Project COMPER - Open postdoctoral position in Computer Science

Project COMPER – Open postdoctoral position in Computer Science
Open postdoctoral position
from 1st of january 2019 to 31st of december 2019
Research area : Computer science
Project COMPER funded by the French Research Agency (ANR)

Abstract of the project
The aim of the COMPER project is to design models and tools to implement a
competency-based approach to support learning in a personalized way. Bringing together researchers in computer science, humanities and social sciences, teachers and educational designers, this project aims to propose a model for the representation of competency frameworks that will make it possible to link the pedagogical activities proposed to learners to competencies, in order to develop a competency profile for each learner. These profiles will be used to personalize learning activities and learning paths, and to help learners to regulate their learning, including motivational levers. The project is based on 3 experimental learning settings of different levels (school and middle school, high school, university), involving competencies of varied granularity in different disciplines, in order to evaluate the genericity of the designed models and tools. The project’s ambitions aim to provide answers to three major research questions:

● Will a competency framework improve (a) the visualization tools built to regulate
learners’ learning objectives, (b) the self-training activities they will use to achieve
these objectives, (c) the computational processes required to reflect their
competencies and to personalize learning?

● Will the exploitation of the learner’s traces of activities make it possible to improve
the whole learning process by providing increased support to the various actors?
What kinds of support can be built from the traces to promote understanding of
learning processes, as well as improvement of the designed tools and processes?

● How these tools and processes will benefit to learners, in terms of learning and
enhanced autonomy?

Missions
The candidate will mainly work on work-packages 1 (modeling the competencies
framework) and 3 (profil visualisations, learning regulation and self-regulation).
Concerning the work-package 1, the candidate will, in collaboration with the partner
Educlever:

● Study the competency models designed by Educlever and IRIT in the context of
previous projects, and that will serve as a basis for the contributions of this
work-package;
● Make a literature review to identify other existing initiatives;
● Design a new meta-model dedicated to competencies and (i) able to represent a
competency at different granularity levels, (ii) providing genericity to federate
competencies related to various pedagogical areas and activities, (iii) offering the
opportunity to take into account various competency frameworks.

The meta-model proposal will be validated through the development of several competency frameworks, with the support of the pedagogical teams involved in the project. The objective of the work-package 3 is to allow teachers to evaluate how learners build their own knowledge in order to help them in the decision making process, but also to provide learners with an overview about their knowledge so they can set goals and measure the efforts to accomplish to reach these learning objectives. The candidate will have, in collaboration with the partners LIRIS and Praxiling, to:

● Design algorithms to process indicators (defined by the other partners), starting from the data collected during learners’ activities.
● Study existing visualization techniques to define how to visualize and interact with
these indicators in order to help users to carry out diagnosis, but also to support
(self-)regulation strategies.
● Specify, according to the results of the study, both simple and complex
visualizations able to expose the indicators to the users.
● Implement these specifications through models and tools dedicated to learner
profiles and offering the opportunity to design various learning scenarios dedicated
to motivation and autonomy enhancement.

Expected competencies
The candidate must:
● be graduated with a PhD in computer science in one of the following areas:
technology enhanced learning, software engineering, human computer interaction;
● be interested in learning technologies;
● have

o strong competencies in web technologies;
o a concrete experience in software development;
o knowledge about (complex) data visualization techniques;

● be used to collaborate with other researchers;
● be a fluent English speaker/writer.

Supervision and localization
The candidate will be supervised by Julien Broisin, Associate Professor at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse (France), within the IRIT laboratory. The candidate will carry out the research activities in Toulouse.

Salary
The net amount of the salary is comprised between 1800€ and 2350€, according to the experience of the candidate.

Application process and calendar
● Deadline for submitting an application (curriculum vitae, research statement and
recommendation letters): November 26, 2018.
● Selection of applications: November 29, 2018.
● Interview of selected candidates: week of December 3, 2018.
● Notification: December 7, 2018.
● Beginning of the work: January 7, 2019.

Contact to submit an application
Julien Broisin, julien.broisin@irit.fr .