Past research projects

You will find here the complete list of past research projects conducted at TECFA (in English or French). See also the list of current projects

Since 2000 / Depuis les années 2000

Citizen Cyberlab

The Citizen Cyberlab is an EU ICT project funded under the 7th Framework Programme. The Consortium Team consists of seven partners: the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR/UNOSAT), Imperial College (ICSTM), University College London (UCL), Université de Genève (UNIGE), Université Paris Descartes (UPD), and The Mobile Collective (TMC).

Funding: EU ICT 7th Framework Programme, october 2012 to september 2015 (formal ending)

The central focus of this research is creativity and learning in on-line citizen science. Beyond helping scientists execute laborious tasks, Citizen Cyberscience projects enable citizens to learn about science and take part in the more creative aspects of research. Little is known about the learning and creativity processes stimulated by such projects, even though millions of volunteers participate. Even less is known about how to optimise those processes.

DUAL-T : Technologies for dual vocational education

The aim of Dual-T is to provide computer support to help apprentices in Swiss vocational education to articulate what they learn at school and what they learn at the workplace. The TECFA team is developing computer-based learning design fostering collaborative writing and sharing about practical experience.

Funded by the Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology (2006-2013)

Project Leaders at TECFA: Mireille Betrancourt and Daniel K. Schneider
Project Members: Giulia Ortoleva, Stéphane Morand.
Ex-Project Members : Monica Gavota, Urs Richle
Leading House : Pierre Dillenbourg (coordinator), EPFL. Partners: Jean-Luc Gurtner, University of Fribourg; Alberto Cattaneo, SFIVET.

EATMINT: Emotion Awareness Tool for Mediated Computer Interaction

Objectives : This project aim is twofold: 1) investigating the role of emotion awareness (i.e. the understanding and knowledge of others emotions) in computer-mediated collaboration (for learning - CSCL or for work - CSCW) ; 2) developing new tools to improve mediated collaborative work and specifically a tool that can automatically predict participants' emotional states from behavioral and physiological cues.

Funding: EATMINT is a project of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research in Affective Science, funded by the Swiss Science Fundation.

Project leaders : Mireille Bétrancourt (TECFA) & Thierry Pun (CVML - Faculty of Science - Unige)
Project members: Guillaume Chanel (CVML / CISA), Gaëlle Molinari (Unidistance), Mohammad Soleymani (CVML), Christelle Bozelle (TECFA), Donato Cereghetti (TECFA)

FELINE: Fine-grained Evaluation of Interactive Narrative Experiences

The use of 3D as a new narrative media has generated much research. In the field of Interactive Storytelling, in order to empower users to exercise a strong influence on the narrative the upcoming narrative events must be dynamically generated using Artificial Intelligence algorithms. But what is a narrative event in an interactive context? Which narrative situations might have an important impact in users during the interaction?

The theories of narrative resulting from the study of classical linear narratives are unable to provide a complete answer to this question. As a result, this project aims to fill this gap through a series of experiments, using interactive narratives developed specifically for the project, in order to accurately assess at every moment the quality of the user experience and to determine the relevance of the presented narrative acts.

Funded by the Swiss National Foundation (2015-2018)

Project Leader : Nicolas Szilas.
Project members: Mireille Bétrancourt, Urs Richle, Fabienne Salamin, Sergio Estupinan.

HY-SUP: Academic blended learning platforms world-wide

Universities all over the world are using platforms to support blended learning courses. Research has however not yet identified the demands placed on these platforms nor the variety of ways they are used. This project aims to answer these questions through a broad field study.

Funded by the EU (2009-2012)

Scientific Project Leader : Daniel Peraya
Project Coordinator: Natalie Deschryver
Project Member: Emmenuelle Viliot-Leclercq, Claire Peltier
Partners : Université Claude Bernard Lyon, Université Rennes, Université de Louvain La Neuve, Université du Luxembourg, Université de Genève - TECFA, Université de Fribourg - Did@ctic, Télé-Université, UQUAM, Montréal

LLL-Transfer / SUPSI4

The goal of this project is to promote lifelong learning (LLL) at Swiss universities. TECFA is contributing to the study on the state of the art of LLL in Swiss Universities, that will result in the development of LLL strategy implementation guidelines and a checklist tool for Swiss higher education institutions.

Funded by : SWITCH (2011-2012)

Project Leader at TECFA : Daniel Peraya.
Project Members: Kalli Benetos
Leading House : Fernfachhochschule Schweiz. Partners: SWITCH, Universität Zürich, Université de Genève, Hochschule Luzern, Universitäre Fernstudien Schweiz, ETH Zürich, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz

Spatial Cognitive Trainer

The Spatial Cognitive Trainer (SCT) project is a 3D real-time simulation software intended to support training, assessment and specialization of complex mental processes, by the use of both haptic and 3D visual simulations.

The SCT consists of three serious game varying from abstract exercises including 3D shapes puzzle reconstructions (level 1) to more concrete exercises where instead of abstract 3D geometrical shapes, trainees will have to reassemble pieces of a simplified fractured wrist (levels 2 & 3). Each level has 5 exercises. This project research aims at validating the effectiveness of spatial ability training of the SCT

Project leader: Rosita Haddad-Zubel.
Project members: Sandra Berney, Juliette Désiron
Partners: HeS Bern – Informatics (Prof. Urs Künzler), Université de Lyon 1 – CRIS (MER Nady Hoyek)

TBI-SIM: Traumatic Brain Injury Simulations

Built on idtension, a highly interactive drama engine, an interactive game is developed to help youth cope better with parents or siblings who had traumatic brain injury.
Funded by the Swiss National Foundation (2010-2012)
Project Leader : Nicolas Szilas, Jean Dumas. Project members: Nicolas Habonneau, Urs Richle. Ex-project members: Thomas Boggini

CULTUMENTO: Personal e-coaching for intercultural competence (2010-2012)

A personal coach has been implemented to teach intercultural competence to students and knowledge workers. The quantitative and qualitative assessment results shall be used to induce measurable skill developments.

Funded by the Gebert Rüf Foundation (2011-2012)

Project Lead: Robert Stoyan, Nicolas Szilas.
Project members: Ioana Ilea. Partner: Prof Katja Rost

IRIS (2009-2011)

Interactive Storytelling aims to develop new media where the presentation and the evolution of a narrative can be influenced, in real-time, by the user. The IRIS (Integrating Research in Interactive Storytelling) project is a network of excellence grouping 10 European universities working together.

EUROPEAN SEED PROJECT (2001-2004)

Seed is an acronym for "Seeding cultural change in the school system through the generation of communities engaged in integrated educational and technological innovation". Seed is a part of the 5th Framework European IST programme. In this project, we developped the TECFA SEED portal as well as a catalog of learning activities using ICT.

GENEVA INTERACTION LAB

This research laboratory was created on 1 January 2001 inside TECFA. The Geneva Interaction Lab is funded by two companies based in Switzerland. The first one, Viviance New Education, has become a major global player in e-learning. Viviance raised research questions aiming at the improvement of learning environments. The second partner, Pictet & Cie, is the largest privately held bank in Europe. Pictet's eBusiness team has raised several research issues in the area of human-computer interaction that will be addressed by the Geneva Interaction Lab.

LEARN-NETT

Learn-nett est un projet européen destiné à  la formation des enseignants et des étudiants en sciences de l'éducation. Son but est de leur donner les moyens d'utiliser les nouvelles technologies dans leurs enseignements.

MICA

In the MICA project (Meta-Cognitive Incentive in Computer Assisted learning), we propose a method of confrontation aiming at supporting conscious awareness of regulation. It consists in confronting learners with the traces of another learner's activity (individually or with a peer-tutoring approach) in order to explicit the procedures they use to realize the learning task and to improve them.

Research on this topic is currently founded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (2005 -2006), in collaboration with Françoise Détienne (INRIA, Rocquencourt, FR), Ghislaine Chabert (Université de Savoie, FR) and Mathieu Quignard (LORIA, France). Further research project on this topic is in development in collaboration with Alain Mille (LIRIS, Université de Lyon, FR).

ACTEUR-TICE

Le projet ACTEUR-TICE est un réseau de recherche interdisciplinaire (informatique, psychologie du travail, psychologie cognitive, sciences de la communication, sciences de l'éducation, sciences du langage, sociologie) représentant 10 partenaires institutionnels internationaux et 9 dispositifs de formation à observer représentant 2500 étudiants et 130 praticiens. La recherche vise à analyser et instrumenter des situations d'apprentissage collectives instrumentées (SACI) au sein des dispositifs de formation dans l'enseignement supérieur.

CLEAP

CLEAP is a FNS funded project (2003 - 2006) carried out in collaboration with CRAFT at EPFL. The originality of this project is to investigate learning from computer animation from two different perspectives, mental models and social cognition. In the first stage, this project will investigate three delivery features: the continuity of the information flow, the learner's control over the pace of animation and the permanence on the screen of previous stages of the animation. In the second stage, we will investigate whether the content of the animation should map the conceptual model or the events as they actually happen. Both the individual and collaborative setting will be used.

EQUEL

EQUEL is a European project that involves key researchers and e-learning practitioners from 14 European institutions of higher education. It is supported by the e-learning Initiative of the European Commission.

EQUEL stands for ‘e-quality in e-learning’ and is a virtual centre of excellence for innovation and research in networked learning in higher and post-compulsory education. The aim of EQUEL is to foster European knowledge and understanding of the effects of e-learning practice, theory and philosophy through building a research and practitioner network of experts working in the field.

UNIVERSANTE

Le projet universante regroupe des experts en santé publique, en éducation médicale et en technologies éducatives des Universités de Beyrouth, Monastir, Yaoundé et Genève.

L'objectif est de mettre en réseau des étudiants et des enseignants de ces différents pays autour d'un projet commun : la formation en santé publique.

DRLOCH

DRLOCH is a scientific co-operation between Eastern Europe and Switzerland. The main objective of the project is building an educational software system assisting the researchers, professors and students in the educational interactivity for learning the History and Theology of Romanian Orthodox Church.

Swiss Virtual Campus

eTEACH-NET

eTeach-Net is a joint project involving 9 higher education institutions in Switzerland (UniGE, UniSG, UniBS,USI, ETHZ, SUPSI, BFH, FHNW, ZFH) and also training organizations.

The major objective of the project is to develop reusable teaching modules about technical, pedagogical and didactic concepts of e-teaching.

GIRAFE

GIRAFE est l'acronyme de Groupe Inter-universitaire Romand d'Accompagnement et de Formation en E-Learning. GIRAFE est un réseau créé dans le but de soutenir une collaboration organisée et opérationnelle entre les centres de compétences en e-Learning romands. Les réseau se compose de partenaires spécialisés en technologies éducatives des Universités de Genève, Fribourg, Lausanne, et Neuchâtel. Ce mandat s'est terminé en Octobre 2005.

COMPUTER FOR HEALTH

Computers for Health is a nation-wide effort to develop, to co-ordinate and to teach the essential content and aspects of medical informatics to medical and other students using Web-based "Virtual Campus" technology.

INTERSTICES

L'acronyme "IntersTICES" signifie : Intégration des Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication dans l'Enseignement Supérieur par la Recherche et le Soutien. Ce projet a pour objectif principal : d'améliorer la qualité des projets en cours, de capitaliser l'expérience pédagogique des projets impliqués dans le Campus Virtuel Suisse et d'établir les bases d'un cadre d'évaluation de l'ensemble des projets.

SWISSLING

SWISSLING is a joint project with the major objective to develop an introductory course in linguistics targeted to university beginners in human sciences (linguistics; communication sciences; literature and languages).

Some even older past projects

National projects

NATIONAL RESEARCH PROGRAM 33: Effectiveness of Swiss Educational Systems (Home page: in french and in german)

The NRP 33 aims to enhance the effectiveness of learning and the quality of evaluation. TECFA's project in the program consists in writing a trend-report on swiss research in the domain " NIT application in education".
The report can be ordered via the WWW by filling in a command-form. This publication is in french and german. (R»sum»/ Zusammenfassung)
We have submitted a project which aims to build a WWW-server for the researcher in educational sciences. Have a look at the scientific part of the proposal (in french)
Contact: Patrick Mendeslsohn or Patrick Jermann

Artificial Intelligence in Education

GEOLAB: A learning environment fo reservoir volumetric characterization.

FSS Consultants is a company which provides geostistics courses, mainly for oil companies. We submitted a joint research proposal to develop an intelligent learning environment in which the trainees learn to estimate the uncertainty of their prediction when they have to estimate the volume of an oil or water reservoir. This software will be built around the existing geostatisctical package developped by FSS and integrated to their existing courses.
Contact: Pierre Dillenbourg

PUZZLE: An environment to study help tools.

The aim of this project is to study how people can discover the underlying regularites of a complex computer environment they have never seen before in order to propose new efficient help tools. The project includes the development of two different tools interacting with each other. The first one is a complex environment to learn visual computing concepts and artificial life fundings. The other one is a kind of multipurpose courseware manager.
Contacts: Silvere Martin-Michiellot or Patrick Mendelsohn .

MEMOLAB et ETOILE

The memolab research project is funded by the Swiss Research Fund under a special research program (PNR 23), intitled `Artificial Intelligence and Robotics'.The research team is multidisciplinary. It includes P. Mendelsohn (psychology), B. Borcic (computer science), M. Hilario (computer science), D. Schneider (political and computer sciences), P. Dillenbourg (educational and computer sciences).
Contact: Pierre Dillenbourg

SMILE

SMILE stands for 'student modelling in interactive learning environments'. In traditional ITS systems, the role of student modelling is to select an adapted teaching strategy. This projects focuses on the role of student modelling in systems which are more open than traditonal ITsS. In such systems, the role of student modelling is not to select s strategy for the learner but to help him to manage his own learning. Therefore, this project tackles issues such as metacognition, open student models, reciprocal modelling, ... and tries to unify this work in a formal approach.
Contact: Pierre Dillenbourg

Learning in Humans and Machines

The mission of this recently launched programme is to advance our konowledge about learning from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing togethere researchers from cognitive science, computer science (especially machine learning) and educational sience.
Contacts: Pierre Dillenbourg or Patrick Mendelsohn

Computer Mediated Communication, Information Systems and Virtual Worlds

Closely related to other research areas (e.g. Distance-Education), CMC, Information Systems and Virtual Worlds for Education & Research is a new line of research at TECFA (started in Summer 1994).
Look at the CMC Overview page for more details.
Contact: Daniel Schneider

European projects

RECRE@SUP

The main goal of the project was to lead a research about the terms for the introduction of ICT in Higher Educations institutions. It was also about the building of an exchange tool between the partners and the creation of an epxerts network (from resources Centers essentially) on the use of ICT for teaching and learning in Higher Education.