Simulation et compréhension de documents techniques : le cas de la formation des grutiers

Résumé Fr En

RÉSUMÉ La capacité à comprendre des documents techniques écrits peut être un obstacle majeur pour des professionnels expérimentés mais peu “ lettrés ”. C’est le problème posé à la formation continue des grutiers qui doivent obtenir un certificat obligatoire, comportant une épreuve de lecture-compréhension de courbes et tableaux de limites de transports de charges. Afin de construire un outil d’aide pour traiter et manipuler ces graphes techniques, nous avons conduit une démarche d’ergonomie cognitive de l’apprentissage en trois étapes. Nous avons d’abord conduit une analyse du travail réel de 10 grutiers expérimentés qui a montré que ces experts possèdent une connaissance intuitive du fonctionnement du système de la grue, objectivement exprimable dans un format de représentation analogique conservant les indices de l’activité. Ensuite, nous avons construit un simulateur multimodal d’apprentissage des tableaux de charge, fondé sur une liaison explicite et matérielle entre la représentation fonctionnelle interne des grutiers et la représentation symbolique externe (courbe de fonction poids-distance). Enfin, nous avons évalué l’effet de ce simulateur sur le traitement des tableaux de charges au cours de 2 expérimentations conduites auprès de 70 grutiers en formation. Les résultats montrent un effet significatif du simulateur comparativement à un groupe contrôle, d’une part, et à la formation traditionnelle, d’autre part.

SIMULATION AND TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS UNDERSTANDING : CRANE DRIVER TRAINING Reading skills are becoming an increasingly essential requirement for success in professional examinations, or for those working with complex systems, where safety is an issue. The lack of even basic skills could cause difficulties for workers who are experienced in their own field of work, but, because of their illiteracy, cannot deal with the written work that relates to theoretical professional knowledge. This is a problem that concerns French crane-drivers. They have to pass an exam that includes a reading-comprehension test of written technical graphics or tables representing crane load transport limits. This exam is compulsory and takes place at the end of a period of training : illiterate trainees often fail the test, even though they are experienced crane-drivers. In order to help them, a multimedia teaching aid tool was specifically designed for the comprehension and manipulation of tables and graphics of load transport limits. This paper presents three main stages in the design and conception of learning situations. First of all, a cognitive work analysis was carried out, involving 10 crane-drivers. The results clearly show that crane-drivers have an implicit intuitive knowledge of the weight-distance function of the crane, and that they are able to express this function explicitly in the context of an analogical format of representation, keeping chosen modalities of crane driving activity. Second, on the basis of these results, we designed a multimedia simulator of working crane. The aim of this simulator was to assist in the reading, understanding, and manipulation of tables and graphics of transport load limits. This teaching tool is based on an explicit and concrete connexion between the internal representation of the crane-drivers and an external symbolic form of representation of the weight-distance function. Finally, we tested experimentally the effects of a learning session with the simulator on the comprehension of tables and graphics during two training periods in two different training centres. Two experiments were conducted, involving 70 illiterate crane-drivers. The results show that this teaching simulator strongly increases the comprehension of tables and graphics.