Nice Sophia Antipolis University
Nice Sophia Antipolis University
Established throughout the 'département' of the Alpes Maritimes, the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis is the second pluridisciplinaire University of France in the number of students. At the start of the 2009 university year, the UNSA registered 26 000 students of which 17% were foreigners. The University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, is also: - 8 training and research units, 2 institutes and 1 University Polytechnic School with: - 8 main campuses and 29 university sites - 266 898 sq m of lecture areas and research areas (of which 58 637 m² are dedicated to research) - 375 203 sq m non-built up areas. - 1 408 teachers, teacher-researchers and instructors - 770 IATOS employees - engineers, administrative, technical, workers, services or health and library employees. Research figures: Research occupies a very important place at the UNSA. Extremely developed, it is recognized internationally. It has at its disposal: - 62 research units recognized by the Ministry - 116 research teams and more than 35 laboratories associated to important research organizations (CNRS, INSERM, INRA, CEA, ...) - 6 doctorate schools - 2 Instituts Fédératifs de Recherche (IFR) - 9 Programmes Pluri Formation (PPF) - 25 Welcoming teams - 3 Young teams - 1 Maison des Sciences de l'Homme - 1 Agrobiotech platform - 208 Defended thesis in 2005 - 1 448 Doctoral students Educational Technology main projects and activities : This department is in charge of both development and promotion of ICT within the University of Nice and plays a role of interface and intermediary for different initiatives and projects of teachers and students in the ICT field. Today this department takes part in stragegic choices of equipment in classrooms wich support new pedagocial methods and build partnership with industrials and ICT companies. iTunesU UNS platform : http://itunes.unice.fr and WebTV : http://podcast.unice.fr/uns.tv/ UNS has recently contracted with Apple Computer to be among first European Universities to broadcast video and audio contents by iTunesU (iTunes University) platform. iTunesU is a part of pedagogical hub which improves visibility of pedagogical training of Universities. The development of mobile devices questioned us on the needs of the working population which uses each day public transport, travels much and uses multimedia resources to learn.http://itunes.unice.fr” - LCMS named Jalon which integrate commercial and opensource tools (for example : Adobe Connect, PodcastProducer 1, WIMS ) in "pedagogic philosophy". Jalon is a pedagogical hub where a teacher can build online courses. The philosophy of this Web environment, built by teachers, is to support all pedagogical activities. Experiences from “Campus numeriques” show us that University needs more a tool friendly and closes to pedagogical uses than a traditional distance elearing tool (like Moodle for example). Our model is to plug many industrial tools and open source tools to produce some learning contents. In this way teacher can integrate or produce learning contents in his pedagogical library. Then, he can build courses by link materials from his library. These two steps allow teacher to re-use materials in different learning context. In Jalon teacher can directly manage his students and their works. By connecting Jalon to pedagocial and administrative information system he manage and can tutor his students without technical subscribing procedures. - Jalon is built on open source components (Plone/Zope CMS), middleware and GUI is developed in University by TICE team and drived by a teachers’ strategic comity. - Jalon is compliant with all W3C – WCAG (Accessibility) standards. A screencast [fr] is available at :http://podcast.unice.fr/?categorie=didacticiels&media=http://134.59.205.11/Podcasts/2008-05-20/presentationjalon We work now on integration of PodcastProducer 2 in our Information System and LCMS Jalon (PcP2 plug-in will be available in opensource through february). - WIMS : WIMS (Web Interactive Multipurpose Server) (http://wims.unice.fr) is both an interactive exercises server and a teaching website. Developed since 1998 by Gang XIAO, Professor at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, it experienced great developments these last years and is used in many educational establishments (Universities, high schools and primary schools). The user only needs an Internet navigator to access a huge database of interactive exercises in varied syllabuses. It is possible to use WIMS from any computer connected to the Internet whatever your operating system is. WIMS aims at never displaying identical exercises. It is why, it integrates in every exercise a random dimension. Thus, each pupil or student has a personalized and renewable exercise, which allows him to train himself on similar exercises with different data. No processing is carried out on the station of the user; no application software has to be installed. Thanks to its GNU - free license of development, WIMS grows up everyday with new types of exercises. There are today more than 15 servers referred all around the world, in 6 different countries (France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, the U.S.A., China...) as well as thousands of exercises designers in many disciplines. Today, WIMS is a part of pedagogical hub J@LON. To improve efficiency and to allow teacher to concentrate on pedagogical activities (instead on technical procedures). Teachers can prepare student to exam and organize exam directly on WIMS. For example, in ECDL training, one thousand students prepare and take an exam with WIMS. - Accessibility : UNS developed an expert testimony in the field of the Web accessibility for people with disabilities. To allow all to reach the numerical information freely, the Web sites must integrate the guidelines of the W3C (Web Accessibility Initiative). To teach this competence to the webmasters in the next years, UNS has continued a reflection on the best way to explain the specials needs of disabled peoples and the technological answers offered. The specialists from long life learning department and TICE, in partnership with the “Université de Haute-Alsace”, chose to create videos to explain how peoples with disabilities use the Web. These videos provide detailed examples of people with different disabilities using Web sites, applications, browsers and technical assistances specific to their handicap. All these videos are compiled on a web site. This resource can be used by the specialists of communication, the webmasters and is a very useful resource for the teachers in the field of ergonomics and applications usability. In the next months, the French government will publish a decree of law to force the administration to publish an online information accessible. This decree will define the methods of training of all the specialists of numerical information. To play an important role in this effort of dissemination, UNS and “Université de Haute-Alsace” develop a “teaching case” for the teachers of French universities and computer schools. With this pedagogical material, we can hope a fast development of good practices in the French schools in the next years. http://www.access-key.org, http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F4E75CCAB4F27499&search_query=ac... Papers on Podcasting : - Podcasting WhiteBook : Work with French Ministry of High Ed. to write a Podcasting White Book in French Universities : http://podcast.iuniv.org/download/Livre-Blanc-Podcast-dec08.pdf
