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9eva insulander & staffan selander:Designs for learning in museum contexts

judith molka-danielsen, mats deutschmann& luisa panichi: Designing Transient Learning Spacesin Second Life - a case study based on the Kamimo experience

karin levinsen: A Didactic Design Experiment- Towards a Network Society Learning Paradigm

fredrik lindstrand: Interview with Staffan Selander

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Editorial: staffan selander 6

eva insulander & staffan selander: 8Designs for learning in museum contexts

judith molka-danielsen, mats deutschmann 22& luisa panichi: Designing Transient Learning Spacesin Second Life - a case study based on the Kamimo experience

karin levinsen: A Didactic Design Experiment 34- Towards a Network Society Learning Paradigmeducation

fredrik lindstrand: Interview with Staffan Selander 56

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No.2/09.DESIGNS FOR LEARNING / VOLUME 2 / NUMBER 2 / DECEMBER 2009

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Editorial staffAnna-Lena Kempe, Stockholm University, SwedenSusanne Kjällander, Stockholm University, SwedenFredrik Lindstrand, Stockholm University, SwedenStaffan Selander, Stockholm University, SwedenEva Svärdemo Åberg, Stockholm University, SwedenAnna Åkerfeldt, Stockholm University, Sweden

Advisory boardBente Aamotsbakken, Vestfold University, NorwayMikael Alexandersson, Gothenburg University,

SwedenAnders Björkvall, Stockholm University, SwedenKirsten Drotner, University of Southern Denmark,

DenmarkLove Ekenberg, Stockholm University, SwedenOla Erstad, University of Oslo, NorwayChaechun Gim, Yeungnam University, South KoreaSven Erik Hansén, Åbo Akademi University, FinlandTorlaug L Hoel, Norwegian University of Technology

and Science, NorwayBirgitte Holm Sørensen, University of Aarhus,

DenmarkGlynda Hull, University of California, Berkeley, USACarey Jewitt, University of London, Great BritainSusanne V Knudsen, Vestfold University, NorwayGunther Kress, University of London, Great BritainPer Ledin, Örebro University, SwedenTheo van Leeuwen, University of Technology Sydney,

AustraliaJonas Linderoth, Gothenburg University, SwedenLars Lindström, Stockholm University, SwedenSvein Lorentzen, University of Trondheim, NorwaySten Ludvigsen, University of Oslo, NorwayÅsa Mäkitalo, Gothenburg University, SwedenPalmyre Pierroux, University of Oslo, NorwayKlas Roth, Stockholm University, SwedenSvein Sjöberg, University of Oslo, NorwayRoger Säljö, Gothenburg University, SwedenElise Seip Tønnesen, Agder University, NorwayJohan L. Tønnesson, University of Oslo NorwayBarbara Wasson, University of Bergen, NorwayTore West, Stockholm University, SwedenChristoph Wulf, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany

ISSN 1654-7608© The authors, 2009© Designs for Learning, 2009DidaktikDesign, Stockholm University.

Graphic Design:AMGD/Anders Malmströmer Grafisk Design

Layout:Anna Åkerfeldt

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»a constant flow of new tools,increasing our abilities to‘record the world’«

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EditorialBy staffan selander, Stockholm University, Sweden

In this issue we present three articles, interrelated to each other in the per-spective of designs for learning: a design-theoretical approach is used in the first article to analyze visitors’ meaning-making in a museum exhibition. De-sign as an approach to develop new social practices is worked with in the other two articles, related to second life and a network society learning paradigm respectively. Thus, we can notice that the design-oriented approach to learn-ing and meaning-making can be used in double-ways, so to say: as an ana-lytical tool and as a tool for development; as a theoretically grounded meth-odology to analyze either institutional arrangements and representations (as in a museum exhibition or in a school text book) and as a tool to analyze visitors’ meaning-making in an exhibition (or students’ meaning-making in a school context). We will also mention two new dissertations using a design-theoretic and multimodal approach (the one focussing mathematics teachers, the other choir conductors), and of course we present still another article in our series of interviews with scholars doing design-theoretic, multimodal and socio-cultural oriented research.

We are looking forward to the second international Designs-for-Learning-conference in March 17-19 at Stockholm University, with the focus on how this new, inter-disciplinary field can be conceptualized. We can notice around 70 presentations, four key-notes and three special workshops. The paper-presen-tations focus various aspects like digital learning resources, aesthetic learning processes, assessments and recognition, learning through the senses as well as eye-tracking studies. Different arenas are scrutinized: formal, semi-formal and informal arenas. A clear trend is that not only the representations as such are in focus, but how resources are used in transformational processes to design new representations of how the world is conceived and understood. This focus on meaning-making changes the perspective from “knowledge transfer” to “knowledge production”.

Finally, we proudly would like to announce the new cooperation that will take place with professor Birgitte Holm Sørensen and her research group within DPU (nowadays Aarhus University in Copenhagen). This means that

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in the future we will cooperate both around the journal Designs for Learning and the biannual conferences “Designs for Learning”. In the next issue, the members of the new board will be presented.

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Designs for learning in museum contexts

By eva insulander & staffan selander, Stockholm University, Sweden

This article presents a new theoretical and methodological way of studying museum visi-tors’ involvement and meaning-making at a museum exhibition. Our approach draws predominantly on a design-theoretic and multimodal analysis of learning and com-munication. This approach is mainly concerned with a) the design aspects of learning resources; b) the learners’ engagement and communication; c) their way of transforming given signs to produce (redesign) their own representations in relation to d) personal engagement as well as a specific areas of knowledge. Multimodality pays special atten-tion to the interplay between different modes in communication. In the article, we use a design-theoretic, multimodal approach to analyse visitors’ engagement. This is done by filming the visitors in pairs to see how they walk through the exhibition, where they stop, what they talk about and how their conversation develops. They are also given cameras so they can take photos of those parts of the exhibition they find especially interesting, Afterwards, the visitors are asked to draw a map of the exhibition and they are also in-terviewed. We also present a model of how to categorize forms of engagement.

introductionOne of the key terms today is learning in formal and informal contexts. Museums, too, are redefining their mission; instead of a focus on collecting and classifying, the emphasis is now on exhibition design and the museum as a place for communication and learning. The museum has thus become, perhaps more clearly than ever before, a place for education and learning, dialogue and debate (Hein 1998; Hooper-Greenhill 1994; Roberts 1997). Today, visitors are also given opportunities to take part in many of the museums’ activities; for example, they can take part in archaeological excavations, navigate through web sites and use new digital devices to scrutinize or add new information to objects. Representations of their visit, such as their own photographs or souvenirs from the museum shop, may be regarded as signs of their interest in the exhibition. In this sense, learning is understood not only as the learning of new facts or skills but also as identity formation and representation of the self.

In this article, we will discuss visitors’ engagement in a museum exhibition in terms of meaning-making, sign-making, transformation and the making of new representations in order to describe, analyse and understand learning as a process of design. Drawing on two illustrative examples, we present two main analytical tools: Learning Design Sequences as an analytical model to follow

meaning making activities and categories of engagement as a way of describing museum visitors’ engagement as being expressive, narrative and meta-reflective.

The present study is part of an international project called The museum, the exhibition and the visitor. Meaning-making in a new arena for learning and communication.1 The study focuses on visitors’ meaning-making in exhibitions, seen in relation to the conditions for learning in the specific settings. In our visitor study, we investigate mixed methods of research design informed by a design-oriented (Selander 2008 a,b,c,d; Selander 2009) and multimodal approach to learning (Kress & van Leeuwen 2001, Kress 2010). This design- oriented perspective as such focuses on both the design of classificatory systems and exhibitions and the individual design of learning processes (c.f. Rostvall & Selander 2008).

Our data consists of video documentation of visitors’ engagement in exhibitions as well as their own representations in interviews, photographs and maps. Visitors were invited in pairs to participate in the study: retired persons, adults working or studying and children. They were filmed by video camera while walking through the exhibition. They were also asked to take pictures of the objects they found most interesting. After the visit, the participants were asked to draw maps of the exhibition. Their photos and maps were then used as a starting point for interviews. All in all, our data consists of video recordings of nine visits, the visitors’ own digital photos and their maps of the exhibition and our interviews with them. The production of data was guided by established ethical considerations in research. Participation in the study was voluntary and the participants’ real identity has been protected.

The analysis presents a close description of the participants’ actions and speech. The video recorded visits have been transcribed with reference to movement/gestures, speech and focus of attention. Owing to limited space, the paper concentrates on the visitors’ speech and the representations they have produced: photographs and maps. The example below is constructed around the data from two visiting pairs. One pair consists of a couple in their 30s: Ingrid, who has a special interest in pottery and music, and Ian, who is an archaeologist. The other pair consists of Janet, around 40 years old, and her ten-year-old son Justin. Janet works as a hairdresser.

theoretical approach and analytical toolsA design-oriented and multimodal approach to learning stresses the institutional framing and is interested in settings with different degrees of formality: non-formal situations and semi-formal and formal settings (Rostvall & Selander 2008, Selander 2008 a,b,c,d, Selander 2009). Since our interest here is learning in museum contexts, we will focus on semi-formal settings.

The model (Figure 1) envisages how institutional norms, resources (modes and media), the “setting of the scene” and affordances (action possibilities) as seen by the visitors in relation to their interests and social interaction

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with others as well as with different kinds of artefacts have consequences for meaning-making and learning. It also implies that the way resources are shaped may affect the possibilities of engagement (Insulander 2009). The process of transforming signs and the forming of new signs by ways of modes and media (re-contextualization and re-configuration as new representations), sees the process of learning as meaning-making (“the primary transformation unit”). It directs the researcher’s attention to the arrangement of the setting and further to the visitor’s engagement with an ensemble of resources. In the project presented here, museum visitors’ representations are made in response to the researchers’ questions and intents. Visitors are asked to take photos and make maps and they are also interviewed. Of course, these are not the normal products of visiting a museum. But even if it is the case that we intervene as researchers, we believe that we are enhancing the individual formation of representations rather than actually shaping them. In the second phase (“the secondary transformation unit”) the learners reflect at a meta-level on their representations.

Figure 1. Model of Learning Design Sequence.

the exhibitionA detailed analysis of the exhibition as a text has been carried out for the purposes of the study, but in this article we will only give a brief account of the exhibition. Prehistories 1is at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. It opened in November 2005, as the first of two connected exhibitions dealing with Scandinavian pre-history. The exhibition is chronologically structured, with rooms in a sequence running from 7000 BC to 600 AD. A rather limited selection of objects has been arranged in such a way as to suggest that all the artefacts are attributable to eight individual lives, which appear in specific life-worlds presented as “frozen” moments in time. Different semiotic resources

contribute to the design of a dark and intimate “prehistoric” setting. The written texts present information about objects or about the historical period in rather informal language. By means of open questions, visitors are invited to reflect on – and contribute to – the interpretation of the archaeological material. Throughout the exhibition there are specific features connecting the different parts. An introduction in several steps and a linear “reading path” make the exhibition coherent. Colours are used to create cohesion: green for the Stone Age, yellow for the Bronze Age and red for the Iron Age. Thus, the entire exhibition appears to be coherent. The exhibition in general does not merely rely on classified objects but on local identity and social history as well.

primary transformation unit – the course of the visits and the reading paths

The primary transformation unit is the phase where we focus on the learners’ engagement with representations (objects, written texts, pictures etc.) of historical phenomena, situations or living conditions. In the study, the video recordings were multi-modally transcribed; not only verbal utterances but also gestures were captured. Digital cameras enabled the visitors to produce their own representations.

The, reading of the exhibition by the first couple, Ian and Ingrid, can be described as “thorough”, as they spent more than an hour there, compared with the reading by Janet and Justin, who stayed only 10 minutes, which may be described as “superficial”. Ian and Ingrid were both very involved during their visit, Ian acting as the “guide/teacher” and Ingrid being the interested “student”. She frequently asked questions and did not always agree with Ian as he was critical of the way prehistory was represented in the exhibition. They took several photos each.

Ian’s reading seemed to be constantly on a meta-level, as he reflected on the different ways of interpreting and representing history (or archaeology) in the exhibition. He was very observant of details in the exhibition design and took pictures and commented upon the modes and media made specifically for the exhibition: written texts, images or ensembles of different resources. As an example we can consider the photo of a floor which looked like grass (a). In the exhibition, Ian encouraged Ingrid to pay attention to the floor. He also made comments on the historical interpretations in the exhibition and described to Ingrid how such large, polished axes were produced (b). He was critical of the explanation of an Iron Age settlement, with different buildings and a pagan temple (c), and claimed that to his knowledge, such a site, with that particular combination of the different buildings, had never been excavated. In his opinion, there ought to have been a written text in which different theories about the different buildings could have been presented.

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Learning resouces

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setting transforming

interest and social interaction

forming representation

metareflecting

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Figure 2. Ian’s photos, a-c.

Ingrid’s reading could be characterized as narratively guided and seemed to be very much related to activities that could be connected to her hobbies, since she took photos of several ceramic vessels and of a musical instrument. Regarding the vessel in photo (d), she talked to Ian about the techniques of making such a vessel, the decoration on it and her own limited experience of making such pottery. As for the musical instrument (e) and the drinking horn/ glass (f), she did not specifically mention or discuss them with her partner inside the exhibition (but commented on them during the interview).

Figure 3. Ingrid’s photos, d-f.

Turning now to the second pair, their reading was expressive – as when they reacted spontaneously to objects – but sometimes also narrative in character, as when they made connections between what they saw and their own personal experience. While the ten-year-old Justin seemed to be attentive and interested in the things presented to him, his mother seemed mostly interested in ending the tour as soon as possible. She was constantly trying to move on, even though her son wanted to explore things more thoroughly. One possible explanation of this behaviour is the fact that the pair was not visiting the museum alone – they had people waiting for them somewhere else in the museum. Justin’s mother had been hesitant about taking part in the study in the first place, but

since her son was really keen on participating, she accepted our proposal and decided that they could participate after all. They took only one photo each.

During their tour, Justin was very positive and expressed value statements when he encountered ancient objects. His statements were positive, like: “Wow! This must be old!”. When they encountered a rune stone, of which he also took a photo, he said that is he was really fascinated by runes. When his mother asked “How come?” he told her that he thought runes were so strangely shaped and that he remembered that they had had exercises in mathematics, trying to decipher messages. “They are really, really old. And they’ve been fixed to that stone for hundreds of years!” All the way through the tour, Justin said he thought it was thrilling to be there. He asked his mother about the things they looked at, but he got very short answers. His mother started reading some of the labels, but didn’t really make an effort to find explanations or discuss the objects on display with her son.

Figure 4. Justin’s photo (to the left). Janet’s photo (to the right).

Janet expressed negative value statements when she said she couldn’t read the labels or panels and that she wanted to move on. “That’s a shame”, said Justin. “Yes, I’m boring”, replied his mother. It seemed that Justin was more involved than his mother was, but Janet actually paid a lot of attention to the great variety of jewellery and other objects that can be related to beauty and fashion, like combs. During their short tour, she commented on several such objects, and at Justin’s suggestion, took a photo of one of the exhibits. “Actually, I think it’s the jewellery that is most interesting”, she said. Justin asked if she thought those things were nice and she answered that she thought it was interesting that we still want to buy jewellery and gold, and that this is nothing new. She pointed at a comb made of bone: “Even in those days, people were very careful about their looks. Their hair couldn’t be a mess. Can you imagine sitting there sawing all those teeth?” Her engagement can apparently be traced to activities connected to her specific interest in fashion and beauty and to the fact that she is a hairdresser.

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Figure 5. Ian’s map.

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Figure 6. Ingrid’s map.

secondary transformation unit - maps and meta-reflection around representations

The analytical focus in the secondary transformation unit is on the visitor’s meta-reflection and their meaning-making as it appears in the connection between form and content in the representations (Kress, 2003). The analysis deals with the selections that visitors made and the choices they faced when making the maps. The visitors also interpreted the task differently – some made concept maps while others made a geographic spatial layout – which makes it interesting to study the type of map each participant produced. The photos were analysed thematically; as a way of focusing on each person’s entire collection of photos. In the study, the photos and maps were discussed during a short interview and there is a detailed analysis of these different aspects of engagement. In this article, however, we will focus on the meta-reflection of the representations already mentioned. When discussing his photos and his map, Ian explained in detail how he perceived the exhibition’s design and its historical interpretations. For instance, he believed that aspects like the colours and the materiality of the exhibition make a positive difference to its communication with visitors. He was critical of some of the archaeological interpretations, which in his opinion were not up to date with the most recent research findings. Ingrid talked about the pottery and said she was very impressed by the prehistoric craftsmanship, since she was familiar with the techniques and knew how difficult it would have been to make such things. About the musical instrument, she explained that she had first noticed the sound it made. Then, when she spotted it, she was astonished because she had never seen such an instrument before and that was why she found it fascinating. The objects appealed to her for aesthetic reasons. In the interview, Justin explained that he had recently been working with prehistory and the Middle Ages in school. This may be the background to his interest in the exhibition. Thanks to his education, he already knew quite a bit about what was presented in the exhibition, like the term prehistory and the runic alphabet. In his map he included the things he found interesting ; apart from the rune stone and a few other things, he had also depicted a comb. The comb was included because his mother liked it, he said.

Janet also included “Justin’s” rune stone in her map, since it was he that made her aware of it. She also included the comb and the “stones” (jewels) from the same exhibit, plus a few other things. She explained that there were also lots of bits of bones spread all over the exhibition, but she didn’t pay any special attention to them. Instead, she pointed out accessories and other “external things”, as she put it, “that we as human beings surround ourselves with”. Such things have always been important to us, she said, and even if they look different today, their essential features are the same. This was something that especially appealed to her, she said. As we understand it, her statements can be understood in relation to her profession. Apart from this, she also

explained that this was at the end of their visit to the museum. They had already gone through the other exhibitions and were now a bit tired. That was the reason why they had gone through this one rather quickly.

Forms of engagementThe brief examples presented here are an illustration of how meaning-making – in an archaeological exhibition – can be described in a rather detailed manner. We have presented the model of Learning Design Sequences as a tool for structuring the analysis of data.

In the analysis, we emphasised the connections between the semiotic resources and the visitors’ narratives and other representations during their visit. What seems to be an obvious difference between learning in schools and learning in museums is the relation to a curriculum. Another difference seems to be that the multimodal resources used in a museum exhibition are used much less in schools, where verbal representations are still the dominant mode. In this article, we have focused on learning activities in a semi-formal context, seeing learning and meaning-making as the key points. This means that our study of the visitors’ engagement does not highlight questions such as: Did the visitors learn what the curators had intended?

Figure 7 + 8. Justin´s and Janet´s map.

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The majority of the different categories can be found in our example of the two pairs of visitors. We have focused on patterns that appear in the analysis, which means that we highlight the most salient categories of each participant. As an archaeologist, Ian’s engagement was guided by meta-reflection on both the historical interpretations and the different modes and media of the exhibition design. Ingrid’s engagement was diverse, but primarily narrative in character and based on her hobbies. Her profound knowledge of pottery also made her meta-reflect on the production of ceramic artefacts. Apart from this, Ingrid also expressed astonishment when she found out about objects that were new to her. As for Justin, his engagement was mostly expressive and concentrated on positive value statements. His mother, Janet, became involved in the exhibition from a narrative perspective based on her professional interest in the exhibition, and she also expressed negative value statements.

concluding remarksIn this article, we have outlined a theoretical and methodological framework for studying visitors’ engagement in museum exhibitions. Meaning-making and learning are seen here as two aspects of communication and engagement. It is not possible to generalize in terms of ‘every’ visitor or the ‘typical’ visitor about these visitors’ engagement. But we do think that our theoretical approach and methodology give a deeper understanding of what visitors’ engagement entails, not only as cognitive understanding but also as emotional engagement, interest and identity construction.

It would also be possible to focus more specifically on other aspects of communication and engagement on the basis of our perspective; these aspects might include the exhibition as representation, the exhibition as a part of – or a break with – tradition, institutional arenas for communication or, for example, the extended, digital museum as a social medium for interaction.

What seems central to us is the relation between a theoretical approach – a design theoretic and multimodal understanding – and a related methodology, and the kind of ‘knowledge-object’ that is constructed by them. We also believe that our model has the advantages of studying both a social understanding of individual engagement and detailed analyses of forms of representations and communication in micro-situations.

1 The project is supported by The Swedish Research Council and will run 2007-2009.

To be able to investigate engagement, we have developed a methodology, which takes into account various sources (sometimes referred to as “triangulation”): recordings of passages through the museum, including talks, photos taken at the exhibition, and afterwards map-drawings and interviews. To organize the relationship between these different sources, we have used the model called Learning Design Sequences. In this final part, we outline a way to interpret different kinds of engagements: expressive, narrative and meta-reflective. This second model has evolved through an abductive process as we tried to find out how to organize our interpretations of the visitors’ involvement and engagement.

Our intention has been to show how visitors’ engagement is context specific and prompted by different semiotic resources in the exhibition. In their encounters with objects, written texts, images and the like, visitors tend to use different ‘starting points’ or ‘places’ that they focus on and to interpret selected parts of the exhibition. The visitors’ interests create a direction that determines how they become involved in the exhibition. The figure below is an illustration of how engagement at different levels can be conceptualized.

Figure 9. Forms of engagement.

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Engagement

AstonishmentValue statement

History

Exhibitiondesign

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ReferencesHein, G. E. (1998). Learning in the museum. London: Routledge.Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean (1994). Museum education. In: (Ed) Hooper-Greenhill, E. The

educational role of the museum. London & New York: Routledge.Insulander, E. (2009). The museum as a semi-formal site for learning. In: Medien Journal. Lernen.

Ein zentraler Begriff für die Kommunikationswissenschaft. 32. Jahrgang. Nr. 1/2008.Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary

communication. London: Arnold. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London and New York: Routledge.Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality. A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London:

Routledge.Roberts, L. C. (1997). From Knowledge to Narrative. Educators and the Changing Museum.

Washington, London: Smithsonian Institution Press.Rostvall, A-L. & Selander, S. (2008). Design och meningsskapande – en inledning. In Rostvall,

A-L. & Selander, S. (eds) Design för lärande. Stockholm: Norstedts Akademiska Förlag. Selander, S. (2008a). Tecken för lärande – tecken på lärande. Ett designteoretiskt perspektiv.

In Rostvall, A-L. & Selander, S. (eds) Design för lärande. Stockholm: Norstedts Akademiska Förlag.

Selander, S. (2008b). Designs for Learning – A Theoretical Perspective. Designs for learning, 1(1), 10-24.

Selander, S. (2008c). Designs for learning and ludic engagement. Digital Creativity, Vol 19, No. 3, pp. 199-208.

Selander, S. (2008d). Designs for learning and the formation and transformation of knowledge in an era of globalization. In Roth, K. & S. Selander (ed.) Identity, communication and learning in an age of globalization, Studies in Philosophy and Education. Springer. Vol. 27, No. 4, July; 267-283.

Selander, S. (2009). Didaktisk design. I Selander, S. & Svärdemo-Åberg, E. (red) Didaktisk design i digital miljö. Stockholm: Liber.

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school for their permission, interest and enthusiasm. This research and thewriting of this paper were supported by the research program LearnIT withinthe Swedish Knowledge Foundation.

1 For further information: www.didaktikdesign/learnit

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RoutledgeFalmer.Cole, M. (1996). Cultural Psychology: a once and future discipline. Cambridge, Mass.:

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of the Learning Science, 4(1), 39–103.Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse. The Modes and Medfia of

Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning – Legitimate peripheral participation.

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Designing Transient Learning Spaces in Second Life - a case study based on the Kamimo experienceBy judith molka-danielsen, Molde University College, Norway, mats deutschmann, Mid Sweden University, Sweden & luisa Panichi, Università di Pisa, Italy

Through the grant “Virtual Campus for Life Long Learning” (NUV, 2007), we have gained experience in the design and building of a virtual island or “sim” in Second Life for the purpose of education. This paper discusses the virtual representations, tools, context and spaces used in course activities conducted under the project. While SL can replicate the classroom lecture, it gives further opportunities for interactive and active teaching as learning activities can take place in dispersed and diversified virtual spaces. These can be defined as transient spaces insofar as participants, activities and repre-sentations change over time. Designing transient learning spaces raises different chal-lenges and opportunities from designing learning in the traditional physical classroom. Challenges include enabling new users to orient themselves in these spaces and how to behave in the new environments, for example. Transient learning spaces also offer new opportunities, such as the ability to design and develop a specific space for each course. The aim of this article is thus to help the teacher and “sim” designers to recognize the po-tential of transient learning spaces and the factors that influence their effective design.

introductionVirtual worlds, which were initially found popular for gaming, are also supportive of rich and social interactions and are therefore simultaneously suitable for learning (Nardi, 2007). Second Life®, a massive multi-user online virtual environment developed by Linden Lab, is of particular interest. Through its open access, it offers participants spontaneous opportunities to meet and learn. While a global concept of the “virtual classroom” or “virtual campus” is still loosely defined, the essence of these concepts include that learning environments be constructed in software for the purpose of offering services to either distributed students and/or teachers, or to bring multiple content together for use (Dillenbourg, 2000). These learning spaces are also referred to as virtual learning environments (VLEs), and there have been several attempts to define the visual design criteria for such spaces (Prasolova-Førland and Sourina, 2006). Here, we postulate that the visual design must be integrated with proposed use of the VLE, and we are supported by the work of the New Media Consortium (Horizon Report, 2007), which focuses on use or potential use as criteria for design. They define virtual worlds as spaces that not only diverge from the real world significantly but also “present the chance to collaborate, explore, role-play, and experience other situations in a safe but compelling way” (Horizon Report, 2007, p. 18). In addition, we speculate

that virtual classrooms have potential to offer targeted support of any area of study through the use of in-world artefacts of realistic and detailed design that can contribute to immersive settings. This article contributes to educational practice by illustrating the design process for virtual learning spaces created for language courses under the Kamimo Project.

former work and the applied framework for designAs reported by the New Media Consortia, many academic institutions are beginning to use virtual worlds for learning activities (Horizon Report, 2007). One such example is Mason (2007), who presents a case project for learning activities which applies models of experiential learning in the area of fashion design. A challenge here is represented by the fact that aspiring fashion designers typically lack resources to learn from real life-like scenarios what it entails to open and operate a boutique in a shopping mall. However, in virtual environments such as SL, there are opportunities for students to expand and address such problems, in that it offers a low barrier-to-entry for content creation. More broadly, virtual worlds are identified as gaming environments where both formal and informal learning can take place (Nardi, Ly, & Harris, 2007; Carr & Burn, in press 2010). For example, Carr and Burn (2010) have examined learning practices in the virtual gaming world called World of Warcraft and have later applied the observed pedagogic models to teaching practises in Second Life. More specifically, they use an action learning framework to investigate informal learning practises of members of online gaming communities in new encounters and in the negotiation of participation in the gaming world. Their study has given insight into how such teaching practises can be applied to more formal teaching activities in virtual worlds such as Second Life. One of the great strengths of virtual environments are the built-in affordances for socialising. Further, virtual environments are highly adaptable to individual needs and are being used for a variety of activities such as cooperative building, playing games, running a business, creating or displaying art and the performing arts. The list of applications can be left to the imagination. As such, these environments can be highly immersive and when used in educational contexts this can lead to more motivated and self-directed student learning. In this way environments typically support persistent socialisation even after the actual designed learning event, leading to the building of learning communities. To make full use of such potentials, however, learning has to be designed with the affordances of the tools in mind. Arguably, the frameworks that have been applied to the selection and use of games in education can also be applied to the design of virtual learning environments. One such framework, based on former work by Mayes and de Freitas (2004, 2006), is the Four Dimensional Framework (de Freitas & Oliver, 2006; de Freitas, 2006: 23), which is represented in Figure 1. The framework can be used to identify gaps in existing designs and to identify parameters that

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Representation of the IT systemRepresentation is the third factor mentioned in the above framework. Representation is the application of the Information Technology (IT) system itself. For example, how does the virtual classroom appear to each student? In representation there is an issue of fidelity, i.e. of how well the visual representation conforms to reality. Or, in other words, is the virtual space believable? There are indications that users who are familiar with virtual gaming worlds will have higher expectations for other applications as well and that the demand on fidelity thus can vary based on prior experience. De Freitas and Oliver (2006) suggest that greater fidelity or conformity to reality of the whole space is not necessarily associated with a greater sense of immersion (becoming absorbed or engrossed in the surrounding virtual environment). They suggest, as we do later on, that a few familiar artefacts are sufficient to create an association with a real world schema:

Barton and Maharg (2006) suggest a notion of the ‘depth of field’ as a way of assisting designers of complex simulations, this ‘depth of field’ (similar to the photographer or cinematographer’s use) and similar to the notion of diegesis (that is the internal space within of the game, see: de Freitas and Oliver, 2006) allows designers to place ‘realia’ and objects within the simulation to allow learners to have a freer opportunity to explore the simulation. This includes intended objects as well as incidental ones. As in the notion of diegesis, the realism of this allows the learner to become more immersed within the space, a factor that is non-dependent upon the fidelity or verisimilitude of the simulation – that is the realism of the look of the space, but more dependent upon the realism of the experiences within the space. (de Freitas, 2006: 47)

Learning ContextThe last factor of the Four Dimension Framework is context. It includes the place of access for the main users of the IT system, and concerns issues such as what type of support is present for students at the location where they intend to access the system. Course information in the form of documents that are available outside of the virtual world is also part of the context of user support. Examples of issues that fall under this category include the type of PC used, available bandwidth, access availability, firewall restrictions and operational factors such as training people how to activate voice chat.

designing transient learning spacesHere we offer a descriptive analysis of our design of transient learning spaces on Kamimo Island. As stated earlier, educators can choose their learning space in Second Life and do not have to settle for a static representation or a single stationary space. In SL, course leaders do not have the same physical restrictions as the physical classroom. They can change the classroom representation themselves, and they can easily choose between different

should be included in future educational design.

Figure 1. The Four Dimension Framework emphasizes the factors that need to be considered in using games for learning.

The four factors of Figure 1 for the learning activity are: pedagogic theory, model or approach used learner profilerepresentation of the IT systemlearning context

Recent research conducted under the Kamimo project (see Molka-Danielsen, Carter, Richardson, & Jæger, 2009; Deutschmann, Panichi & Molka-Danielsen, 2009) indicates that SL is supportive of the social constructivist theory of learning (Vygotsky, 1978; Kolb, 1984), and as such indicates that SL is conducive to collaborative learning, experiential learning and role-play scenarios). All of these learning scenarios have been tried and tested in various courses run under the project. The results in this article are based primarily on two English language proficiency courses aimed at doctoral students, which were conducted 2007-2008. For further details about specifics related to these courses see Molka-Danielsen, Carter, Richardson & Jæger (2009); Deutschmann, Panichi & Molka-Danielsen (2009); Deutschmann & Panichi (2009).

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locations. In addition, the course leader can teach within the closed set of group members, they can allow for outsiders to visit them, or they can take the students to a location where they can meet others. This means that students and teachers can experience and perform learning activities in dispersed and diversified virtual spaces. Because different spaces can be used for different parts of the learning process such as initiation, development and reflection, we have thus identified the spaces of Second Life as transient learning spaces. Transient spaces can be designed to be suitable for a single type of activity and do not have to be created for all the activities of one course. Having said this, we recommend that a variety of learning spaces be utilized so that different parts of the learning process can be supported. Below, we introduce several learning spaces that have been created on Kamimo Education Island in Second Life in a series of figures. We describe the purpose of each of these settings in terms of the factors of pedagogy, learner specifications, virtual representation and support of context. Figure 2 is the welcome area of Kamimo Island. It contains a 3D-map of the island with teleport links to “classroom” locations on the island. Alternatively, avatars can simply walk or fly to the classroom locations. In the distant background of the image, two of the island’s classrooms can be seen. As the welcome area is the default entry point for first time visitors to the island, it is a good place to tell course participants to meet for the first time. In general, the open nature of the space allows for an easy overview of who is present.

Figure 2. Kamimo Island welcome area.

Figure 3 is a collection of four figures which show different types of classrooms on Kamimo. The classroom in the top-left box is just a circular seating

arrangement and is located in a skybox several hundred virtual meters about the ground of Kamimo Island. To get inside the skybox it is necessary to find the Teleport sign that is located on the ground. This type of meeting place requires some experience on behalf of the participants just to get there. The classroom in the top-right box is a more traditional in design. It has seating that faces a screen where power-point slides can be displayed. It has a traditional seating arrangement so the presenter can stand in front of the audience which faces both the presenter and screen. This is a familiar teaching schema and many inexperienced visitors to SL are comforted by this familiar setting. The fact that the participant’s avatar has a seat to sit in means they do not have to focus on moving and talking at the same time. That all participants can view the same materials on the same screen we think contributes to the sense of participation in and sharing of the experience. However, even this is not exactly as it would be in real life because in SL everyone sees the screen from their own client application. Consequently, if the class is to look at a video on the screen, each user must start it on their own computer, and each user will be at a different point in the video depending on when they started it and the efficiency of their hardware connection.

Figure 3. Several classrooms on Kamimo Island.

The classroom on the bottom-right is the same classroom as the one on the top-right. However, the tool to present slides has been moved to the side, and

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another tool that can display streaming or live video has been placed in the center. It is possible for anyone in SL to move their camera view to zoom in on any object. This means that the video screen may fill up one’s entire client window. In the figure, two teachers are talking to each other: one is speaking over voice in SL and the other is speaking and being seen “Live” through the video application.

The final classroom in Figure 3 at the bottom-left is a seating arrangement for group meetings. The meeting area has several scales and functions. A group may simply sit around a table and talk together although the purpose of the space is to allow several groups to work simultaneously. This function is controlled from the facilitator’s seat which is separate and located at the centre of the group tables. These group tables in fact constitute separate platforms, and the facilitator can move them to different heights in the sky. This function enables each group to talk privately, out of hearing range of the other groups. They can communicate with the facilitator through note cards and can indicate when they wish to be brought back down to land level. This classroom, although built on a very accommodating concept, has not been used much. It seems that it requires a slightly advanced level of expertise in SL in order to be operated and this may have discouraged use.

Figure 4. Kamimo Island was designed with Scandinavian nature in mind.

Figure 5. Artefacts can create a sense of realism.

Figure 4 shows that initial designs of Kamimo were made with the intention of making it look like somewhere in Scandinavia. Many of the features, objects and artefacts are common to Norway and Sweden in particular. The island was designed to give the participant the feeling that they are close to nature, and to our local students, a feeling of being “close to home”. It is even possible to walk up the mountain on Kamimo as shown in the top left corner of Figure 4. The traditional cabin shown in the bottom left corner contains the teleport that goes up to the sky-box classroom that was shown in Figure 3. If the participant explores the island, they may even discover the secret cave that is located behind the waterfall. The cave is shown the bottom right corner of Figure 4. Hidden surprises like the cave can make the island exciting and may make visitors want to come back to discover more. In addition, they can be relaxing spots to just talk with one or two friends.

Other locations on Kamimo are in open view, such as the campfire in the top right corner of Figure 4. This campfire has been used for many classroom discussions. Again, because it is so easy to see, it is a good place for a first meeting. It is also possible for everyone sitting around the campfire to see each other’s avatars. This is essential for early meetings where you are trying to see which avatar is talking, and activity which is indicated by green bars emitting from above the head of the avatar. During early course meetings, before you recognize the voice of the speakers present, one wants to see which avatar is

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speaking. We have found that, even when all participants of a class know who the others are in real life, they may still not be able to match the avatar that is speaking to the real identity. It takes time to recognize these representations.

Figure 5 demonstrates some of the details that exist within the general spaces of Kamimo. As noted in Section 2, some artefacts are directly intended for assisting learning while other artefacts can be incidental but still add to the sense of immersion. The artefacts also contribute to a greater sense of fidelity. In the top-left image is a classroom that was used for one meeting of the Social English course. The objects in the room have different functions. For example the chairs can be sat on and the display board can be changed by the teacher. Some items such as the back-pack or the drawings on the table are incidental; they are just there to add to the “classroom” feeling. The image on the top-right represents part of the open space on Kamimo. It shows a lantern for signalling boats and a boathouse, inside which there is a traditional rowing boat. All of the artefacts are very characteristic of a Scandinavian coastline setting, and designed to encourage visitors to just sit and relax and spend time in the place. For example, it may be a place for unplanned conversations. The image on the bottom left shows two climber’s ropes hanging on a wall and an old photograph of a climber. These artefacts are located inside the shown cabin. The challenge is to discover the entrance to the cabin. It is located on another place on Kamimo. The inside of this building has a different purpose from the outside of the building. From the outside the appearance the building is that of a “stabbu” in Norwegian. This was a place where both animals and people could live in the middle ages. The outside door will, however, bring one up to the classroom shown in the top left hand frame. The inside of the stabbu contains artefacts often found in a “climber’s cabin” from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Climbers would use cabins in the mountains as places to rest although not necessarily a stabbu. So, it is again one of those exciting places to discover. Finally, the bottom-right frame of Figure 5 shows an area that has been used for meetings between students from different cultures. Two groups, one in Sweden and the other in China, have been contributing to the design of Kamimo by adding the photographs that are displayed there. The photos were a focal point for discussion during the course and had remained on Kamimo for a period of time as a reminder of the group meeting.

The rationale behind the application of the framework we have discussed is that it will allow for a more inclusive design process. The island of Kamimo was designed with intended functionality in mind. But in general, the spaces can be adapted for a variety of purposes that were not envisaged at the start of the design process. As such, the spaces can include new user groups and new applications over time.

Furthermore, it is often the case that an academic institution has not identified all user groups at the initial stages of adoption of the virtual technology. The key issue here is the creation of a community which can later develop more formalised activities. One example of such approach was

taken by the University of Greenwich. They had the idea of building “Homing points” in SL. They developed “offices” for staff who had expressed interests in using the environment and this both helped people to feel ‘at home’ on the island, and gave visitors an idea of the personality of the people there (Kirriemuir, 2008). In another example, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have developed a virtual campus (Located at http://slurl.com/secondlife/NTNU/130/130/29/ ) where all major faculties have represented office space.

summaryWe have stated that the design of a virtual learning environment must consider factors such as pedagogy, learner specifications, virtual representation and context of support. Our descriptive analysis illustrates our experiences in relation to design on Kamimo Island. This is only a small set of experiences and certainly does not convey all the options of design outcomes. The issue of learning theoretical models should influence the general design, and also be born in mind for each course. This implies that both teachers and the island maintainers should discuss the pedagogic models that will be applied on the island. The anticipated uses should be addressed in an initial flexible design, and there also must be a mechanism that allows the teacher to contribute over time to the environment with artefacts and content. This can be done by creating groups and giving teacher rights to add objects to the island, to add text, and by allowing and assisting them in using tools such as displays. The above section has focused primarily on the virtual representation and on learner specifications in Second Life. Some of the classroom spaces should allow for associations with known schema, so that it is easy to get started. Other spaces can be something completely new so that it encourages exploration and discovery. Further, we have experienced that all learners are different and one design cannot fit everyone. Nevertheless, environments can be built to be more inclusive. The learners will have varying amounts of experience with virtual worlds and will thus have different expectations. Some settings should be designed with few objects and wide open spaces so that minimal experience is required to move around or to use the classroom space. At the same time, a level of authenticity with a real world place may be required to give other students a sense of immersion. A few key artefacts can bring about the right level of fidelity. In this article, we have not said much about the general supportive context. We feel that this is largely an institutional matter. The institution that is responsible for the courses should have a policy regarding how student and teacher may access Second Life. It should be clear if SL is to be used as part of the normal academic program, and if so, the technical support should be as it is for other IT used in the classroom. Most commonly, student labs are provided with installed client applications that have been tested. Teachers and students

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should be given time to get used to SL, to learn the basics such as moving and talking and managing inventory. The university should provide support documentation, and a note card can be given to new users at course start to explain frequently asked questions such as how to activate voice. A sufficient and supportive context must exist along with the other three factors of design for the best outcome. If this is the case, well designed transient learning spaces that meet the needs of learners and educators become possible.

ReferencesBarton, K. & Maharg, P. (2006). E-simulations in the wild: interdisciplinary research, design

and implementation. In. Aldrich, C., Gibson, D., Prensky, M. (eds), Games and Simulations in Online Learning: Research and Development Frameworks. Information Science Publishing.

Carr, D. O., M., Burn, A. (in press 2010). Learning, Teaching and Ambiguity in Virtual Worlds. In. Peachey, A, Gillen, J, Livingstone, D, Smith-Robbins, S. (eds). Researching Learning in Virtual Worlds. UK: Springer.

de Freitas, S. (2006). Learning in Immersive Worlds: A Review of Game Based Learning. Report prepared for the JISC E-learning programme, 23-24: 47.

de Freitas, S. and Oliver, M. (2006): How can exploratory learning with games and simulations within the curriculum be most effectively evaluated? Computers and Education Special Issue on Gaming. 46: 249-264.

Deutschmann, M., L. Panichi, J. Molka-Danielsson (2009). Designing Oral Participation in Second Life – A Comparative Study of Two Language Proficiency Courses. ReCall. 21(2). 70–90.

Deutschmann, M. & L. Panichi (2009). Talking into empty space? - Signalling involvement in a virtual language classroom in Second Life. Language Awareness, Vol. 18 (3-4): 310-328.

Dillenbourg, P. (2000). Virtual Learning Environments. EUN Conference 2000. Workshop on Virtual Learning Environments. Retrived August 12, 2008 from http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/publicat/dil-papers-2/Dil.7.5.18.pdf

Horizon, (2007). The Horizon Report, The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. ISBN. 0-9765087-4-5. Retrived August 12, 2008 from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2007_Horizon_Report.pdf

Kirriemuir, J. (2008). A Spring 2008 “snapshot” of UK Higher and Further Education Developments in Second Life. EDUSERV report, p.17. Retrived October 30, 2009

from http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundationKolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning. Prentices Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA.Linden Labs (2007). Second Life Key Metrics. Retrived August 12, 2008 from http://

s3.amazonaws.com/static-secondlife-com/_files/xls/SL_Virtual_Economy_Metrics_02-02-07.xls

Mason, H. (2007). Experiential Education in Second Life. Proceedings of Second Life Education Workshop 2007, Chicago, 24th-26th August, Second Life Community Convention 2007, Retrived October 29, 2009 from http://slcc2007.wordpress.com/

Mayes, T. & de Freitas, S. (2004): Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models. JISC e- learning models study report. London. The Joint Information Systems Committee, Retrived July 31, 2006 from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/elp_outcomes.html

Mayes, T. and de Freitas, S. (2006). Learning and e-learning: the role of theory. In: H. Beetham and R. Sharpe (Eds), Rethinking Pedagogy in the Digital Age. London. Routledge.

Molka-Danielsen, J., Carter, B., Richardson, D., and Jæger, B. (2009).Teaching and Learning Affectively within a Virtual Campus, (eds.) Birch, D. and Al-Hakim, L. In. Special Issue: Towards Virtual Universities of the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations. Inderscience Enterprises, Ltd.

Norgesuniversitetet, NUV (2007). Organization information accessed at: http://norgesuniversitetet.no.

Nardi, B., Ly, S., and Harris, J. (2007). Learning Conversations in World of Warcraft, In: Proceedings of HICSS 2007.

Panichi, L., Deutschmann, M., Carter, B. & Richardson, D. (2008). Perceptions of learning in the CMC environment of Second Life. A Swedish-American case study. Presented at: EuroCall SIG Event, 18. April, in Padova, Italy. retrived August 28, 2008 from http://claweb.cla.unipd.it/cla/EUROCALL/presentations/panichi.ppt

Prasolova-Førland, A.S. and Sourina, O. (2006). Cyber campuses: design issues and future directions. The Visual Computer. Springer, Vol. 22, No. 12, pp. 1015-1028. Retrived August 12, 2008 from http://staffx.webstore.ntu.edu.sg/personal/assourin/Shared%20Documents/Papers/TVC2006b.pdf

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. (Trans. M. Cole). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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A Didactic Design Experiment - towards a network society learning paradigm

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By karin tweddell levinsen, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark

The ongoing transition from industrial to network society challenges educational prac-tices and the process is characterised by opposing forces. At the political level, New Public Management initiatives oppose the general consensus that it is necessary to consoli-date network society competencies. At the level of everyday educational practice we see a mounting tension between the quality of educational outcomes, in terms of genuine learning, and students’ strategies for dealing with an increasing pressure of efficiency and time. This article presents a design for teaching and learning experiment that aims to navigate these turbulent waters, scaffold genuine learning, satisfy learning objectives and ease the strain on students. Due to the experiences and knowledge derived from the experiment, the paper argues that the model behind the experiment demonstrates quali-ties that may be developed and refined and contribute to the educational system’s adjust-ment to the network society.

introductionThe transition from industrial to network society generates new concepts and phenomena that address globalisation, education and competencies of the future (Castells 2000). During the process, these concepts and phenomena gradually become dialectic, constituting and constituted actors in the ongoing transformation.

In Castells (2000) famous trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, he analyses various dimensions of society and identifies certain characteristics, which have already emerged out of the transition from industrial to network society. In the important paper Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society (2000), Castells clarifies certain implications of his observations in The Information Age which are of relevance in this context. Castells describes (2000b, p. 10) the new societal structure – New Economy – according to three dimensions: informational, global and networked. The informational capacity for generating knowledge and processing information determine productivity and competitiveness. Development of a worldwide IT-infrastructure provides strategic activities with the capacity to work as a unit on a planetary scale in real time or chosen time. Globalisation as an organisational principle is highly selective and links to value anywhere, while discarding anything (people, firms, territories, resources) that has no value or becomes devalued. The technologically based connectivity of the global economy generates a new form of organisation, the network enterprise made from either firms or segments of firms. The unit of production is no longer

the firm, but the business project (2000, p. 176). According to Castells, work and employment make up the New Economy, characterised by flexibility and mobility, and the people who work within this system are “fundamentally divided in two categories: self-programmable labour, and generic labour” (2000b, p. 12). Self-programmable labour is equipped with competencies for lifelong learning: the ability to retrain and adapt to new conditions and challenges. By contrast, generic labour is both interchangeable and disposable. It is generally accepted that the transition challenges the educational system as the transformation produces concepts and phenomena that represent forces that pull in opposite directions and leave education and learning open for interpretation within at least two meta-discourses (Dyson, 1999). The political-ethical discourse is focused on the development of a new network society paradigm inspired by social constructivist theory, and on a general consensus that ‘network society’ competencies take time to mature. This is based on the idea that humanity is made up of whole persons or employees (Greve, 2000). On the other hand, the economic-pragmatic discourse rests on New Public Management (NPM). The term NPM was coined by Christopher Hood in 1991 and describes how administrative reforms of the public sector – including educational institutions – are based on target management, commercialisation and the quantifiable measures of output and effect (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2000). While network society theory aims to describe a new paradigm, NPM represents an incremental adaption of the industrial paradigm to the challenges of the emerging network society. While the network society demands from its citizens, e.g. educators and students, the ability to navigate through chaos in a reality of fluidity and unpredictability, NPM demands fast, efficient, predictable and controllable productivity from educational institutions and from its actors. Horton (2000) argues that around 2000, internationalisation has led to a globalised situation where the rational economic paradigm tends to take over at the expense of the social constructivist learning paradigm. According to Dyson (1999) this process is characterised by a lack of acknowledgment of the paradigmatic incompatibilities of the discourses and the ambiguous use of concepts. Consequently, at the level of society development, the dominant political-ethical discourse on the fluid network society calls for a new paradigm: the new learner, formal and informal learning, and the self-programmable labourer/employee. On the other hand, the dominant economic-pragmatic discourse’s call for commercialisation and globalisation tends towards an incremental improvement of the industrial paradigm through the implementation of New Public Management, at the risk of reproducing generic labourers/employees.

the backgroundThe Danish context

In Denmark the tension is at present stabilised through legislation, contracts and institutional structures and it is noticeable considering that the Ministry

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of Science, Technology and Innovation’s implementation of NPM in Danish universities is at odds with the Ministry of Education’s visions and plans of action regarding practices within universities, which are based on the definitions of future competencies in floating contexts (OECD, 2001; G8 summit, 2006). Within adult learning, the tension appears at the level of educational institutions as an increasing conflict between curriculum and learning objectives related to the political-ethical discourse, which opposes the economic-pragmatic discourse’s focus on summative evaluations and economic measures of student-units. At the level of the students’ everyday practice, the contradicting forces burden adult students, who are often in full employment and have a family, with heavy time pressures. Thus, for the individual, the tension appears as a personal cost-benefit analysis of the balance between deep learning (political-ethical discourse) and passing a given course within the time limit (economic-pragmatic discourse). A substantial body of literature confirms that students react with stress due to time pressures. Additionally, empirical studies demonstrate that students’ strategic choice under stressful circumstances conform to the economic-pragmatic discourse at the expense of deep learning (Biggs, 2003; Lawless & Allen, 2004; Levinsen, 2006; Orngreen & Levinsen, 2007). In everyday practice, the tension appears phenomenologically, as students who have not read the theory before they engage in learning activities. Students either hope for, or expect that the teacher presents a digested version of the core curriculum. At the base-line, the paradigmatic struggle constitutes a battle between the production of quality and the increasing time pressure stemming from the demand for efficiency in terms of time reduction and cost-effectiveness. The tension must be considered a basic condition that leaves the educational system with a major challenge in terms of a dilemma: on one hand, we cannot get rid of the opposing paradigms and we cannot remove the time pressure, and on the other hand, we cannot accept a substantial loss of educational quality.

Dealing with the dilemmaSo far, incremental efforts of dealing with the changes in society have turned time into a scarce resource and made stress the most prevalent disease in the Western world. The incremental efforts can be described through Argyris’ (1977) and Dirckinck-Holmfeld et al. (2002) concepts of single- and double-loop learning. In short, single-loop learning is reflection in action, while double-loop learning is reflection on action. Thus, efforts to do more and more of the same at a higher speed reflect single-loop learning. In contrast, efforts to change strategy without changing the basic assumptions, e.g. the idea of filling the skill gap (Horton 2000), reflect double-loop learning. Both single- and double-loop learning can be considered as reactive strategies according to Ackoff (1976). Rather than to try to resolve the dilemma through incremental adaption and assimilation, we can – as Hastrup suggests (1999,

p.103) – exploit the inherent power of contradicting forces. This implies a change from a reactive to a proactive and interactive strategy (Ackoff, 1976) and triple-loop learning (Hauen et al., 1998, Yuthas et al., 2004) – in short, reflection on reflection on action. Triple-loop learning corresponds to Jean Piagets’ accommodation, Yrlö Engeström’s expansive learning or Gregory Bateson’s Learning III. Triple-loop learning moves the focus from incremental improvements to genuine or radical innovation. It involves a wider scope on the practice and context, and implies a radical change of the involved parties’ mental models. In other words, proactive and interactive strategies may change the current situation from a Catch 22-situation into a thinking-out-of-the-box-situation. In conclusion, the challenges have to be met by radical innovation, and that was what the author intended. The aim was to explore whether an innovative design for teaching and learning may facilitate the specific course required to bypass the negative consequences of time pressure, and fulfil learning objectives. The experiment was not envisioned as a research project from the beginning, but as it rapidly developed in that direction, the collection of data demanded a choice of methodology. Due to the author’s role as developer, participant and researcher, the choice of data collection methods is inspired by action research and anthropology. The article is structured such that section one presents the outline of the experimental design and describes how the model, in its transition from theory to practical application, passes through three phases of construction: Phase 1) Conceptual modelling is based on Lotte Darsø’s Edge of Chaos Model (2001); Phase 2) Orchestration, where the conceptual model is transformed into a script that stages the subject matter in a complex framework of practice, based on Bohr’s Complementary Principle (1957); and Phase 3) Operationalisation, the specific, but also contingent directions for the students’ performance that apply the conceptual model to the specific context. Section two presents the work of two groups during the performance, and the final section discusses a number of indications that the model provides a supporting scaffold to students and enables them to maintain progress in their ongoing learning processes. Accordingly, it is argued that the model contributes to the innovation of the network society’s design for teaching and learning. But first, the Master Programme and the current case are introduced.

The case - Masters in ICT and Learning (MIL)

Figure 1. Timetable for MIL, first semester.

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Module 2 – 3 courses. Online supervision. Group work. Product    

  Assessment: Evaluation of written group assignments 

Course 3 (M2C3) Human computer interaction 

Course 2 (M2C2) Visual communication and interaction 

Course 1 (M2C1) Cognitive theory  

Module 1 – 3 online courses 

Intro 1. seminar                                                    2. seminar                                      <X­mas>               3. seminar

The Danish Masters programme in ICT and Learning (MIL) is an established programme of two years’ duration. MIL is designed as blended mode with online activities and seminars, based on variations of social constructivist and constructivist pedagogy. The current MIL design of workflow and progression (Figure 2) rests on the assumptions that students are well prepared, and that learning progresses as a linear process. The productive frustration which is necessary for a reflective learning process (Illeris 2006, p. 82, p. 104 and p. 181) is designed to occur and peak at the seminar.

Figure 2. Current workflow model for MIL´s first semester.

Within the programme and during the course of this research, there were 32 adult students in full employment who also had family obligations. They had been out of the educational system for 5 to 10 years and their skills and competences differed widely. The class convened for weekend seminars twice a semester. At the first seminar, the class was divided into working groups. During the semester, groups participated in two subsequent modules; M1 and M2, each subdivided into courses; C1, C2 and C3 (see Figure 1). M2 - ICT and Interaction Design – that constitutes the current case, is the study of human-computer interaction, focusing on interface design and design of (virtual) learning spaces. The learning objectives are specified as intellectual, subject related, and practice competencies in relation to ICT, design and learning. The first course in the module (M2C1) is an introduction to a theoretical psychological frame and focus is on sense making. The second course (M2C2) focuses on visual communication and visual interaction as the basis for human-computer interaction (HCI). The third course (M2C3) is about HCI methods and techniques in design, test and evaluation.The case is based on a four-hour session at the second seminar that aims to introduce M2C3 (Figure 1). Prior to the seminar, students had just finished M1 and prepared initial individual short papers for M2C1. At the seminar, all three M2 courses were introduced. Due to the heavy workload prior to the seminar, the teacher expected the students’ personal cost-benefit negotiation to favour an economic-pragmatic attitude. Consequently, their knowledge of the course literature could be considered sketchy because:

They have not read the literature at all before the seminar.They have read (some of) the literature and may be aware of main concepts, but they have had no time to digest or apply the content.

This actual situation does not fit to the assumptions of the current workflow model (Figure 2) and thus, the teacher could not expect students to be able to understand or operationalise important aspects of the theory. Furthermore, and more generally, they may find it difficult to reflect on the theory with regard to relations, contradictions, complexities and ambiguities (Biggs, 2003; Laurillard, 2002; Lawless & Allen, 2004; Levinsen, 2006; Orngreen & Levinsen 2007; Salmon, 2002; Salmon, 2003). According to Darsø (2001, p. 35), the basis for learning and construction of new knowledge is a clear set of concepts that can be used as a starting point for building a common ground and clarify concepts (Darsø uses the expression, to clarify concepts where other authors use the term negotiate meaning). However, when students are poorly prepared, there is no clear set of concepts with which to negotiate meaning or build knowledge. This is the missing link in the current case and the basic challenge for an alternative approach.

the design for the teaching and learning experimentIn search of alternative approaches

The pragmatic and often used solution of the dilemma is to mediate a condensed version of the theory in order to establish the necessary set of concepts, followed by structured, closed exercises that aim to consolidate the concepts. This approach aims to fill the students’ knowledge gap and provides a reading guide for the following online-period. However, the approach is incremental and reactive as it maintains the linear workflow and merely postpones the problem (see Figure 3). The students’ choice of strategy may correspond to the current workflow model but the author’s findings as both external examiner (Levinsen & Madsen, 2007) and as supervisor (Levinsen, 2006) are that they do not. On the contrary, students choose to start working on the assignment right away and spend time doing scattered ad hoc reading. Consequently, the productive frustration does not peak at the seminar but during the compressed workload when the assignment is almost finished, a situation that influences the quality of learning negatively.

Figure 3. Traditional solution workflow model - filling the knowledge gap.

The challenge is to support the students’ internalisation of the important and framing concepts of the subject matter, when they are not prepared. The challenge is to create a design for the seminar activities that dissolves the

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Students read 

Seminar – learning activities and discussions point forward 

Students reflect on theory                             Deep reflection 

 Extra reading 

  Work on assignment                    Writing the assignment 

Timeline 

                 Compressed workload  

Students do not read 

Seminar Filling the gap 

Students read  Reflection            (Deep reflection?)  

Work and write on assignment 

  (Deep reading?) 

Timeline  

compressed workload and allows the students to bridge the gap rather than have it filled, e.g. as a design that facilitates a workflow as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Alternative workflow model.

The workflow model aims to:

Kick start students’ productive frustration and reflectionBridge the knowledge gap and regain some lost time Kick start students’ production of (new) knowledge Provide students with a scaffolding for approaching the theory and support their reading reflection and operationalisation of the theory during the online period after the seminar

Conceptual modellingMIL is designed around group work and projects and therefore it makes sense to look into Lotte Darsø’s theory on group dynamics and project management. In her book Innovation in the making, Darsø (2001) distinguishes three phases of a project’s life-cycle: Preject, Pre-project and Project (Figure 5).

Preject Pre-project Project

Explorative Identifying the goal Goal oriented

Divergent Divergent–convergent Convergent

Non-linear Linear Linear

Time-frame Deadline Deadline

Process driven (innovation) Product driven (specifica-tions)

Product driven (final prod-uct)

No pressure on making deci-sions

General decisions are made Modifications are made

Figure 5: Darsø’s phases and their characteristic attributes (2001: chapter 3).

The alternative MIL M2C3 workflow (Figure 4) can be aligned with Darsø’s project life-cycle. Preject: The body of knowledge is characterised by divergence and ignorance of the theory. The students begin to grasp and identify landmarks of the new subject through exploration, meaning negotiation, knowledge construction and innovation. The seminar situation and the first part of the online-period belong in the Preject. Pre-project is the phase that is characterised by focused goal-oriented research and refinement. The Pre-project gradually transforms into a structured project period; the Project is the phase where the assignment is actually takes form, is produced and finally delivered. The case design involves the seminar activities as a Preject. In her book, Darsø examines Prejects and the complexity of innovation processes in heterogeneous groups, and offers a framework for the construction of a conceptual model for the alternative workflow. Preject participants bring whatever resources they posses into the process (Ibid., p. 321), and therefore the Preject draws on divergent knowledge in terms of conscious everyday knowledge, along with qualified and tacit knowledge. The Preject is also characterized by ignorance and emerging relations among participants. Based on her empirical studies (Ibid., p. 330), Darsø defines two dimensions or axes of major importance for the success of innovative and knowledge constructing group dynamics: the relational dimension and the complexity dimension (depicted as the Dynamic knowledge map, Ibid., p. 332). On the relational axis, group dynamics must pass beyond the sharing barrier where it becomes ‘essential to share’ rather than not to share. On the complexity axis, the group challenge must pass beyond the complexity barrier and change perspective from simple or complex puzzles where the problem is predefined, to deal with the identification and exploration of genuine problems. In the area of the model that Darsø calls The Edge of Chaos, participants in the Preject are challenged or even forced to negotiate meaning, explore, and construct new knowledge on the basis of their everyday knowledge, qualified knowledge, tacit knowledge and their realisation of ignorance. In this way, the Preject functions as a conceptual model for the present design that helps to bridge the students’ knowledge gap and bypass the ‘missing link’. Based on Darsø, the conceptual model for the current design frames the seminar activities within The Edge of Chaos space, by staging their position on the axis through concrete tools (Figure 6). Instead of starting from zero, the basic idea is to activate the students’ informal resources in terms of everyday and qualified knowledge through carefully designed, but also open, activities at The Edge of Chaos. When everyday resources are externalised through practice, they may constitute a basis for building common ground and clarify concepts. Furthermore, everyday resources may work as a vehicle for reflection and knowledge construction in relation to the subject matter, inasmuch as it is possible to align this to theory, e.g.: the everyday activity of deciding what is practical to do when we want to know about something, aligns with the specialised activity of methodological data-collection design; the everyday realisation

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Reading           Deep reading 

Consolidate theory Kick start reflection /Deep reflection                    

Work on assessment                                           Write assesment Seminar –  Activities  Bridging the gap 

Students do not read 

  

Timeline

of ignorance aligns with the specialised activity of formulating a research question. Thus, the design aims to bridge the knowledge gap, to generate the ‘missing link’, and to provide a basis and scaffolding for meaning negotiation and knowledge construction theory during subsequent online-periods.

Figure 6. Darsø’s Edge of Chaos Model (2001: 330) adapted to the current case.

Apart from setting the stage and initiate the role-play, participants’ practices also have to be facilitated during the activities. According to Darsø, participants must be aware of how they practice communication, e.g. whether they attempt to persuade or if they jump to conclusions, as these practices tend to push the Preject towards the Pre-project phase. In order to sustain the process in the Preject phase, it is important to maintain communicative practices such as explorative questioning and active listening. When participants are forced to negotiate and choose between options, the Preject’s time trajectory becomes a path of bifurcation points “rather like ‘forks in the road’ leading to different futures” (Ibid., p. 326) where learning is linked to the participants’ conscious awareness of the points of bifurcation, related contingent choices, styles of communication and the negotiation of decisions. During the performance of the role-play, the challenge is of how to facilitate and balance participants’ productive frustration between the opposites of static deadlock and destructive chaos as it is not possible for the teacher to be present and facilitate all the groups while they work. Therefore, the support principles of the conceptual model relate to the practice of supporting these processes:

An explorative approach and a communicative practice is maintained through the description of the groups’ task as open-ended and explorative;An awareness of points of bifurcation and choices is sharpened and maintained through the demand for and focus of the group’s documentation of its work;An ongoing negotiation and structuring of the groups’ collaboration is facilitated through a specific script for the groups’ task.

So far, Darsø’s Edge of Chaos Model has worked as a vehicle in the development of the conceptual model for the design. The next step is to orchestrate the conceptual model and the subject matter as an integrated time–space relation.

OrchestrationOrchestration means to transform the claims of a conceptual model into performable time–space relations, just like a musical score or a movie script. One major challenge for the design is the curriculum’s complexity and volume. It is not possible for students to touch upon the entire curriculum and its implications in the course of four hours. As defined to this point, the conceptual model cannot deal with this challenge. This is where Bohr’s Complementary Principle (1934/1961 & 1957) becomes relevant for the orchestration. Bohr’s Principle of Complementarity refers to quantum physics, but Bohr recognized its relevance for the Humanities and epistemology (Bohr, 1934/1961; Bohr, 1954/1957; Favrholdt, 1992; Favrholdt, 1994; Favrholdt, 2002; Faye & Folse, 1994; Levinsen 2005). According to Bohr, a material world exists independent of our consciousness. However, any observed phenomenon is a construction that cannot be separated from the observer, the position or the context, and consequently all phenomena are situated and relative to the observer and observation as agency (Barad, 2007). Bohr’s epistemology bears strong resemblances to Heidegger’s phenomenology and this is not accidental, as Heidegger was inspired by Bohr and Quantum Physics when he developed his phenomenology (Glazebrook, 2000). However, Heidegger did not elaborate on Bohr’s Complementary Principle and Bohr’s idea of the complementary image with regard to the Humanities and Social Science. Therefore, it is necessary to turn to Bohr’s original writings (Bohr, 1934/1961) and present Bohr’s Complementary Principle and the complementary image in order to explain the method of orchestrating the conceptual model. Bohr’s epistemology recognises that some objects and events cannot appear as phenomena and can only appear indirectly as index signs, as they evade both observation and language – they are inexpressible. The classic example deals with the object of light. From one position, light appears as the phenomenon of waves, while from another position, it appears as particles.

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1 Relational axis: A role­play scenario frames the 

group work and confronts negotiation of a common 

ground and sharing. Thus, the activity is pushed 

above the sharing barrier. 

2 Complexity axis: The role­play storyline confronts 

genuine dilemmas and problems and forces the 

participants to identify and explore problems. Thus, 

the activity is pushed beyond the uncertainty 

barrier. 

3 The Edge of Chaos: The participants’ assigned 

roles frame the scope of their actions in relation to 

the theory, while the problem actualises their 

qualified­ and everyday knowledge, tacit knowledge 

and ignorance in a field of tension that may 

generate (for them) new knowledge and innovation. 

In the current case, new knowledge is understood 

as everyday knowledge that can be aligned with the 

theory.  

 

RELATIONAL  AXIS                                                               THE EDGE    Essential                 THERAPERUTIC SPACE         to share                                 Sharing barrier  Some need to share                                      No need to share                                                                                 COMPLEXITY                                                                                                                                                                          AXIS                         Simple                             Complex                            puzzles                            puzzles                       Problems                             Modes of working     

OF C

HAOS 

                          

  Uncertainty barrier 

                         Shared                           certainty 

    

                                                               CHAOS Unshared                   certanty                        ORDER 

Role play scenario

RolePlay

Role Play Storyline

Bohr argued that in order to express the complex and inexpressible object of light, we have to accept that light (though we can never know what light is), can be both but cannot be observed as both at the same time. According to Bohr, it is possible to know something about objects which we can never observe as phenomena. Bohr argues that we have to specify the conditions of observation and be precise in our use of language and that the use of metaphors allows us to construct complementary images, which may serve as a vehicle to communicate about and explore inexpressible objects and events (e.g. black holes). In current Social Science and Humanities, complementarity is generally understood holistically as the construction of a whole out of complementary elements or perspectives, similar to the Yin-Yang Principle (see e.g. Wenger 1998, p. 232). Figure 7 illustrates the fundamental difference between a holistic interpretation and Bohr’s complementary image.

Figure 7. Complementarity – the difference between the holistic YinYang-complementarity and Bohr’s Complementary Principle in terms of the constructed complementary image.

According to Bohr’s Complementary Principle, there will always be blank areas in the image (Honner, 1994, p. 152). Some of these gaps may be filled with new knowledge as in the holistic interpretation of complementarity. Other areas are inexpressible and can only be bridged through interpretations and constructions. According to Bohr, the complementary perspectives do not have to be logically consistent, compatible or even measurable. Thus, unlike other approaches, the different pieces or perspectives in a Bohrean complementary image cannot be expected to fit as the Yin-Yang principle or as a jigsaw puzzle (Lemke, 2000). Bohr stresses that the only language we can use to share and explore our complementary images of the inexpressible and the knowledge gaps, is the everyday language. We have to be precise in our use of language in order to share the conditions of observation and the use of metaphors. In this sense Bohr’s Complementary Principle offers a dimension to Darsø as a metaphor for the construction of meaning and the use of everyday language in the construction of knowledge at the Edge of Chaos. In the Humanities and Social Sciences, dynamic objects and events such as life, learning, thoughts, practice and competencies, possess qualities similar to Bohr’s inexpressible objects – they are complex and they possess dimensions

that evade language and phenomenological appearance. Still, we can know something about these dimensions and negotiate their meaning. In the current MIL-case, objects such as HCI theory and interaction design possess inexpressible complementary characteristics. Consequently, rather than trying to expose all students to the entire curriculum, the idea is to orchestrate the time-space relations in a script that aims to distribute knowledge by exposing work-groups to different essential parts of the content. When the students need to share the distributed knowledge later in the course, they may all contribute to the shared construction of a complementary image of the curriculum and interaction design practice. In the current case, the backbone of the time-space-relation-script is an iterative life-cycle model for Interaction Design (for details, see Sharp et al. 2007, p. 448). The iterations in the HCI life-cycle occur inside the phases and encompass four basic activities: research, conceptualisation, construction and evaluation. Iterations between the phases are rare. Each iteration produces an output that serves as input for the next iteration until a satisfying output is produced and the life-cycle proceeds to the next phase along the timeline (Figure 8).

Figure 8. The script model for the group-work at the seminar. The Complementary Principle applied on the HCI life-cycle model.

The four basic activities and some of the HCI methods recur through the phases, but they are performed differently depending on the time-space relation to the life cycle. E.g. in the HCI Preject and Pre-project phases, evaluation means to explore: “Do we need to know more?”, “What do we not know of yet?”. In the HCI Project phase, evaluation means to test: “Does this work as intended?”.

Operationalisation At the seminar, the whole group received a crash course on the core issues of Interaction Design in order to facilitate meaning negotiation during the

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Blank areas filled as Interpretation  Accepted knowledge 

   

 

Methaphor/ Complementary image 

Holistic interpretation Complementary image 

 

 

 

Visions             storyboards          sketches              scenarios          mock up                                                                models                      

Final product modification 

Gradual shift 

Pre­Project and  Project Preject  

Production ­ Project 

working prototypes 

Timeline 

Phases:     Objectives:    Life cycle iterations:    Activities:  Group nr.:    Group 1                     Group 2                          Group 3                 Group 4                         Group 5 

Pre­analysis           Specification            Conceptual design          Design             Production    Refinement     Innovation                

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role-play. A PowerPoint presentation, which was designed as a quick guide and summary, was posted to the virtual learning environment immediately after the crash course. After an introduction to the role play, students proceeded to the activities that were orchestrated on the basis of the Complementary Principle. To obtain the widest possible distribution of knowledge as complementary elements, students were divided into five seminar groups across the original semester groups, and each seminar group’s task was related to a phase in the HCI life-cycle, and accordingly to specific parts of the theory (see Figure 8). In this way, the design embraced the full syllabus in both theory and practice as complementary bits of distributed knowledge. Additionally, all semester groups had a member in each of the seminar groups so that an individual part of the curriculum was familiar to at least one person in the semester group. As a further support for reflection and knowledge sharing, each seminar group documented their work through written notes, photos, sound recordings and videos using the process support principles from the conceptual model. These documentations were shared online after the seminar. The seminar groups presented their learning in a videotaped plenary session, which was also shared online afterwards, as streaming video. The activities were staged in the operationalisation script that drew on classic role-play theory (Johansen & Swiatek, 1991). The storyline and the scenario of the role-play possess specific challenges and simultaneously constrain participants to act within certain limits that aim to force the role-play into the The edge of chaos:

There are [problems] with X-firm’s website. Users complain. Therefore X-firm has hired your team as HCI-experts. In order to explore the problem you use this [HCI method] to explore [a specific problem area].

All activities were fictitious, yet realistic cases, related to public train service. The script drove the role-play through three phases and forced participants to collaborate and move above the sharing barrier, while they had to move beyond the complexity barrier in order to invent/innovate relevant actions and interpretations as they explored and negotiated meaning:

1. You design the specific use of the [HCI method], e.g. you produce a paper interface prototype and explore it using the Think-aloud method (groups were provided with quick guides to the methods).

2. You perform the method (evaluation) on real users (students from another group) while collecting data in the form of writ-ten notes and video (special attention to communication style and bifurcation points).

3. You analyse the data, the quality of your design and your data collection, and evaluate the use of the method. For the plenary discussion, you prepare a presentation of what you have done and what you have learned (Bohr, 1964).

The demand for reflected data collection further forced the participants beyond the complexity barrier and to be aware of their communication style, points of bifurcation, as well as their decision making. This awareness supports deep reflection on arguments, choices and actions. In order to utilise the Complementary Principle even further, participants rotated during step 2 of the activities. The rotation followed a pattern based on the jigsaw method (Aronson et al., 1978; Slavin, 1991; Clarke, 1994) and allowed every semester group to end up with members that had either taken on the role of leader, evaluator/tester, user/test-person, or observer, from both the owner and guest perspectives.

At the seminar – report from two groupsIn the following, two of the five group-activities will be presented in detail.

Group 1 - Image taggingThe fictitious task was to identify foreigners’ and immigrants’ special user needs, as the Danish Rail wishes to develop their website to serve this growing costumer group. The HCI Preject team – Group 1 – explored how users think about travelling by train and what the concept of ‘travel’ means to them. The first task was to choose 12 Tag-related images from Flickr using the Tag = travel (Lapham, 2007). The second task was twofold: 1) Present the chosen images in a way that generates and supports an explorative conversation with the user about what it means to travel by train; and 2) Design the session with an emphasis on collecting useful and valid data. Group 1 chose to arrange the images as a linear PowerPoint presentation and let the user interact with the images during a video-recorded conversation. The group found that the method provided a useful frame for an explorative conversation. However, they realised that their choice of presenting the

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images as a linear PowerPoint presentation became an obstacle for collecting useful and valid data. The user perceived the PowerPoint as a linear narrative and consequently the explorative conversation on travelling by train became a controlled step-by-step interview. In the plenary presentation, the problems were described in everyday language, but their findings were easily adjusted to basic methodological requirements for qualitative research and the core issues of HCI theory and methodology. Group 1 forgot to identify what exactly they wanted to explore and find out about. This lack of focus in the preparation of the data collection led to weaknesses in their whole process from data collection to analyses. The group became aware of this when they analysed their collected data and retraced their process and choices through the points of bifurcation. The results were presented in the plenum:

The search for and choice of images was not optimal for a meaningful explorative conversation.It became difficult to introduce the test-user (a guest from Group 5) to the purpose of the session and what was expected from the user. The group found that a pilot run may be a useful way of refining the test-material and a script, before running the data collection session.The limits for the test-leader’s interference became unclear.The user became insecure and felt uncomfortable.It became unclear whether the user tried to please the test-leader.The group found that it is of great importance to prepare the session and create a pleasant atmosphere where the roles and expectations are clear.

Group 1 also found that the presence of a test-leader/interviewer affected the situation, the user and the quality of the collected data. They realised that the repertoire of competencies in the group influenced the process and outcome. They found they had applied their own ideas of what it means to travel and how to use the Danish Rail’s website to the test the design, and unintentionally, had biased the data collection and the analysis and thus, they began to grasp the difference between hypothesis-driven and explorative research approaches. In addition, they found that it is important to define criteria for selecting informants or test-users. The group had chosen to video record the computer screen and the user’s hands. They found that a camera covering the total situation might be a useful addition, as a total take would document the interaction between the test-leader and the user along with the user’s non-verbal reactions to the test-material.

Group 4 - Thinking Aloud (TA)Group 4’s fictitious task was to perform a user-test of the Danish Rail’s existing website in order to identify usability problems (test) and determine the need for a re-design (explore). The group was asked to choose an area of the website and design 1-3 tasks for the test-user in a Thinking Aloud test (Boren & Ramey, 2000). Again, the group’s task was twofold: 1) Design tasks that are experienced as relevant from the user’s perspective and at the same time challenge the user’s meaning construction and interaction with the website, and 2) Design the session placing an emphasis on collecting useful and valid data. The data was collected as a combination of a web-cam documentation of the user, Camtasia screen-recording of the user’s interaction, and written notes on the process, communications styles and bifurcation points.

Figure 9. A group member writes the task, for the test-person to read.

After reading the task, the group discussed the website and decided on various relevant tasks. The tasks were formulated as scenarios and in the first, a woman and three children aged 2, 5 and 13, with a bicycle and a pram were to travel from Copenhagen to a small town in Jutland. The woman wanted to find the shortest travel route with a preference for family seats. This task was then written on the blackboard for the test person to read.

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Figure 10 (to the left). The test-person and the test-leader sit by the computer. One observer is seen in the background. Figure 11 (to the right). Example from the Camtasia screen-recording.

The test-person and the test-leader then sat by the computer. One observer is seen in the above image, as remaining in the background (see figure, 10).

A Camtasia screen-recording of the user’s interaction with the website is illustrated above. The synchronous web-cam recording of the user and the test-leader can be seen in the lower right corner of the screen (see figure, 11). Group 4 also presented their reflections in everyday language, and again, it was easy to correlate their conclusions and concepts to the theory during the plenary discussions. The group knew about the TA-method in advance, as it is the most frequently used HCI method. Therefore they had thought it easy to adopt. They found TA useful but realised that it calls for a careful design of performance and purpose. When they analysed their data and retraced the points of bifurcation, they found that they had focused on discussing the test-scenarios as narratives and had entirely forgotten to develop a frame and purpose for the actual test-session. In plenum, they said:

We were not good at defining the test. What is it we want the test-person to do? What is the purpose of the test? It’s the website that has to be tested, not the test-person!

The group reflected on the consequences of the bad design and found that the test-scenarios had worked in the sense that the user could identify with the scenarios. However, the scenarios did not produce useful and valid data, e.g. the group could not distinguish between problems stemming from the user’s (lack of) ICT-literacy and problems related to usability or the website’s visual support of the user’s meaning construction. The group also reflected on the relation between test-leader and test-person, and found it important to create a pleasant atmosphere where the test-person relaxes and focuses on the task rather than on the situation. They realised that the quality and timing of the test-leader’s interventions are crucial and based on professional competencies as well as sensitivity and experience. It is not easy to decide when to be silent

and how to cue the test-person. As they said in the plenary session:

You should not be ironic and say things like ‘Actually, this was the easy task, ha ha!’

They had expected TA to be easy to use and they were very surprised to experience how their setup affected the test-person’s emotions, and that even fellow students experienced their test as a personal and unpleasant examination.

discussionThe objective of the experimental design was to kick-start productive frustration and reflection, to bridge the knowledge gap, to regain some of the lost time and provide students with a sturdy scaffold for the online-period. I recognise the problem of being designer, teacher and researcher in this experiment. However, during activities, materials were produced by students, independently of the author. Accepting this premise, the video-taped presentations at the plenary sessions, along with the students’ written documentation of their work, confirm that the experimental design succeeded at least in the plenary context. The data demonstrates that all groups had encountered, identified and discussed challenges and problems that are pivotal to core issues of the HCI theory and practice, e.g. the design process, the HCI practice, conceptual modelling, prototyping, as well as the quality of data collection and analysis. The problems and reflections were described in everyday language, but most of the findings were easily correlated to basic methodological requirements for qualitative research, core issues of HCI theory, and scientific methodology. Some of the findings may seem trivial. However, when the groups discussed the relation between test-leader, design of the test, test-person and collected data, the discussion reflects an emerging understanding of the difference between the objective positivist position and the correspondence principle on the one hand, and on the other, the phenomenological position where subject–object–phenomenon are inseparable and bound to agency. This is a theoretical understanding that usually is very difficult both to convey and to grasp. Another example is that the groups became aware that they were biased in their views of their own data collection and how this affected the quality of their analysis. Here, they demonstrated an emerging understanding of the concept of preconceptions and began to discuss how to confront and promote an awareness of preconceptions in order to avoid unintended bias – that is, they touched upon Husserls’ concepts of Epoché and Reduction which are also difficult to convey and to grasp. This is one of the big challenges for the validity and reliability of qualitative research and the issue is subject to continuous negotiation and discussion in the constructivist theory of science. Finally, all groups identified these complex challenges by retracing their documentation from bifurcation point to bifurcation point. Again, what may appear trivial

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in the everyday presentation at the plenary reflects the emerging acquisition of basic scientific methodology (Latour, 1999) through the experience of its immediate advantages. Students at the seminar displayed a competence level in relation to these dimensions matching Dreyfus & Dreyfus’ third stage Competent (1986), while usually we see that students, even at master’s level struggle at the Novice or Advance Beginners stages. In this sense, the experimental design managed to kick-start a relevant knowledge-construction and reflection, which may be expected to work as a pathway into the theory during the subsequent online-period. Two months after the seminar, the original semester groups collaborated online on their written M2C3 assignment. During online supervision sessions, it became clear that they had remembered and were able to reflect on and use difficult aspects of the theory. They were still conscious about the design of data collection and bias. On their own initiative, a group raised a discussion on the ambiguity of parts of the HCI vocabulary and struggled to distinguish between difficult concepts as mental model and conceptual model. Previously, I have experienced that students had not even noticed that these concepts were not identical. A few groups collected data in unpredictable environments and by their own initiative, were able to modify their data collection design accordingly. Finally, the written assignments demonstrated a high initial level of HCI knowledge, the generation of empirical data as well as reflective and critical uses of the theory. All groups were conscious of their way of communicating and precise about the distinction between explorative and hypothesis-driven research. In conclusion, they seem to be able to utilize the Complementary Principle and construct complementary images of the curriculum and to navigate at the edge of chaos. On the basis of these results, I find that the suggested approach to conceptual modelling and orchestration offers a contribution to the development of a theory of design for teaching and learning. In the meantime, I continue the research and the improvement of the conceptual modelling and orchestration in various contexts.

AcknowledgementsI thank the students at MIL for letting me turn their seminar into a research experiment and allowing me to use their written and visual documentation in this paper.

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school for their permission, interest and enthusiasm. This research and thewriting of this paper were supported by the research program LearnIT withinthe Swedish Knowledge Foundation.

1 For further information: www.didaktikdesign/learnit

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Douglas, M. (1986)

Interview with Staffan Selander

By fredrik lindstrand

This issue of Designs for Learning features an interview with professor Staffan Seland-er, who has contributed in important ways to the shaping of the field we talk about as “designs for learning”. In the interview that follows we hope to give some further insights regarding interests, influences and experiences that have formed a background to the development of his theoretical approach to issues concerning education and learning.

Staffan Selander is professor in Didactic Science at the Department of Didactic Science and Early Childhood Education, Stockholm University. He is also honorary professor at The Academy of Turku, Finland. A major part of Selander’s research has focused learning from hermeneutic, socio-cultural and semiotic perspectives, especially on questions concerning interpretation, transformation and representation. In recent years he (and his research team) has developed the approach called “designs for learning”. Staffan Selander has been in charge of various research projects concerning multimodal texts, toys, aesthetic learning processes, digital learning resources and learning in various contexts. He has also for many years been the president of IARTEM (www.iartem.no). Among his recent publications (in English) are Designs for learning and ludic engagement (2008), Designs for learning and the formation and transformation of knowledge in an era of globalization (2008), Socio-cultural theories as ideology? The need for a design-theoretic, multimodal approach to learning (2008), Coordinating multimodal social semiotics and an institutional perspective in studying assessment actions in mathematics classrooms (with Lisa Boistrup-Björklund, 2009) and Nordic identities in transition – as reflected in pedagogic texts and cultural contexts (ed. with Bente Aamotsbakken, 2009).

FL: Perhaps we could start by talking a bit about where you come from academically. Where it all started?

SS: Yes. The first subject I studied was education. I remember that I had a question very early on that had to do with how we organize, represent and mediate our understanding of the world and how we transmit that understanding to younger generations. And I remember a discussion with a peer student where I pointed at a tree and asked “how do we know that we actually talk about the same kind of tree here?” And that was long before I ever read Saussure or anything. So I went into education, but didn’t find very many answers to that kind of questions. I continued to anthropology, sociology and philosophy of science. Part of my anthropological interest was to go and see

phenomena in other countries. I went to China in 1971 to study education and then to Brazil to study alphabetization, and that was very interesting – to go further into a culture you knew almost nothing about and a language you didn’t quite understand. And try to figure out “how are they doing things here?”. Then I came back to and continued with education. So that was my starting point.

FL: Interesting. Did you pick something specific up from those early travels that led you further in relation to your initial questions and interests?

SS: I think it was the insight of missing more precise theoretical tools, to do those things I had in my back head to do. At the time I had Ulf Lundgren as my supervisor and he worked with frame factor theory, which is oriented towards organizational issues in education. That gave me some kind of framing for my own thinking at the time. Basil Bernstein was visiting our department back then and we had several seminars with him. I became interested in the role of language in different social contexts. There was also tension in this, because frame factor theory was rather structuralistic and rather deterministic. And so were parts of Bernstein’s thinking. But in his thinking was also more space for what we now call agency. So that was a very early question, about structure and agency. That was one main contradiction to detect for a young student. The other one was “how can you both have an idea of a structure, while you do analysis at a certain point of view, and have a historical understanding of changes?” How can you both study change and structure? Education was very dull back then, due to the influence of behaviourism – everything you read about learning was behaviouristic – and most of my student fellows did investigations that came out of method. You have a method of variance analysis or factor analysis and then you try to find a problem that you can solve with that kind of method. And I was at the other end, so I was lucky to come to Stockholm and come to this environment where you could test thinking in different ways.

There were only two possibilities at the end of the 60’s: either the behaviouristism – we read everything about Thorndike, Bandura, Bloom, Skinner, you name it – or phenomenography. If you didn’t like behaviourism you could go to phenomenography, which had some kind of phenomenological rooting. But they focused on mental perceptions of things as they were presented in talk and then they thought, or still think – I don’t know – that what people say is a true representation of what or how they think, without discussing the mediating role of language. That is some kind of one to one relation that is impossible for me to understand. So I was not interested in learning at the time. I was more interested in social regulation and social classification, institutional arrangements.

Next step for me was when I left the idea of frame factor theory. That first question came back: how do people in different contexts conceptually

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organize and represent their world. Frame factor theory could say nothing about that, so I started to get more interested in the interface. Since I was in a school context at the time, my focus was on the interface between school as an institution and the pupil. The interface, as I saw it, was not about legal regulations, economy, ideology, or whatever you talked about. It was the text. So I went into the study of text and all my colleagues asked “what does that have to do with education?” I think a reason to why I took an interest in that was also partly because I was never only interested in schooling. For me schools and schooling was but one possible area to study this more basic question within. To study text, and especially school text, is to study how we, in a society, signify and classify the world. What is in the centre, in the periphery, what are basic root metaphors and so on.

So I had to leave the institutional arrangement I was in and I went from Stockholm to Härnösand where I started an institute for pedagogic text research, which at the time was a bit odd (however, I became involved in developing a Centre for Pedagogic Text Research at University College of Vestfold in Norway, which now has three professors in the field). Härnösand was “far away”, but I got some financial support and some students. That was one strand - trying to understand how we organize texts as representations of different knowledge domains.

And the next step was then to go into a broader concept of text, not only analysing what was in the text. Because that was also the interesting first question: “what is in the text?” And the more I read about hermeneutics and social semiotics, the more I understood that there is nothing in the text. Instead, I became interested in how texts are interpreted and used in different contexts (which actually also was the question in my dissertation about how “Paulo Freire” was conceived and discussed in Sweden in the 70’s). This interest was triggered further by my very early meeting with Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress, at a conference in London 1990. I have collaborated with them in different ways over the years, first with Theo in a project about toys and now with Gunther in a project about museums. So that was the idea of trying to understand these phenomena not only in school contexts. How do we arrange a toy world for the children and what do they do with it? How do we arrange the collective meaning of society in museums and what do visitors do when they go to museums?

In a way, I have moved from frame factor theory, down to text, to pictorial illustrations, and to more concrete objects and environments. Very late – some five or six years ago – I came back to the idea of learning. And now, as I go back into the learning environment, I find this very interesting; to try and understand arrangements for learning, institutional framings of learning and what people are doing in that. How do they interpret, work with and design their own understanding? That also led into two types of theoretical perspectives. I mentioned social semiotics, especially the work done by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen and their development of the thinking

from Halliday. They have done something very important in pointing at the richness of communicative patterns or communicative situations – the multimodality of communication. It took me long time to understand because I came from a verbally based theoretical understanding of the world. But once I started to get a grasp, it really was enriching because it also gave a possibility to go into more detailed social micro-situations and see how meaning is socially constructed in corporation or co-operation. But at the same time you go down into details and one problem is that much of the thinking about the environment or the context is taken for granted.

And then I could mirror that with my old interest, which is much closer to what is nowadays called socio-cultural thinking. Based on Vygotskij, which in a way is very funny, because Vygotskij is only a name for a group of thinkers – you have Bakthin, Volosinov, even philosophers like Gadamer (in hermeneutics) and Cassirer and a lot of other thinkers at the time. Vygotskij had some marxist connection so there was in his understanding a social part. But Vygotskij himself was more interested in the little child, the development of thinking or what happens with thinking when language develops. And then he is the father figure for all kind of socio-cultural thinking.

Socio-cultural theories are very important in the way that they are trying to understand, on a collective level, how we represent the world. How we relate to technological development, how we use tools in different ways and also how these tools encapsulate social and historical memories. But then you are still on a very general level in understanding communication. So then I started to think, since I had two perspectives here – the social semiotic and the socio-cultural – that they don’t seem to talk about the same thing. Socio-cultural theory takes the micro-situation very much for granted and are very much focussing on the situated activity, which often becomes the same as “the situation”. Social semiotics take the context for granted and say we can’t talk about the context, we can only see how context is mirrored in communication, or constructed in communicative events. Then how can you see what is reconstructed if you don’t have any idea about the context? As I said, when I went to China I had very few clues of how to understand communication. How could I understand communication if I didn’t both know something about language and historical context? For example how they reacted to me as a white foreigner. Why did the old man turn around and spit on the ground when he saw me? How can I interpret that situation without understanding its historical context and the role of “white, long-nosed intruders”?

So out of that, in the group I work with at Stockholm University, we started to discuss and develop a thinking around how we can understand learning that is situated, historically rooted, institutionally arranged and individually interpreted. Out of that came the idea of learning designs. And I think that learning design has the advantage of being able to say something about how learning is designed, how we in different situations design learning situations.

Once I also worked in West Africa, in Guinea-Bissau, where I tried to

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support a master program in teacher education. Suddenly, after three weeks, everyone disappeared. They went out into the bush, to perform their own rituals that would transform the young boys into men. And that is really another design for education and learning. Perhaps it also points at some parts that are too narrow in our daily talk about education, because education is not only about effective remembering. It is about being incorporated in an environment and being able to do things meaningfully there. And thus it is also related to identity construction. How do you build up an identity as a part of this group? If you are somebody outside the group you are no one in that society, and I think even in our society. If you are out of a group you are none. You do not exist. So I think we should look at our educational system from that point of view. How do we actually construct and develop identities as social members in different fields, with different kinds of competencies and possibilities to take part.

That was one part of the design concept – how we design for. For example we do that through buildings. We have certain kinds of school buildings, but why do we construct these specific buildings? We do it by textbooks or by educational resources on the net. We do it by having teachers with certain kinds of education. We do it by socially grouping pupils. We do it by dividing time in a certain way. We actually design a lot for certain types of education.

But that can not explain what actually is happening for every individual. As I see it, we have to understand how an individual in that situation designs his or her own way and makes that situation meaningful. And that is why it is important for me both to understand the context – what is designed for – and to understand the situation. But not the situation as a separated individual not-connected-to-anything-else situation, but a situation that is related to the situation that was before and that is heading for the situation that will come. And that is why I think that the understanding of sequence – and to analyze sequences in learning in order to understand learning – is very important. That is why we started to discuss in terms of learning design sequences.

FL: You mentioned that you conceptualized the text as the interface between the learner and the educational system. At some point you widened the notion of the interface, since you included all these other aspects.

FL: Yes

FL: When was this and what happened? Was it the meeting with social semiotics?

SS: Yes, it was. I think that perhaps it is because of my peculiar and distant way of looking at things but when I became interested in texts many people reacted and said: “that’s not important”. What is important in school is what the teacher is doing. And I quite couldn’t understand that. The text was seen

as a glass-window – totally transparent and without significance. As we began to study different educational settings it was obviously so that the teacher went by the text very much. That was even the norm for what was going to happen in the tests afterwards. If you are not in school as a student you have to read the text. And you should read that text and not other texts. And then it is interesting to see today, when we have the computer. Suddenly, in school contexts, the text is no longer a given. And suddenly it has become of interest again to study school textbooks again. I find that interesting. The notion of text was for me the verbal text, for a very long time. We worked in a project and there was a teacher in art education who always told me not to forget about the pictures. And I thought “well, she says that out of aesthetic reasons, because it is so important for her”. Then we did a project about Racism and discrimination in school textbooks? and we started to look for verbal expressions of how we humiliated others. As it turned out, we couldn’t find anything like that in the verbal text. And then we looked for more evaluative statements and it was in mostly texts saying either nothing or very positive things. According to the text books immigrants came with labour force; they built up our society; and they brought interesting music, good food and interesting clothing with them.

And then, at a particular time we had all the books on the floor and suddenly we noticed the pictures. And we saw that the black man – most often it was a man – was either naked or half naked. He was sitting on the ground, or on a chair. And the white man was always half a metre higher up, giving things, supporting the black man. All these pictures of Africa reminded of textbook representations of the Stone Age. There were no hospitals, no roads, and no cities. I started to think that those pictures tell us a lot about our relation to the Other. In the pictorial illustration there was another language than in the verbal text. And then I started to think: “what is the most important here?” What they say in the text or what you see, what they “do”, so to say. So that was my first step toward a multimodal understanding, that you have a language in pictorial illustration that differs from the verbal one. It could support, contradict, whatever – it did other things. So I got more and more interested in that: how we express our relation to the world and our engagement in the world through different kinds of modes. That was my first step, to see that pictorial illustration and verbal language are two kinds of expressions, communicative expressions. And then I started also to talk with Theo van Leeuwen and at the time he was becoming interested in three dimensional objects. And then we decided to do this toy project. Toys are also a manifestation, or design, of an understanding of the world. If you go into a toy shop and say “what kind of toys are here? What kind of toys for boys and what kind of toys for girls?” And we detected in that project that dolls are mostly used by boys (!), not by girls: the war dolls. And then of course, today, you have all the different kinds of games. What are they actually telling you about the world and what is good and how can you relate to the world? What is accepted? So that was my travel from the verbal to the pictorial elements to three-dimensional objects and

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then, as a next step, was to talk about the museum, which is an institutional arrangement of objects, a collective representation of the world.

It is very interesting when you go into some kind of philosophical scientific thinking you start to see the world in a certain way. And structuralism was like “Aha!” to me. They had an interest of trying to detect basic structures behind or beneath or under what you could see. For Claude Levi Strauss it was very obviously so. He went to Brazil and fifteen years later he wrote Triste Tropique. He tried to understand indigenous Brazilian customs in relation to other indigenous people from other parts of the world, and he actually tried to reveal underlying structures. And I remember discussions we had: “Are structures out there?” And then came the critique saying that “well, it is actually we who construct the structure; there is no structure at all out there. We are constructing.” That is a very interesting tension and I was thinking of that now, in trying to understand learning. And I don’t know if you actually solve this problem because there seem to be some structuring principles, some kind of more or less stable pattern. Not structure, but structuring principle.

At the same time it is obviously so that we are constructing and naming aspects of those structuring patterns. And someone else could name some other interesting structuring patterns. And I think that in the scientific work, for me it is important to have the openness for trying to understand this kind of tensions in our thinking, or in my thinking. Why are there uncertainties? What do I think I have explained and what have I not yet explained? And what have I taken for granted in what I explain?

Another thing I would like to mention is that I also started to read hermeneutics at the time, and soon came to Paul Ricœur. What fascinated me was that he could sit for one year and read for example Aristotle and then he could sit one year and read someone else, Augustine for example. And then he says Aristotle talks about poetry and drama and narratives. But he doesn’t talk about time. Augustine talks about time, but he doesn’t talk about narratives. What happens if we take the question of time into the narrative? And then he wrote Time and Narrative. For me that was interesting, both because I learnt about earlier thinkers but especially his way of doing it. The openness for different theoretical understandings, as well as for the question: What happens when you relate them to each other out of a new kind of question.

That was very important and encouraging when I started to think “well, I have some basic insights in socio-cultural thinking, I have started to think more social semiotically. What happens if I take the question of conditions for learning and learning processes into these fields?” Socio-cultural theories focus learning and social semiotics communication. But on the other hand they talked about transformations and designs, which socio-cultural theories didn’t talk about. What happens if they meet? So for me, learning design was a meeting point of two traditions, trying to develop – which it seems – something new out of it. And for me that is the most thrilling intellectual adventure. Not to be “in”, to do the right thing, but to challenge the borders. I did that

when I started with the pedagogic texts and I think we do it now, when we go into learning designs. And I must underline that learning designs, in our conceptualization here, is not the same as instruction. It is not the normative part, even though we could say that there is an opening in a design perspective, not only to analysis but also to take part and discuss the conditions for doing things differently. Not to say how they should do it – this is important – but to go into dialogue: what does it mean to think in this way and if we think in this way, what are the consequences for praxis? And that is also one of my concerns here.

In very much contemporary research in education we talk about praxis, without discussing the differences between “praktik” and “praxis”. And I remember, when I read Husserl and then Derrida’s critique of Husserl, because Husserl (at least the young Husserl) had the idea that you could get direct access to reality. And when Derrida talks about différence he says there is always something coming between the world and me, and that is language. When I see something my language intervenes and does something to my perception of the world. It’s a very important thing, never talked about in educational contexts. Praxis is just that you get access to reality by talking to those working in that specific field. For me this is problematic, because discursive practices, by way of classifications, symbolic systems and metaphorical expressions, stand between us and what we see and what we do. And to discuss that is a means to discuss the conditions for what you do.

FL: So it’s back to the tree, basically..?

SS: Yes (laughter)

FL: I mean, it’s a good metaphor for the kind of questions that you can always work with.

SS: Yeah

FL: What are you working with right now?

SS: We have published a lot, theoretically and empirically, from the Learn-IT project about digital artefacts seen from a user oriented perspective. Especially aspects like the setting of the scene, designs for and by learners, representations of knowledge, interaction and transformations during Learning Design Sequences and the making of new representations has been used here.

We are about to finish a rather large project about “museums, exhibitions and visitors” where we use a design-theoretic and a multimodal approach to scrutinize exhibition designs, visitors’ involvement and their “signs of” learning

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and engagement. Here we also discuss the changed role of the museum as an institution today. This has been part of our cooperation with, besides Umeå University and Kerstin Smeds, the Institute of Education in London, especially with Gunther Kress and Carey Jewitt.

A rather new cooperation has started with DPU in Copenhagen (Aarhus University) and Birgitte Holm Sørensen, concerning theoretic development and research cooperation in relation to a design-theoretic perspective of learning. We will in the future also cooperate around the journal Designs for Learning and the biannual conferences. So the next Designs for Learning-conference is planned to take place in Copenhagen 2012.

Besides of that we, as a research group, also cooperate with Gunther Kress in London, Roger Säljö in Gothenburg, Birgitte Althans in Trier and Cristoff Wulf in Berlin, and their research groups respectively. We call ourselves “The New Learning Group”, a forum for re-conceptualizing learning in relation to basic questions like: How to cultivate alternative education for future generations? This question entails aspects like: the consequences of cultural diversity, the role of technology/media for learning (not the least in relation to mobile technologies), forms of knowledge, the need for a new conceptualization of the child and of the learner in relation to “agency”. Learning does not only refer to skills and propositional knowledge, but to a wider range of issues related to identity formation.

My interest in conditions for, and ways to, organize and mediate social understanding in a way started with the “tree” outside the university building in Lund. This interest is, as you noticed, still a driving force to me in my work to try to develop “new” (which of course always is a dangerous word) ways to theoretically conceptualize learning in a global and changing world, and to do empirical research out of this perspective.

ReferencesSelander, S. (2008). Designs for learning and ludic engagement. Digital Creativity, Vol 19, No.

3, pp. 199-208.Selander, S. (2008). Designs for learning and the formation and transformation of knowledge

in an era of globalization. Studies in Philosophy and Education. Springer. Vol. 27, No. 4, July; 267-283.

Selander, S. (2008). Socio-cultural theories as ideology? The need for a design-theoretic, multimodal approach to learning. Medien Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1; 40-48.

Selander, S. & Aamotsbakken, B. (eds. 2009). Nordic identites in transition – as reflected in pedagogic texts and cultural contexts. Oslo: Novus.

Björklund Boistrup, L. & Selander, S. (2009). Coordinating multimodal social semiotics and an institutional perspective in studying assessment actions in mathematics classrooms. In Proceedings of CERME 6, Sixth Conference of European Research in Mathematics Education, Lyon, France - Jan. 28 - Feb.1 , 2009.

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Att ge form åt musikaliska gestaltningar. En social-semiotisk studie av körledares multimodala kommu-nikation i kör. [Shaping musical performances. A social semiotic study of choir conductors’ multimo-dal communication in choir]. Ragnhild Sand-berg Jurström, University of Gothenburg.The purpose of this thesis is to identify and describe how musical interpretations and performances are semiotically de-signed and performed by choir conduc-tors in their interaction with choir singers during rehearsals and concerts.Theoretically, the multimodal perspec-tive is combined with the perspective of designs for learning in terms of represen-tations, transformation processes and the forming of new representations and per-formances.

The data consists of video-recorded rehearsals and concerts with six Swedish professional choir conductors and their choirs. The video films are transcribed with focus on gestures, gazes, body move-ments, singing etc.

This thesis brings light to the complex-ity and multiplicity of an audiovisual cul-ture, and shows among other things a collective and local musical language is constructed, but also the role of produc-tive leadership.

Det kommer med tiden. Från lärarstudent till matematiklärare. [It takes time. From teacher stu-dent to mathematics teacher]. elisabeth pers-son, Stockholm University.The main purpose of this thesis is to in-vestigate future pre- and primary school teachers change their approaches to mathematics and mathematics educa-tion during their subject studies, and also how this view has affected their teach-ing of mathematics after graduation. An institutional oriented theory has been used in this work, supplemented by a de-sign theoretical approach. The following methodologies have been used: a qualita-tive interview method, observations, field notes, sound recordings, video recorded mathematics classes and learning re-sources produced by the teacher.

The results show that the vocabulary about mathematics teaching and learn-ing had changed over time. But whilst the mathematics education gave a consistent image of mathematics teaching, this im-age was confronted with quite another picture of mathematics education and collaborative work in schools. These two types of activities were conceptualized as different “thought styles” and resulted in the fact that the students felt insecure. However, this insecurity became much less stressed after they had been workin one or two years in the schools.

isbn: 91-975911-1-4

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isbn: 987-91-977757-9-3

Institutionen för didaktik och pedagogiskt arbete

Doktorsavhandling i didaktik vid Stockholms universitet 2009

Elisabeth PerssonD

et komm

er med tiden

Det kommer med tidenFrån lärarstudent till matematiklärare

Elisabeth Persson

ISBN 978-91-7155-905-0

Submission of manuscripts Manuscripts, fully numbered and typed in double spacing throughout, should be sent both as a Word-compatible file and as a PDF-file to:

Susanne Kjällander Department of Didactic Sciences Stockholm University SE-106 91 Stockholm Sweden [email: susanne.kjallander@did.su.se]

Covering letter Please attach to every submission a letter confirming that all authors have agreed to the submission and that the article is not currently being considered for publication by any other journal.

Format of manuscripts Each manuscript should contain: (i) title page with full title and subtitle (if any), preferably not exceeding 60 signs. For the purpose of blind referee-ing, full name of each author with current affiliation and full address/phone/fax/email details plus short biographi-cal note should be supplied on a separate page. (ii) abstract of 100–150 words. (iii) up to 10 key words. (iv) main text and word count - suggested target is not exceeding 5000 words (or 30,000 signs, including spaces) unless by prior agreement with the editors. Texts are expected to be clearly organized, with a clear hierarchy of headings and subheadings and quotations exceeding 40 words displayed, indented, in the text. (v) end notes, if necessary, should be signalled by su-perscript numbers in the main text and listed at the end of the text before the references. (vi) references in both the text and end notes should follow APA manual.

Illustrations All line diagrams and photographs are termed ‘Figures’ and should be referred to as such in the manuscript. They should be numbered consecutively. Line diagrams should be presented in a form suitable for immediate reproduc-tion (i.e.not re- quiring redrawing). Photos and digitally generated images should be in 300 dpi resolution at 100% size. Images made for web publishing (normally 72 dpi) are not sufficient. They should be reproducible to a final printed text area of 205 mm x 142 mm. Illustrations on disk should be supplied as TIF or EPS files at high resolution. All figures should have short descriptive captions typed on a separate page.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permissions from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. Permission letters must be supplied to Designs for Learning.

Style Use a clear readable style, avoiding jargon. If technical terms or acronyms must be included, define them when first used. Use non-racist, non-sexist language and plurals rather than he/she.

Spellings UK or US spellings may be used with ‘-ize’ spellings as given in the Oxford English Dictionary (e.g. organize, recognize).

Punctuation Use single quotation marks with double quotes inside single quotes. Present dates in the form 1 May 1998. Do not use points in abbreviations, contractions or acronyms (e.g. AD, USA, Dr, PhD).

New files On acceptance of your manuscript for publication, you will be asked to supply the final version in a new Word-file and PDF-file.

Proofs and offprints Authors will receive proofs of their articles and be asked to send corrections to Susanne Kjällander (see address above) within 2 weeks. They will receive a complimentary copy of the journal and electronic offprints of their article.

Reviews In future issues Designs for Learning will include a section in which books and other significant contributions to the field are reviewed. This includes both essay length and shorter contributions. Books for review and manuscripts of reviews should be sent to Susanne Kjällander (see address above).

Staffan Selander & Bente Aamotsbakken (Eds.)

ISBN 978-82-7099-528-8

9 788270 9 9 5 2 8 8

Novus Press

This book raises some central questions concerning identities, especially theconstruction and the representations of identities: How do we understand our-selves? Who are “we” and who are “the Others”? The question of identities intransition in a Nordic context is presented in the following way:

! a theoretic overview ! an overview over languages and language policies in the Nordic countries ! the role of digital media and gender issues related to youth cultures and

identity constructions ! religion and ethnicity! the question of national identities

Nordic identities in transition is an interesting case, as one example of regionalchanges among almost 25 million inhabitants in relation to global changes likemigration, new communicative patterns and increasing mixes – and clashes –between cultural values and norms.

The articles represent transitional processes in Denmark, Finland, The Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway and Sweden

Bente Aamotsbakken is dr.philos. and professor of Text Science at the Centre ofPedagogic Texts and Learning Processes, the University College of Vestfold,Norway.

Staffan Selander is Ph.D. and professor of Didactic Science at Stockholm Uni-versity, Sweden

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Nordic identities in transition

– as reflected in pedagogic textsand cultural contexts

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Nordic identities in transition - as reflected in pedagogic texts and cultural contexts.Staffan Selander & Bente Aamotsbakken (Eds.). Novus Press. 2009.This book raises some central questions concerning identities, especially the construction and the representations of identities: How do we understand ourselves? Who are “we” and who are “the Others”?

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