Abstracts - Earli

an effective way. The results will be discussed in relation to the interaction between the design ofILEs, the learning tasks, and learner factors.Seeking help via a mobile phone: A solution for apprentices at work?Jean-Luc Gurtner, University of Fribourg, SwitzerlandMatthieu Calame, University of Fribourg, SwitzerlandDiego Corti, University of Fribourg, SwitzerlandThe present paper reports on the first step of a research project in vocational education whosegeneral objective is to foster apprentice autonomy via the use of learning technologies. In fact,learning at work differs in many ways from learning in a traditional school context. For example,apprentices rarely sit at a desk, and more experienced co-workers are expected to assist beginnersin the accomplishment of their duties. Within this context, we postulate that the use of light mobilecommunication devices may alleviate the apprentices’ but also the experts’ difficulties related toseeking and providing "just-in-time" help at work. The aim of this preliminary study was toevaluate the technical and cognitive feasibility of the project: the apprentices’ ability tocommunicate their problems and needs via a mobile phone, and the experts’ capacity to providethe apprentices with assistance without being next to them and actually seeing the problem.Eighteen volunteer apprentices in car mechanics were equipped with cellular phones, headsets, andmicrophones. Research assistants called them once a week during eight consecutive weeks andasked them to verbalise their thoughts and feelings (e.g., problems encountered) out loud duringtheir work at the garage. An analysis of the apprentices’ help requests showed, for example, thatonly one request out of four would have necessitated the experts to quit their own activity andcome and help the apprentice directly. Furthermore, the experts rated the help requests stemmingfrom the last four sessions as easier to understand than those formulated during the first foursessions, indicating that the quality of the apprentices’ problem descriptions improved over thesessions. Altogether, the results provided some evidence that light mobile communication devicesmay indeed offer an enriching and realistic alternative to face-to-face help-seeking interactions forapprentices at work.From planification to search in computer help systemsMireille Betrancourt, TECFA-FPSE, University of Geneva, SwitzerlandExisting literature on help systems reports on major difficulties novice users encounter whentrying to learn new software functionalities through the use of an embedded help system. Far to bea simple and univocal task, information search in a help system is most often accomplished as asecondary task during a primary activity that is performed in a dynamic context under specificconstraints (e.g. professional situations). We assume that one of the main sources of difficulty forusers lies in the formulation of a definite search query from an ill-defined problem encountered inthe primary activity. We carried out an experiment to evaluate the users’ performance and searchstrategies with different types of targets. The targets were defined as either simple or complexaccording to the familiarity of their denomination, and they could be reached in either 3 or 4 stepsin the help system arborescence. In order to be as close as possible to an ecological text formattingtask, the users were asked to reproduce a formatted text in which four elements were to besearched in the help system. The results showed that the familiarity of the target denominationaffected dramatically the searching performance, but that the depth of its position in the helpsystem arborescence had little effect on it. We conclude in deriving some guidelines for the designof help systems that would effectively support learning.– 383 –