Digital development across the nation inevitably involves education. From collège (secondary school ⁽¹⁾) to university, all of the country’s educational institutions already benefit from broadband access and are preparing to create Digital Working Environments (DWE). The aim: to improve the educational service and to prepare pupils and students for a digitally-driven society.

What is a DWE? | Thousands of resources online | Etup@ss: access to the digital university

What is a DWE?
A Digital Working Environment is a global mechanism which, via networks, offers users access to a number of digital resources and services related to the user’s activity. In education, DWE refers to a group of on-line services, which are both personalised and secured, and which are accessible to a number of users: pupils, parents, students, teachers, along with administrative, technical and supervisory staff working in education institutions. For a pupil/student, the mechanism offers the opportunity to access, on line, within or outside the institution, timetables, diaries and marks, but also to consult documentary resources or course notes made available by teachers/lecturers and to work in partnership with fellow students. For parents, it is a means of keeping in touch with the institution, of consulting information on day-to-day life (timetables, liaison information, absenteeism, meetings…). For an administrative or technical officer or for a teacher, it offers the possibility to conduct his/her professional activity from either the workplace or from home and to exchange with students outside school hours.

Thousands of resources online
The Lower Normandy Regional Pedagogical Documentation Centre already launched its “digital revolution” 18 months ago, by offering on-line access to thousands of documentary references and through the transformation of its “audiovisual unit” into a digital publishing service. “Our traditional publishing culture has been metamorphosed to adapt to digital technology,” explains the centre’s manager, Didier Detalminil. A revamped version of the centre’s website (www.crdp.ac-caen.fr) is on line since the 1st of February. The next step: launching a digital platform offering on-line access to all of the CRDP’s resources, to the national database, to education authority websites and to other pedagogical documentation centres. The platform will be targeting the educative community and aims at becoming one of the academic and regional DWE’s future services.

Etup@ss: access to the digital university
On Lower Normandy’s university campuses, registering students are given a unique, personal and confidential account (ETUP@ss) enabling them to access an espace numérique étudiant - “digital student area” (www.unicaen.fr/etupass). They can then use a number of on-line resources and services offered by the university: on-line re-registration, electronic messaging, web navigation and personal on-line storage space, Wi-Fi access, digital documentary resources from the Service Commun de Documentation, use of computers in IT rooms on a self-service basis, and in classrooms and libraries, use of other office equipment including printers… One of the challenges facing RUNN will be to improve the capacity and enhance the resources offered by this digital student area on an interregional level.
Today’s digital campus, in a few figures:
• 3,000 computers available for student use: 1,004 on a self-service basis and 2,135 in classrooms
• 133 WiFi base stations
•300 users simultaneously connected

“In the near future, our universities will be welcoming generations of students for whom digital technologies are a totally natural part of everyday life. This new generation’s experience of digital technologies is far from trivial; it is central to their communication, their language and their culture,” notes Henri Isaac, a lecturer at the University of Paris-Dauphine, in his report entitled “L’Université Numérique” addressed in January 2008 to the French Minister for Education. But his conclusions can very well apply to each and every rung of the educative ladder. Although the State’s and regional authorities’ voluntarist action has already provided schools and universities with infrastructures ⁽²⁾ and high-performance digital equipment, a genuine Digital Working Environment remains to be created (cf. What is a DWE?), to accompany children and young adults throughout their schooling, from primary to university, and to prepare them for life in a truly digital society. The task is vast.

A survey in 16 schools

“We’re not exactly starting from zero,” maintains Yvon Noël, in charge of the DWE project at the Lower Normandy Regional Council’s ICT department. “All of our secondary schools are already equipped with a communications server and have developed their own range of digital services, but in an incomplete and incongruent manner.” The Regional Council has therefore taken the initiative to launch an academic DWE project for Lower Normandy, within the framework of its SDET (Master Plan for Working Environments), following government recommendation The partners involved (education authorities, departmental councils, university and the Deposit and Consignment Office) have all accepted the challenge, concluded an agreement and set up a steering committee. “The deployment of the DWE project is an opportunity for each and every one of us to adapt our mission to the new needs of what has become a digitally driven society,” Didier Detalminil is keen to stress. He is the director of the CRDP - Regional Pedagogical Documentation Centre (cf. Thousands of resources on line) and ICT advisor to the Director of Education. Within the Regional Council, the project reunites the ICT department and the Learning and Higher Education department A feasibility study is currently underway within 16 schools (9 collèges and 7 lycées), in order to develop a scenario for the general deployment of the DWE by 2010. Without for as much predicting the results of the survey, the aim is to provide a common platform, offering services associated with everyday school and extracurricular activities (managing timetables, school reports, miscellaneous information), guidance and teaching aids (access to digital resources, distance learning/training…).

Digital campus.

Concurrently, the UNR (Regional Digital University) project entitled « RUNN - Réseau Universitaire Numérique Normand » (Normandy’s Digital University Network) was given the go-ahead by the ministry last June. The three universities (Rouen, Caen and Le Havre), the two engineering schools (ENSICAEN and INSA in Rouen, INSA (National Institute of Applied Sciences), the two CROUS and the Upper and Lower Normandy Regional Councils, are on the verge of signing a contrat d’objectifs (aims contract), in order to harmonise digital policies throughout higher education and public research institutions. “Coordinated by the Universities of Caen and Le Havre, the network’s progressive implementation is the first major achievement to be generated through the interregional cooperation and is the first step towards a PRES (Research and Higher Education Cluster),” considers Carole Dornier, 2nd Vice-chairman of Caen University’s scientific committee and in charge of the UNR/ENT project. The institutions therefore have three years ahead of them to pool their Digital Working Environment, “the aim being to rapidly offer real and practical services to users and to develop the necessary technical structures for our future collaboration,” explains François Legay, co-coordinator of the RUNN project and Technical Director of Caen University’s CRISI (Computer and Information System Resource Centre).
Eleven specific activities have been identified. The University of Caen will be taking on three of them involving the provision of technical solutions for the future RUNN network: access points throughout education institutions and the region, information system security and the pooling of data centres. ENSICAEN will be working in partnership with the TES Competitiveness Cluster to develop a multiservice electronic student’s card. The digital campus should be operational by 2011.

(1)  in France, there are two periods of high school education: collège the first 4 years, then lycée the last 3 years)

(2) The VIKMAN network, contracted by the Regional Council, provides a high throughput interconnection between all of the region’s research and training sites.

François Legay
Technical manager of the CRISI /
University of Caen
Tél. : 02 31 56 62 53

Yvon Noël
Director of ICT / Lower Normandy Regional Council
Tél. : 02 31 06 97 31

Didier Detalminil
Manager of the CRDP,
Tél. : 02 31 56 61 18

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