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The work reported here takes place in the educational domain. The authors propose a learning environment based on a graphical representation of a course. The emergence of online multiplayer games led the authors to apply the following metaphor to the digital work environments: The method of acquiring knowledge during a learning session is similar to the exploration of a dungeon, where each student collects knowledge related to a learning activity. In the first part of this article, the authors focuses on a description of how concepts of learning activities can be represented in the dungeon view. The second part deals with the support of the observation task for the teacher during a learning session and more generally with providing users with awareness. The authors thus propose a multiagent system using data collected from traces resulting from the collaborative learning activity. Finally, this environment allowed the authors to set up experiments with students at their university.

Our work aims at providing teachers with an observation tool making the learning task flexible and more adaptive. The main point of this paper deals with an agent approach to support the observation task of the teacher during a learning session. A multi-agent system architecture is proposed and discussed.

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In this chapter, the authors propose a Game-Based LMS called the pedagogical dungeon equipped with cooperation abilities for particular activities. The main purpose of this chapter is to explain how to keep awareness of the on-going activities while remaining involved in the game itself. The difficulty is to provide the teacher with this awareness in an immersive way, making the teacher more involved in the game when s/he obtains feedback on the activity. The chapter is split into three sections. The authors propose a first section that deals with the description of our view of learning games illustrated through the pedagogical dungeon. They briefly describe the generation of a dungeon from activity preparation and the links between pedagogical concepts and their representation in the dungeon. The second section concentrates on the observation features needed in these environments in order to obtain interesting facts on what is going on. The authors need to collect traces of the collaborative activity during the enactment phase. They describe the trace life cycle and explain how facts constituting awareness can be calculated from the traces. The third part deals with the restitution of this awareness to the teacher. The problem here is to find an appropriate way to represent awareness both of students’ knowledge and behavior. This awareness must be perceived through appropriate graphical representations to preserve the “immersion” property, implying that these representations must be directly present in the game. The pedagogical dungeon has been experimented during several practical works with real classrooms at the University of Savoie and the Graduate Business School of Chambery, France. This experimental approach illustrates the different aspects of the work, concerning the learning game itself, the observation features, and the restitution of the awareness to the teacher.