover their functions.

International audience; Semantic technologies provide for the expression of meaning of resources such as content, software, systems, people, and communities in machine processable formats with the help of ontologies. Ontologies provide the vocabulary for describing resources and their relationships (Gruber 1993; Musen 1992). Based on the meaning of resources, semantic technologies can draw conclusions and enable better resource discovery and matching. In a learning context, the potential of semantic technologies translates to a number of affordances. Thetypes of resources involved in formal or informal learning environments could include learners, teachers, software, services and content. Given the description (or annotation) of these resources with the help of ontologies, it is possible to support more efficient discovery of learning resources, sequencing of relevant learning material, adaptation of learning experiences to match learner profiles, formation of groups for teaching learning activities, collaborative construction of knowledge, recommendation of learning resources and activities, and assessment. A number of ontologies are developed in the learning domain in order to support these applications with the help of reasoning software.

International audience; Advanced Learning Technologies (ALTs) are artifacts (technologies) that enable, support, or enhance human learning, emerging from the most recent advances avail able in both areas. There are nowadays two real challenges to be faced when trying to outline in detail this definition of ALTs as a meaningful, full-fledged state of the art of the key concepts for future use, not just an historical overview of socio-technical approaches. The main technical challenge is due to the unprecedented speed of innovation that we notice in Information and Communication Technologies: ICTs; in particular: the Web. The educational challenge is a consequence of the technical one. An account of educational uses of technologies has to consider the impact of ICT innovation onto unexpected changes in human practices in any domain, modifying substantially the classical human learning cycle that since the nineteenth century was mainly considered to be managed within formal teaching institutions such as the schools. Therefore, our interpretation of advanced will be in the sense of dynamic, experimental, to be implemented and evaluated in order to limit the risk that what we describe today as advanced will be considered obsolete in a few months. This vision of ALTs, however, does not underestimate the interest for a reasoned analysis of past experiences. On the one side this analysis will guide us to avoid well-known pitfalls, on the other it will teach us lessons not only about how to exploit the potential learning effects of current advanced technologies - the applicative approach - but also how to envision, elicit, estimate, evaluate the potential promising effects of new technologies and settings to be studied and developed within human learning scenarios - the experimental approach - the last, enabling scientific progress both in Informatics and in Psychology of human learning.

International audience; The Web is the largest human information construct in history and it is transforming society (O'Hara and Hall 2008). Understanding what the Web is, engineering its future, and ensuring its social benefit necessitate new interdisciplinary approaches and research methodologies. Web Science (http://webscience.org/webscience.html) is a new interdisciplinary field that studies the Web as both a piece of engineering and infrastructure (micro level) and a phenomenon that impacts society and human activity (macro level). Web Science employs interdisciplinary research approaches (Berners-Lee et al. 2006, Hendler et al. 2008). Due to the size and the dynamicity of the Web, we may consider it as a complex natural phenomenon that deserves to be studied as such, with the help of all classical means used by the natural sciences (observations, experiments, simulations, models, abstractions, generalizations, interpretations, forecasts). At the same time, the Web represents also the first realistic natural laboratory for controlled experiments on human behavior especially when humans (and machines) perform the highest intellectual activities of information processing; studying the ways in which the Web transforms society and human activity thus requires the use of interpretative approaches found in social sciences. Modeling and analysis of theWeb also requires formalisms from computer science, mathematics and statistics.

International audience; Immanence reflects the principle of emergence of something new from inside a complex system (by opposition to transcendence). For example, immanence occurs when social organization emerges from the internal behaviour of a complex system. In this position paper, we defend the vision that the integration of the Grid and Multi-Agent System (MAS) models enables immanence to occur in the corresponding integrated systems and allows self-organization. On one hand, Grid is known to be an extraordinary infrastructure for coordinating distributed computing resources and Virtual Organizations (VOs). On the other hand MAS interest focusses on complex behaviour of systems of agents. Although several existing VO models specify how to manage resource, services, security policies and communities of users, none of them has considered to tackle the internal self-organization aspect of the overall complex system. We briefly present Agora, a virtual organization model integrated in an experimental collaborative environment platform. Agora's architecture adopts a novel design approach, modelled as a dynamic system in which the result of agent interactions are fed back into the system structure.

International audience; This position paper addresses the question of integrating GRID and MAS (Multi-Agent Systems) models by means of a service oriented approach. Service Oriented Computing (SOC) tries to address many challenges in the world of computing with services. The concept of service is clearly at the intersection of GRID and MAS and their integration allows to address one of these key challenges: the implementation of dynamically generated services based on conversations. In our approach, services are exchanged (i.e., provided and used) by agents through GRID mechanisms and infrastructure. Integration goes beyond the simple interoperation of applications and standards, it has to be intrinsic to the underpinning model. We introduce here an (quite unique) integration model for GRID and MAS. This model is formalized and represented by a graphical description language called Agent-Grid Integration Language (AGIL). This integration is based on two main ideas: (i) the representation of agent capabilities as Grid services in service containers; (ii) the assimilation of the service instantiation mechanism (from GRID) with the creation of a new conversation context (from MAS). The integrated model may be seen as a formalization of agent interaction for service exchange.

A paraître sur BCS eWiC (Electronic Publications); International audience; We take the view of ‘learning as a conversational process’, and argue that this can be extended to include the notions of peer-group interactions among students, tutors, and even artificial agents. This in turn lends itself to an approach to distributed conversation which builds upon modern Instant Messaging tools, and extends such tools to include what we call enhanced presence: a way of monitoring the availability of (and interacting with) fellow students and tutors at a distance. We describe a scenario being developed in the recently-started European Learning Grid Infrastructure ‘ELeGI’ project, deploying our own BuddySpace tools, and describe the novel contributions that this approach can bring to e-learning.

International audience; This paper demonstrates some issues in agent interaction on the Web, which is the center point of supporting the needs of fully-realized learning GRID in the future. Of particular importance is the conversation support., with its core element, communication protocols. We propose to construct communication protocols through learning of performatives of ACL messages based on the FIPA-ACL messages. The work involves two steps: 1) converting real conversations into a markup agent communication language and then 2) inducing communication protocols based on these set of converted conversations.

International audience; The nature of the Intelligent Tutoring System research has evolved during the years to become one of the major conceptual as well as practical source of innovation for the wider area of Human Learning support by advancements in Informatics. In the invited paper we present our view on the synergic support of Informatics research and the Human Learning context – in the tradition started by Alan Kay with Smalltalk and the Dynabook more that 30 years ago – down to the most concrete plans and results around Agents, the GRID and Human learning as a result of Human and Artificial Agent’s conversations. The paper will be organised around three questions: what?, why?, how?.

International audience; The position paper focuses on the concepts of Service Elicitation and Evaluation/Exploitation Scenarios (SEES) and, in particular, on experimental protocols for justifying, motivating, implementing and exploiting Learning GRID's services for very large numbers of potential users. (http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3987)

International audience; Recent work in our teams focused on a methodology, called Phi - calculus, the aim of which is to study the process of interaction between a human - or a group - and a machine when the former is interested on using certain capabilities of the latter in order to improve the task of explicitating knowledge in a coherent and unambiguous fashion. Our more recent work consisted on examining how Phi-calculus might be instantiated in the context of Human Education. The result is a Web-served Learning Environment, called PhiInEd, to assist both the planning and the execution phases of a course. PhiInEd has been used by a class of D.E.A. on Business Contracts.

International audience; Designing an Interactive Learning Environment (ILE) requires work within a multi-disciplinary team [9]. In this paper, we describe the designing process of the ILE AMBRE, the purpose of which is to teach methods. We show how, based on didactic work, we chose to represent the specialist knowledge to be taught to the learner through Artificial Intelligence techniques. We also describe how we adjusted the Case-Based Reasoning paradigm (CBR), derived from Artificial Intelligence, to teaching abstract knowledge based on problem classes. Last we describe a Cognitive Psychology experiment we conducted in order to test the appropriateness of the thus designed EIAH to the goals of the AMBRE project.

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. internationale.; International audience; This research is part of the French-speaking Virtual Medical University (UMVF). The French medicine-educational-process does not only take place at the university but also in the hospital, at home or in an office. At home, students need to adjust their computer in order to receive and view the educational resources supplied by the virtual university. In the setup-stage, he may need some help, according to his computing qualification level. Therefore we provide him with a setup-system. We specify a reference-frame, which describe pieces of software and hardware are required in the computer, to be able to work correctly, before the student use it for studying. We choose UML for modelling the setup-system. Services concerning the management of the student computer installation and its testing have been enlightened. Those services are not supplied by any well-known WEDS.

Nowadays, the Web is formed by two types of content which are linked: structured data of the so-called Semantic Web and users’ contributions of the Social Web. The ViewpointS approach was de-signed as an integrative formalism capable of mixing these two types of content while preserving the subjectivity of the interactions of the Social Web. ViewpointS is a subjective knowledge repre-sention approach. Knowledge is represented by means of viewpoints which are micro-expressions of individual semantics tying the relation between two Web resources. The approach also provides a second level of subjectivity. Indeed, the viewpoints can be interpreted differently according to the user through the perspective mechanism. In addition to a top-down approach where collective semantics of a group is established by consensus, collective semantics of a ViewpointS community is emerging from the exchange and confrontation of viewpoints and evolve fluidly. In our frame-work, resources from the Web are tied by viewpoints in a Knowledge Graph. From the Knowledge Graph containing viewpoints and Web resources a Knowledge Map consisting of “synapses” and re-sources is created as a result of the interpretation and aggregation of viewpoints. The evolution of the ViewpointS synapses may be considered analog to the ones in the brain in the very simple sense that each viewpoint contributes to the establishment, strengthening or weakening of a syn-apse that connects two resources. The exchange of viewpoints is the selection process ruling the synapses evolution like the selectionist process within the brain.We investigate in this study the potential impact of our subjective representation of knowledge in various fields: information search, recommendation, multilingual ontology alignment and methods for calculating semantic distances.; Le Web d’aujourd’hui est formé, entre autres, de deux types de contenus que sont les données structurées et liées du Web sémantique et les contributions subjectives des utilisateurs du Web social. L’approche ViewpointS a été conçue comme un formalisme creuset apte à intégrer ces deux types de contenus, en préservant la subjectivité des interactions du Web Social. ViewpointS est une approche de représentation subjective des connaissances. Les connaissances sont représentées sous forme de points de vue – des viewpoints – qui sont des éléments de base d’une sémantique individuelle déclarant la proximité de deux ressources. L’approche propose aussi un second degré de subjectivité. En effet, viewpoints peuvent être interprétés différemment selon l’utilisateur grâce au mécanisme de perspective. Il y a une subjectivité dans la connaissance capturée ainsi que dans la manière de l’exploiter. En complément aux approches top-down où la sémantique collective d’un groupe est établie par consensus, la sémantique collective d’une communauté ViewpointS émerge de façon « bottom-up » de l’échange et la confrontation des viewpoints et évolue de manière fluide au fur et à mesure de leur émission. Les ressources du Web sont représentées et liées par les viewpoints dans le Graphe de Connaissances. A l’utilisation, les viewpoints entre deux ressources sont agrégés pour créer une « synapse ». A partir du Graphe de Connaissances contenant les viewpoints et les ressources du Web une Carte de Connaissances composée de synapses et de ressources est créée qui est le fruit de l’interprétation et de l’agrégation des viewpoints. Chaque viewpoint contribue à la création, au renforcement ou à l’affaiblissement d’une synapse qui relie deux ressources. L’échange de viewpoints est le processus de sélection qui permet l’évolution des synapses d’une manière analogue à celles qui évoluent dans le cerveau au fil d’un sélectionnisme neuronal. Nous investiguons dans cette étude l’impact que peut avoir la représentation subjective des connaissances dans divers scénarii de construction collective des connaissances. Les domaines traités sur les bénéfices de la subjectivité des connaissances représentées sont la recherche d’information, la recommandation, l’alignement multilingue d’ontologies et les méthodes de calcul de distance sémantique.

With the arrival of cloud computing technology, game accessibility and ubiquity havea bright future. Games can be hosted in a centralize server and accessed through theInternet by a thin client on a wide variety of devices with modest capabilities: cloudgaming. Some of the advantages of using cloud computing in game context includes:device ubiquity, computing exibility, affordable cost and lowered set up overheads andcompatibility issues. However, current cloud gaming systems have very strong requirementsin terms of network resources, thus reducing their widespread adoption. In factdevices with little bandwidth and people located in area with limited network capacity,cannot take advantage of these cloud services. In this thesis we present an adaptationtechnique inspired by the level of detail (LoD) approach in 3D graphics. It is based ona cloud gaming paradigm in other to maintain user's quality of experience (QoE) byreducing the impact of poor network parameters (delay, loss, bandwidth) on game interactivity.Our first contribution consist of game models expressing game objects and theircommunications needs represented by their importance in the game. We provided twodifferent ways to manage objects' importance using agents organizations and gameplaycomponents. We then provided a level of detail approach for managing network resourcedistribution based on objects importance in the game scene and network conditions. Weexploited the dynamic objects importance adjustment models presented above to proposeLoD systems adapting to changes during game sessions. The experimental validation ofboth adaptation models showed that the suggested adaptation minimizes the effects oflow and/or unstable network conditions in maintaining game responsiveness and player'sQoE.; Le Cloud computing émerge comme le nouveau paradigme informatique dans lequel la virtualisation des ressources fournit des services fiables correspondant aux demandes des utilisateurs. De nos jours, la plupart des applications interactives et utilisant beaucoup de données sont développées sur le cloud: Le jeu vidéo en est un exemple. Avec l'arrivée du cloud computing, l'accessibilité et l'ubiquité du jeu ont un brillant avenir; Les jeux peuvent être hébergés dans un serveur centralisé et accessibles via l'Internet par un client léger sur une grande variété de dispositifs avec des capacités modestes : c'est le cloud gaming. Le Cloud computing, dans le contexte de jeu vidéo a beaucoup attiré l'attention en raison de ses facilités d'évolution, de disponibilité et capacité de calcul. Cependant, les systèmes de cloud gaming actuels ont des exigences très fortes en termes de ressources réseau, réduisant ainsi l'accessibilité et l'ubiquité des jeux dans le cloud, car les dispositifs clients avec peu de bande passante et les personnes situées dans la zone avec des conditions de réseau limitées et/ou instables, ne peuvent pas bénéficier de ces services de cloud computing. Dans cette thèse, nous présentons une technique d'adaptation inspirée par l'approche du niveau de détail (Level of detail) dans les graphiques 3D. Elle est basée sur un paradigme du cloud gaming dans l'objectif de fournir une accessibilité multi-plateforme, tout en améliorant la qualité d'expérience (QoE) du joueur en réduisant l'impact des mauvaises conditions réseau (delai, perte, gigue) sur l'interactivité et réactivité du jeu. Notre première contribution se compose de modèles de jeu reliant les objets du jeu à leurs besoins en termes de communication représentés par leurs importances dans le jeu. Nous avons ensuite fourni une approche de niveau de détail pour gérer la distribution des ressources réseau basée sur l'importance des objets dans la scène et les conditions réseau. Nous validons notre approche en utilisant des jeu prototypes et evaluons la QoE du joueur, par des expériences pilotes. Les résultats montrent que le framework proposé fournit une importante amélioration de la QoE.

International audience; Nous proposons une évaluation du modèle MoPPLiq et de l'outil au-teur APPLiq d'adaptation des parcours pédago-ludiques des jeux sérieux qui sont une contribution au meta-design pour les jeux sérieux. Cette évaluation impliquant plus de vingt enseignants sur plusieurs semaines a montré que la re-présentation graphique augmentée de MoPPLiq générée par APPLiq aide les enseignants à comprendre le scénario d'un jeu sérieux et qu'APPLiq permet la création et la modification de parcours pédago-ludiques que les enseignants considèrent plutôt utilisables avec leurs élèves.

National audience; Le cycle de conférence TICE a pour objectif de faire tous les deux ans le point sur les résultats de recherches, les nouvelles applications, les derniers usages, et les retours d’expériences dans le domaine de l’éducation supérieure numérique. Le colloque TICE 2014 est organisé par l’IUT de Beziers, une composante de l’Université Montpellier 2. Cette neuvième édition du colloque TICE sera l’occasion de rassembler à Béziers, du 18 au 20 Novembre 2014, la communauté scientifique et industrielle des TICE autour du thème « Nouvelles pédagogies et sciences et technologies du numérique ».

In the actual area of resource and skills decentralization, the use of technologies has become increasingly common under the name of electronic collaboration or eCollaboration. In spite of its interest, the involvement of technologies in the collaboration process has not solved all its problems. The research works on eCollaboration evaluation are focused on the detection, explanation and resolution of these problems.In the literature, we noted that evaluation works accord a special and unjustified attention to technological component of eCollaboration scenarios at the expense of their human component. This finding has motivated our thesis, aiming to propose a generic evaluation approach of eCollaboration scenarios that considers technological and human eCollaboration components. Given the delicacy of eCollaboration environments and to attain the objective of this work, our contribution follows a three step based process. The first step consists in a scenario based analysis that allowed, after carrying out several abstractions, to suggest a conceptual eCollaboration model, a scheme of the implemented interactions and a classification of eCollaboration scenarios. The second step is focused on the development of an eCollaboration simulator based on results of the previous step. This work allowed us to identify a generic criterion for eCollaboration success by generating different instances of eCollaboration scenarios progressing in varied conditions and observing different types of anomalies occuring on them. The third step was interested in the proposition of a generic evaluation approach based on the success criterion previously detected and composed by two levels : the first is interested in anomaly detection and the second is focused on the explanation of it, using a human reliability analysis method which considers that any detected anomaly is due to inappropriate progress conditions including both technological and human causes., A l'ère actuelle de la décentralisation des ressources et des compétences, le recours aux technologies est devenu de plus en plus fréquent donnant naissance à la collaboration électronique désignée aussi par eCollaboration. Malgré tous les avantages qu'elle apporte, l'implication des technologies dans le processus de la collaboration est loin de résoudre tous ses problèmes. Les travaux de recherche tournant autour de l'évaluation de l'eCollaboration se focalisent sur la détection, l'explication et la résolution de ces problèmes. Dans la littérature, nous avons noté que les travaux d'évaluation accordent un intérêt particulier et non justifié à la composante technologique de l'eCollaboration aux dépens de sa composante humaine. Cette constatation a motivé notre travail de thèse qui a pour objectif de proposer une approche générique d'évaluation des scénarios d'eCollaboration qui prend en compte leurs composantes technologiques et humaines. Face à la délicatesse du contexte de l'eCollaboration et afin d'atteindre l'objectif fixé, notre contribution a suivi une démarche constituée de trois étapes. La première étape a consisté en une analyse basée sur les scénarios qui, suite à l'élaboration de plusieurs abstractions, nous a permis de proposer un modèle conceptuel de l'eCollaboration, un schéma des interactions mises en œuvre et une classification des scénarios d'eCollaboration. La deuxième étape s'est intéressée au développement d'un simulateur de scénarios d'eCollaboration en se basant sur les résultats produits par l'étape précédente. Ce travail nous a permis d'identifier un critère générique de succès de l'eCollaboration à travers la génération de différentes instances de scénarios d'eCollaboration se déroulant dans des conditions variées et l'observation de différents types d'anomalies qui y apparaissent. La troisième étape a porté sur la proposition d'une approche générique d'évaluation basée sur le critère de succès dégagé précédemment et composée de deux niveaux : le premier consiste en une détection des anomalies et le deuxième se focalise sur l'explication de celles-ci en se basant sur une méthode d'analyse de la fiabilité humaine qui considère que toute anomalie détectée est provoquée par une inadéquation des conditions de déroulement qui englobent des causes aussi bien technologiques que humaines.

International audience; Cet article présente une réflexion sur les raisons qui poussent les enseignants à concevoir et à maintenir un site Internet dédié à leur activité professionnelle d'enseignant. Ces sites sont a destination de leurs pairs. On peut y trouver des documents plus ou moins finalisés ou encore des conseils pour consolider leur pratique d'enseignant et mettre en place une démarche réflexive. L'analyse réalisée montre que la conception de ces sites s'organisent autour de trois valeurs : le tissage qui est un élément central, l'effet vitrine et la valorisation de l'expérience personnelle.

Section: Learner modeling; International audience; Our aim is to develop a Fuzzy Logic based student model which removes the arbitrary specification of precise numbers and facilitates the modelling at a higher level of abstraction. Fuzzy Logic involves the use of natural language in the form of If-Then statements to demonstrate knowledge of domain experts and hence generates decisions and facilitates human reasoning based on imprecise information coming from the student-computer interaction. Our case study is in geometry. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy logic representation for student modelling and compare it with the Additive Factor Model (AFM) algorithm implemented on DataShop. Two rule-based fuzzy inference systems have been developed that ultimately predict the degree of error a student makes in the next attempt to the problem. Results indicate the rule-based systems achieve levels of accuracy matching that of the AFM algorithm.

The reflexions lead around the idea of collective (or collaborative) intelligence suggest, that those emerge within a system in interaction of which technical, social and semiotic factors are strongly imbricated ( PIERRE LEVY , 1994). In order to leverage this challenge, this thesis propose to mix two innovative concepts. Firstly, the collaborative ubiquituous space is used to catalyse the interactions between groups of agents and services. Secondly, an infrastructure with distributed resources is used to dynamically coordinate the resources and the security according to quality of service criteria. A collaborative ubiquituous space integrates artificial processes to achieve massive computation (simulations, data mining, etc.) and multimodal interfaces including shared visualisation for interactions between humans. In terms of infrastructure, this thesis explains why the Web does not respond suitably to the problem of collective intelligence and why we looked at GRID. In particular, a singular property of GRID is the stateful service that allows to coordinate distributed ressources in a dynamic and secured manner. To show it, instead of developping an analytical model, we have chosen a systemic model. The architecture model Agora proposes to use GRID to deploy collaborative ubiquituous spaces. Validated by a empirical method, this model has been evaluated iteratively based on returns from experimentations with communities of users. According to the progress of our investigations, a GRID architecture coupled concepts linked to multi-agents systems show caracteristics required for scalability with a rationnal use of resources, while offering garanties of sécurity and high availibility., Les réflexions menées autour de l'idée d'intelligence collective (ou collaborative) postulent que celle-ci émerge d'un système en interaction dont les dispositifs techniques, sociaux et sémiotiques sont fortement imbriqués ( PIERRE LEVY , 1994). Pour relever ce défi, cette thèse propose de conjuguer deux concepts innovants. D'abord celui d'espace collaboratif ubiquitaire pour catalyser les interactions entre groupes d'agents et services. Ensuite celui d'infrastructure à ressources distribuées pour coordonner, de façon dynamique, les ressources et la sécurité en fonction de critères de qualité de service souhaités par les groupes d'agents. Un espace collaboratif ubiquitaire intègre des processus artificiels pour réaliser du traitement intensif (simulations, fouille de données, etc.) et des interfaces multimodales, incluant la visualisation partagée en mode synchrone ou asynchrone, pour les interactions entre humains. En termes d'infrastructure, cette thèse explique pourquoi le WEB n'apporte pas une réponse adaptée à la problématique de l'intelligence collective et pourquoi nous nous sommes tournés vers GRID (GRILLE DE RESSOURCES INFORMATIQUES DISTRIBUÉES). Notamment, une propriété singulière de GRID est le service à état qui permet de coordonner des ressources distribuées de façon dynamique et sécurisée. Pour mettre ceci en évidence, nous avons développé le modèle d'architecture AGORA qui propose d'utiliser GRID pour déployer des espaces collaboratifs ubiquitaires. De cette façon, les groupes d'agents humains et artificiels s'auto-organisent dans un espace immanent où les ressources sont délivrées dynamiquement par l'infrastructure. Validé par une méthode empirique, ce modèle a été l'objet d'une élaboration itérative fondée sur des retours d'expérimentation avec des communautés d'utilisateurs. Au vu de l'avancement de nos investigations, une architecture GRID couplée avec des concepts propres aux systèmes multi-agents présente les caractéristiques nécessaires pour déployer AGORA à grande échelle avec une utilisation rationnelle des ressources, tout en offrant des garanties de sécurité et de haute disponibilité.

This thesis deals with dynamic service exchange modelling. The notion of service is now at the centre of distributed system development; it plays a key role in their implementation and success. The thesis proposes firstly a reflection about the notion of service and introduces the concept of Dynamic Service Generation (DSG) as a different way to provide and use services in a computer-mediated context: services are dynamically constructed, provided and used by agents (human or artificial) within a community, by means of a conversation. In particular, two major characteristics of DSG are highlighted: an agent and Grid oriented aspect of service exchange. Therefore, the thesis proposes an integration of three research domains in Informatics: Service-Oriented Computing (SOC), Multi-Agents System (MAS) and GRID. The thesis contributions consists of three main aspects: The proposal of (i) a new agent representation and communication model, called STROBE, that enables agents to develop different languages for each agent they communicate with. STROBE agents are able to interpret communication messages and execute services in a given dynamic dedicated conversation context; (ii) a computational abstraction, called i-dialogue (intertwined dialogues) that models multi-agent conversations by means of fundamental constructs of applicative/functional languages (i.e., streams, lazy evaluation and higher-order functions); (iii) a service-oriented GRID-MAS integrated model based on the representation of agent capabilities as Grid services. In this model, concepts of GRID and MAS, relations between them and the rules are semantically described by a set-theory formalization and a common graphical description language, called Agent-Grid Integration Language (AGIL). AGIL integrates the thesis results together by formalizing agent interactions for service exchange on the Grid.; L'objet de cette thèse est la modélisation de l'échange dynamique de services. La notion de service joue désormais un rôle clé dans le développement, la diffusion et l'implémentation des systèmes distribués. Cette thèse propose une réflexion sur la notion de service et introduit le concept de Génération Dynamique de Service (GDS) comme une approche différente de l'échange de service en informatique, dans laquelle des services sont dynamiquement construits, fournis et utilisés par des agents (humains ou artificiels). Ces échanges de services sont basés sur des conversations qui ont lieu au sein de différentes communautés. Deux caractéristiques de la GDS sont particulièrement mises en avant : l'aspect orienté agent et l'aspect orienté Grid. La thèse se situe donc à l'intersection de trois domaines~: le Service-Oriented Computing (SOC), les Systèmes Multi-Agents (SMA) et GRID. Les trois contributions majeures sont :: (i) la proposition d'un nouveau modèle de représentation et de communication agent, appelé STROBE, qui permet aux agents de développer dynamiquement un langage différent pour chacun de leurs interlocuteurs. Ils sont capables d'interpréter des messages et d'exécuter des services dans des contextes de conversation dédiés; (ii) une fonction, appelée i-dialogue, qui modélise les conversations agents à l'aide des principes de la programmation applicative/fonctionnelle (i.e., flots, évaluation paresseuse, procédures de première classe) ; (iii) un modèle d'intégration GRID-SMA qui représente les capacités des agents par des services Grid. Dans ce modèle, un langage formel, appelé Agent-Grid Integration Language (AGIL), décrit sémantiquement et graphiquement les concepts clés de GRID et SMA, leurs relations, ainsi que les règles de leur intégration. AGIL intègre tous les résultats de la thèse en proposant une formalisation des interactions entre agents pour l'échange de services sur le Grid.

This thesis presents concepts, models and tools for the design and developmentof software systems for the Everywhere Anytime Computing context. In fact, the technologicalcontext of software systems is continuously evolving and nowadays the availability of smallcommunicating devices offers the opportunity to make the Everywhere, Anytime Computing(EAC) a reality that naturally integrates our societies and economies. Up until now therehas not been an EAC solution that supports the many levels of design in a single framework.This thesis produces such a framework that deals with: (i) the constraints of the communicationmedium in terms of intermittence of the communications; (ii) the management of theon-the-fly composition and decomposition of the software systems; (iii) the autonomy of thesoftware entities and systems; (iv) and the management of the interoperability of the opensystems. To answer the first three points, we have introduced an algebraic model of a deploymentenvironment holding the interacting and autonomous agents. This model is known asMovement, Interaction, Calculus* (MIC*). The autonomy of the software agents is guaranteedsince MIC* preserves their structural integrity. The interaction scheme within MIC* ispersistent and timely uncoupled. Consequently, the intermittent nature of the communicationmedia does not affect drastically the functioning of the systems. Finally, thanks to the algebraicmodeling, the composition of MIC* deployment environments is formally specified andconcretely implemented. We have addressed the interoperability from a coordination point ofview. We propose a formalism to express coordination protocols as a graphs expressing the dependencieson resources between the roles. Using this formalism, a formal link has been made,using a rewriting system. Furthermore, using Queue Petri Nets we have offered a practicalmean to check the consistency between a coordination protocol and the conversations amongthe agents. Finally, an engineering framework is proposed for the design and implementationof applications within the AEC context as open artificial societies of autonomous agents. Inorder to experiment with the suggested approaches, an AEC simulation platform has beendeveloped. The user can move within a virtual world where she/he can interact dynamicallywith the services that are deployed.; Cette these présente des concepts, modèles et outils pour laconstruction de systèmes informatiques dans le cadre des services electroniques disponiblespartout et n'importe quand (Everywhere Anytime Computing, AEC). Dans cette thèse nousconsidérons qu'un cadre de conception et de développement dans le contexte de l'AEC doitrépondre aux points suivants: gestion de l'intermittance des communications, la compositiondes systèmes, le respect de l'autonomie des entités, et l'interopérabilité. Pour repondre auxtrois premiers points le modèle algèbrique d'infrastructure nommé Mouvement, Interaction,Computation (MIC*) est proposé. L'autonomie des agents est garantie grâce a l'integritéstructurelle. Le modèle d'interaction est persistant ce qui permet de s'affranchir des intermittencesdu medium de communication. La composition des systemes est realisée par lacomposition des environnements de deploiement. L'interopérabilité est abordée par la coordination.Les protocoles de coordination sont représentés comme des graphes de dependance.Nous avons presenté le lien formel ainsi que le moyen concret pour valider des séquences deressources par rapport à un protocole de coordination donné. Finalement, nous proposons uncadre de conception des systèmes informatiques dans le contexte de l'AEC ou chaque systèmeest spécifié comme une société artificielle, peuplée d'agents autonomes, ouverte et interopérableavec d'autres sociétés en coordonnant certaines activités. Nous avons pu implémenter et testernos approches grâce à une plate forme de simulation où un utilisateur peut naviguer à traversun monde virtuel et interagir avec différents services.

This thesis presents concepts, models and tools for the design and developmentof software systems for the Everywhere Anytime Computing context. In fact, the technologicalcontext of software systems is continuously evolving and nowadays the availability of smallcommunicating devices offers the opportunity to make the Everywhere, Anytime Computing(EAC) a reality that naturally integrates our societies and economies. Up until now therehas not been an EAC solution that supports the many levels of design in a single framework.This thesis produces such a framework that deals with: (i) the constraints of the communicationmedium in terms of intermittence of the communications; (ii) the management of theon-the-fly composition and decomposition of the software systems; (iii) the autonomy of thesoftware entities and systems; (iv) and the management of the interoperability of the opensystems. To answer the first three points, we have introduced an algebraic model of a deploymentenvironment holding the interacting and autonomous agents. This model is known asMovement, Interaction, Calculus* (MIC*). The autonomy of the software agents is guaranteedsince MIC* preserves their structural integrity. The interaction scheme within MIC* ispersistent and timely uncoupled. Consequently, the intermittent nature of the communicationmedia does not affect drastically the functioning of the systems. Finally, thanks to the algebraicmodeling, the composition of MIC* deployment environments is formally specified andconcretely implemented. We have addressed the interoperability from a coordination point ofview. We propose a formalism to express coordination protocols as a graphs expressing the dependencieson resources between the roles. Using this formalism, a formal link has been made,using a rewriting system. Furthermore, using Queue Petri Nets we have offered a practicalmean to check the consistency between a coordination protocol and the conversations amongthe agents. Finally, an engineering framework is proposed for the design and implementationof applications within the AEC context as open artificial societies of autonomous agents. Inorder to experiment with the suggested approaches, an AEC simulation platform has beendeveloped. The user can move within a virtual world where she/he can interact dynamicallywith the services that are deployed., Cette these présente des concepts, modèles et outils pour laconstruction de systèmes informatiques dans le cadre des services electroniques disponiblespartout et n'importe quand (Everywhere Anytime Computing, AEC). Dans cette thèse nousconsidérons qu'un cadre de conception et de développement dans le contexte de l'AEC doitrépondre aux points suivants: gestion de l'intermittance des communications, la compositiondes systèmes, le respect de l'autonomie des entités, et l'interopérabilité. Pour repondre auxtrois premiers points le modèle algèbrique d'infrastructure nommé Mouvement, Interaction,Computation (MIC*) est proposé. L'autonomie des agents est garantie grâce a l'integritéstructurelle. Le modèle d'interaction est persistant ce qui permet de s'affranchir des intermittencesdu medium de communication. La composition des systemes est realisée par lacomposition des environnements de deploiement. L'interopérabilité est abordée par la coordination.Les protocoles de coordination sont représentés comme des graphes de dependance.Nous avons presenté le lien formel ainsi que le moyen concret pour valider des séquences deressources par rapport à un protocole de coordination donné. Finalement, nous proposons uncadre de conception des systèmes informatiques dans le contexte de l'AEC ou chaque systèmeest spécifié comme une société artificielle, peuplée d'agents autonomes, ouverte et interopérableavec d'autres sociétés en coordonnant certaines activités. Nous avons pu implémenter et testernos approches grâce à une plate forme de simulation où un utilisateur peut naviguer à traversun monde virtuel et interagir avec différents services.