Audio transcription.
At itslearning, we support education, so what could be more natural than to go and meet the players in the field? Today we're talking to Alexandra Maurice, educational engineer at ISFEC Aquitaine, in charge of research and development, educational innovation and digital technology. Hello Alexandra, you've been an educational engineer at ISFEC Aquitaine for almost three years, in charge of research and development for educational innovation and digital technology. What does this mean in concrete terms?
So, I work at ISFEC François d'Assise - the school recently changed its name - but it actually covers the whole of ISFEC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, so the whole Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. So what does this rather "snooty" title mean? Well, first of all, my primary mission is to support all users, whether they be teachers, professors or students (we're a higher education institute).
In concrete terms, this involves supporting the organization, i.e. acting as an interface between the various learning communities. The aim is to make the itslearning LMS platform more user-friendly, to propose content, etc.
For the trainers, it's more than just technical and pedagogical support, it's also technical support on itslearning functionalities, but also on how to better propose, program and script itslearning, and so on. For students, it's a matter of getting to grips with the system at the start of the school year, and then providing technical support as and when problems arise.
In the midst of all these activities and a schedule that's not stretchable, but very wide-ranging, what about support for trainers? Did you feel any change before or after confinement? Have you noticed an evolution in needs?
Yes, absolutely. At ISFEC François d'Assise, we had the advantage of already supporting our trainers in the hybridization of their training courses by offering distance workshops, both synchronously and asynchronously, and also using the itslearning LMS for face-to-face training. So they were already somewhat prepared and aware.
Despite this, we set up a specific workspace for trainers, summarizing everything that can be done with the LMS platform's tools and even what can be added as a third-party tool (integrations). They quickly understood, and perhaps even more so with the confinement, that the platform was a centralized place for communicating with learners, keeping in touch with them and offering interactivity, even at a distance.
From then on, something clicked: they really understood that the platform was the designated tool for communicating, working and studying (even the students asked for spaces to continue communicating with each other) with just a login and password. So, evolution yes, I'd even say an improvement, because the idea is that today they feel more "secure", in any case more secure, and now they're asking to go beyond that. I'd say that before, we had a basic, intermediate use, but now we're going to be able to move towards more complex, more sophisticated and interesting things, for both trainers and learners.
To sum up, it's clear here that the platform enables you to centralize, as you said, numerous digital tools. In fact, I think you'd agree that the tool remains at the service of the use to which it is put. So what is the added value of integrating digital technology into our practices?
I'd even go so far as to say that digital technology serves pedagogy and not the other way around. It's a mantra we repeat to ourselves and to our trainers, and to all those who want to get involved in pedagogical uses. In reality, there are several dimensions that digital technology can bring to pedagogy. In terms of face-to-face teaching, we can offer "enriched face-to-face teaching". In other words, there's more follow-up, more automation, more communication between sessions, and so on. In concrete terms, I don't see my learners for a certain period of time, but I always have access to the platform to get them going again, captivate them, and commit them to the next session.
In the end, all asynchronous activity is facilitated by digital technology, even if the human element must not be neglected. This is precisely what a learning platform such as itslearning enables. In other words, it also enables you to keep in touch, stay in touch and offer communication tools.
In addition to all your missions, what are your main training priorities?
In the first instance, what people want is to be reassured, because they often think: "I'm not talented, I won't be able to do it, etc." whereas you can go in by the back door and make rapid progress by doing simple, basic things, and then move on to something else. So, above all, it's a question of providing reassurance and support for better use, and saying to yourself: "No, it's nothing serious, you're not operating on someone with an open heart. Don't worry if you've made a mistake, you can delete and start again."
So it's a matter of securing people on the tool and then, I'd say almost at the same time, it's the scripting and programming of learning on the platform. One doesn't go without the other, but at the outset, what we generally do is ask them: "What do you want to do with the learners, where do you want to take them, what do you plan to do with them?" and then comes the "tools" aspect and the "How do you actually use itslearning to do what you had planned to do?" aspect.
Then there are the somewhat redundant proposals, which are still relevant today, and which continue to mobilize trainers. They often include: How can I encourage collaboration? What can I suggest for asynchronous activities? What can I suggest to make my course more user-friendly and interactive? What can I suggest to maintain commitment?
How do you manage to create this emulsion between trainers, since you propose questions that, I imagine, are not of your own making?
In fact, it's a matter of monitoring and then it comes back to the needs of trainers who say: "Here I am now, I'd like to do a little more in terms of interactivity, I'd like to propose more collaborative activities, etc.". At that point, we launch communication actions, small workshops and a monthly "digital café".
Can you tell us more about this "digital café "?
The "Digital café" is a monthly meeting devoted to digital teaching issues, during which trainers are invited to take their teaching proposals a step further. This may involve improving them or making them more sophisticated. In any case, the aim is to get trainers out of their comfort zone, by saying to them: "Today you're doing this, tomorrow you'd like to do that, how do you get from A to B? Without, however, proposing anything too complex, so as not to risk taking them out of their zone of proximal development.
These exchanges are structured around "teaching moments" and operational deployment phases on itslearning. For example, the subject of the previous "Digital café" was: How can I develop collaboration in my hybrid course? And the next one will be entitled : How can I gamify my hybrid course?
There's always a "collaborative" aspect, with contributions, sharing of experiences between trainers, etc. then we do a short demo on itslearning to show them how they can set up their projects via the platform, how to create collaborative documents, use the forum, how best to propose a forum to learners, how to moderate it, what rules, what instructions we give. So, in concrete terms, we demonstrate the benefits of the functionalities according to their needs.
Finally, you're always ready to listen, to make proposals, to question the views of trainers, to find out what their intentions are, and then to put them into practice on the platform so that they can be analyzed and put into practice. So, Alexandra, how are the next few months shaping up?
Lots of new projects, of course! One of them will be to federate and organize our learning communities around research themes. Combining IFSEC François d'Assise's preferred subjects and expertise with a more action-oriented, applied research approach. We also want to offer new modalities, enrich our courses with new proposals, support and train in bimodality (we have more and more bimodal training courses), produce training modules, and so on. Finally, on a personal level, to validate my training, as I'm enrolled on a university diploma entitled: "creativity in training".