**1. Introduction**

The question that we propose to raise in this work is to know what advantage can be gained from a new type of design based on infrastructure. In the light of this question, we formulate the definition of instructional engineering as specified in Paquette et al. [1]. Thus, instructional engineering is what designers do as they construct and preserve

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

global learning systems that focus on engaging learners in two main processes: knowledge extraction and knowledge dissemination.

According to the instrumental approach Rabardel [6], the instrument is composite; it contains components from artefact and components from users' utilization schemes. The artefact part comes from the designer and from his/her anticipation as to the future use of the artefact. The users' utilization schemes part comes from the subject's involvement in the completed activity. Thus the instrument is not only part of the world which is external to the subject but also

Innovative Approach for Renewing Instructional Design Applied in the Context of e-Learning

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When we look at instrumental approach from the computer science perspective, we find that schemes of use are not prescribed but dynamically constructed by user during the process of the utilization of the tool. In our approach, instrument would thus be an object (within oriented object paradigm) which includes an artefact part (as properties of the object) and a scheme components part representing all possible prescribed uses of the tool (as methods

The design of the learning activity means the specification of the nature of this mediation by the design of different instructional material layers. The instructional designer should specify the elements used for modelling each layer of pedagogical instrument (**Figure 1**) to be constructed by other actors (the pedagogical and didactic layer, the cognitive layer, the

The pedagogical instrument is characterized by five criteria corresponding to its different

• Its pedagogical function as pedagogical artefact: this corresponds to the pedagogical intentions represented as: <action, knowledge unit> or <Action; status-of-learner's-knowledge;

• Its effects as cognitive artefact: this concerns the learner's behaviour with the instrument

• Its form: the shape of the instrument as digital resource (buttons, text fields, word, letter,

The problem of e-learning design is that knowledge is of different kinds. Consequently, a single person cannot manipulate precise knowledge in all domains. The main role of the team is to allow the learner's knowledge to progress according to his/her preferences, the identification of the knowledge actually used by the learner, how to manage and activate certain learner strategies and the translation of the collected results in terms of the effectiveness of the techniques used. The issue at stake is the "divide and conquer" principle which makes teamwork an absolute requirement. The various actors involved in the design process are:

• *The instructional designer*: he/she defines the general characteristics of the pedagogical instrument; his/her role is to specify the shells for the other specialists to integrate the vari-

• Its scenario of use: the life cycle, number of tests, imposed or proposed help, etc.

(its effects on the progress of its knowledge and cognitive states).

the result of the subject's personal involvement in the action.

representing its scheme of use called in our case scenario of use).

knowledge objects model and the interface layer).

roles (**Figure 1**):

knowledge unit>.

• Its content to be taught.

image, colours, size, etc).

ous standard specifications.

In fact, this definition let us think that instructional engineering is a particular case of knowledge engineering applied in education domain. Instructional engineering should present tools offering multi-views of instructional material models. Micro ID (Instructional Design) has to integrate these perspectives by the principles of divide and conquers. The designer should differentiate clearly the features of the instructional materials and its contents (with all models being able to represent the various aspects of the instructional material). The outcome of the presented approach should be the convergence of cognitive, didactic, interface and content designs.

Our proposition is focused jointly on the innovative and routine designs. The innovative micro-components of the pedagogical instruments are designed to be used and reused within the principles of an object-oriented paradigm. Our approach is intended to renew ID methodology to support the creation of reusable artificial objects for learning systems in order to operationalise the theoretical foundations.

The purpose of this work is to present a new current of learning activity design based on activity theory where its design means the specification of its specific teaching materials called pedagogical instruments; this material has the role of mediator between the learner and the objects presented in the activity. Vygotsky [2] proposed a point of view based on the subject-object-artefact triangle. The main problem is to know how learners interact with content using mediating artefacts (pedagogical instrument). All the higher psychological processes are mediated through a tool.

In reality, the application of activity theory to ID is not new; Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy [19] have taken up and applied activity theory to the domain of ID. This theory has now spread and is applied to many educational domains [3–5] (Schmitz, 2010; Levy, 2008). All these works are applying activity theory for modelling the learning activity without taking into account ICT constraints. The micro-design shows how to represent and use artefact and instrument in the context of e-learning. Research in activity theory was continued in another way according to the instrumental approach called the psychological approach to education by Rabardel [6] in which he proposes to specify the instrument as something constructed by the user during interaction. We will review Rabardel's [6] work in what follows and make a theoretical comparison with our own specification of the pedagogical instrument according to what we call micro ID.
