Laboratorium project summary:
We are currently building an environment for immersive learning experiences on multimodal simulations. It will be used (i) by medical students to solve problems and by doing so acquire skills (in the field of statistics and within the context of epidemiology), and (ii) by researchers to assess the conditions for learning within the environment.  

One challenge of the "Laboratorium of epidemiology" project is to design scenarios allowing implementing learning situations without the boundaries of the screen. The environment design, inspired by the embedded phenomena framework of T. Moher, combines gaming situation and ambient technologies, and is characterized by:
- Immersive learning experience. Students experience randomness by immersion into a phenomenon (occurrence of a nosocomial disease at the hospital).
- Persistent simulation. The simulation evolves and is accessible continuously over an extended period of time: an otherwise inaccessible professional situation (interviewing patients in a hospital).
- Distributed simulation. Rather than centralizing information access on the same media, information on the state of the simulation is available through different media (laptops, phones, DVD players).
- Personalization. Students collectively design data collection campaigns, and they gather and interpret their own data in order to make a decision (regarding the hospital they are studying). They only get the data they have decided to collect.

Several designing-testing iterations will be implemented in the course of the project. A first implementation will be tested during winter 2009. Experiments will be conducted in ecological situations, that is, during classroom-based learning situations that are implemented on a regular basis for several groups of students, and in agreement with teachers. 

The project currently involves two research groups, MeTAH (LIG) and Themas (TIMC laboratory), and is partially supported by the region Rhône-Alpes.
http://liglab.imag.fr/?lang=en                 http://www-timc.imag.fr/?lang=en          

Research issues:
The aim of the PhD work is to investigate how an authentic experience (within a simulated hospital) provokes learning (in statistics). We assume that knowledge is gained in the context of authentic problem situations, in other words, the situation in which knowledge is developed is integral to what is learned. More precisely, we search the characteristics of the environment that make the experience efficient in terms of learning. Among the characteristics that are assumed to play an important role are localisation (e.g. the physical place and media used by students to collect data) and temporality (e.g. the dynamic of data availability that simulates hospital life).

Main work:
There are four phases in the problem situation offered to students: design a protocol, collect data (e.g. interview patients), analyse data, make a decision in an uncertain world. We will focus on the protocol design and data collection phases and assess the impact on learning of the experience lived by students during these phases. Indications of this impact are expected during the last phase (decision making).
The work to be done can focus on different aspects of the project depending on the candidate: didactical analysis on learning and teaching statistics, gaming scenario design, environment design issues (including collaborative learning support), and environment trails design and interpretation. Experiments and tests will be conducted every year.

The MeTAH group:
The candidate will become a member of the MeTAH group. MeTAH comprises 20 researchers, 3 engineers and about 12 PhD students. We do research either on the design of computer environments for learning (microworlds, simulations, ...), for teaching (authoring systems, diagnosis systems...) and/or on their use for math/science education. MeTAH is the largest group in France working on TEL (technology-enhanced learning). It is part of the Laboratory of Informatics of Grenoble (LIG).

Studentship:
This studentship is available from October 2008 for three years. You have a Master's degree in science education or educational sciences, with a thesis topic preferably related to TEL. If necessary, you will have to take French lessons in order to be able to analyse students' productions. The PhD thesis dissertation may be written and defended in English.

Closing date for applications:
Send a detailed CV no latter than September 30, 2008.

Further information on this position is available from:
CNRS researchers Muriel Ney (Muriel.Ney@imag.fr) and Nicolas Balacheff (Nicolas.Balacheff@imag.fr)
(documents on the project are available on request)