Claroline

Marcel LEBRUN22describes the model as follows:”…this figure may act as a check-list in order to properly design or evaluate a largevariety of “devices” devoted to learning promotion :
 textbooks (the nature, the structure, the attributes and the lay-out of theinformation),
 pedagogical software (the context of the proposed activities or the directives tobe followed),
 Educational Web sites (the activities proposed to the students or the place ofthe web site in the pedagogical scenario),
 pedagogical plans (carefully considered individual and collaborative activities),students’ output …
This model may finally be used, to boost, design and evaluate innovation inside aninstitution” (Lebrun, 2002; Lebrun, 2005).“In the centre, the three rectangles are inspired by the constructivist approach: briefly,information is transformed into knowledge by the student activities and this newknowledge feeds the following process (systemic loop). This process is enabled bymotivational factors and sustained by interaction (from the environment - functionalinteraction) or from other students and from teachers (relational interaction)).”“Our model is in good agreement with the M. D. Merrill “first principles of instruction(Merrill, 2000).
Describing these principles is a good opportunity to illustrate again theopenness and wideness of our model:
1. Learning is facilitated when students are engaged in the solving of realproblems (information and motivation);
2. Learning is facilitated when prior knowledge is activated and questioned withnew contexts (information and motivation);
3. Learning is facilitated when new knowledge is explained, demonstrated andjustified (information, activities);
4. Learning is facilitated when new knowledge is applied by the learners(activities, productions);
5. Learning is facilitated when new knowledge is integrated into the learner'sworld (productions and motivation).”“Despite the fact that Merrill’s principles cover rather well our Learning components,mention should be made for the lack of the “interaction” part which makes usbelonging to socio-constructivism. In all cases, Merrill uses this model as a guidelinefor the development of pertinent pedagogical setup (5 star instructional design rating)… it’s also the way we intend to use our own model.The main components of our model are also coherent with expectations of variousactors for the competences needed in the society (information gathering, autonomy,communication, abilities for team work …) and may be undertaken with the toolsdeveloped on Claroline. (Evers et al., 1998, Knight & Yorke, 2004).”This model is learner-centered and focused on learning rather than on informationtechnology although the latter is enabling and favoring the whole learning process. Itis of course LMS platform independent. It can be put into practice using Claroline butalso with the use of any other LMS platform such as Moodle, Anaxagora, Blackboard,etc.