JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed

Design as communication in micro-strategy — strategic sensemaking and sensegiving mediated through designed artefacts.

This paper relates key concepts of strategic cognition in microstrategy to design practice. It considers the potential roles of designers' output in strategic sensemaking and sensegiving. Designed artifacts play well-known roles as communication media; sketches, renderings, models, and prototypes are created to explore and test possibilities and to communicate these options within and outside the design team. This article draws on design and strategy literature to propose that designed artifacts can and do play a role as symbolic communication resources in sensemaking and sensegiving activities that impact strategic decision making and change. Extracts from interviews with three designers serve as illustrative examples. This article is a call for further empirical exploration of such a complex subject

Don’t throw rocks from the side-lines: A sociomaterial exploration of organizational blogs as boundary objects

Purpose Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually-constituted performance of the material and social. Design/methodology/approach The aim of our research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, we adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is our use of data released under a Freedom of Information request. Findings We present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. We draw on literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually-constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. We also invoke the notion of ‘extended chains of intra-action’ to theorise changes in the wider organization. Originality/value Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming, challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization

Boundary objects, power, and learning: The matter of developing sustainable practice in organizations

This article develops an understanding of the agential role of boundary objects in generating and politicizing learning in organizations, as it emerges from the entangled actions of humans and non-humans. We offer two empirical vignettes in which middle managers seek to develop more sustainable ways of working. Informed by Foucault’s writing on power, our work highlights how power relations enable and foreclose the affordances, or possibilities for action, associated with boundary objects. Our data demonstrate how this impacts the learning that emerges as boundary objects are configured and unraveled over time. In so doing, we illustrate how boundary objects are not fixed entities, but are mutable, relational, and politicized in nature. Connecting boundary objects to affordances within a Foucauldian perspective on power offers a more nuanced understanding of how ‘the material’ plays an agential role in consolidating and disrupting understandings in the accomplishment of learning

Next steps in implementing Kaput's research programme

We explore some key constructs and research themes initiated by Jim Kaput, and attempt to illuminate them further with reference to our own research. These 'design principles' focus on the evolution of digital representations since the early nineties, and we attempt to take forward our collective understanding of the cognitive and cultural affordances they offer. There are two main organising ideas for the paper. The first centres around Kaput's notion of outsourcing of processing power, and explores the implications of this for mathematical learning. We argue that a key component for design is to create visible, transparent views of outsourcing, a transparency without which there may be as many pitfalls as opportunities for mathematical learning. The second organising idea is that of communication, a key notion for Kaput, and the importance of designing for communication in ways that recognise the mutual influence of tools for communication and for mathematical expression

Sense and symbolic objects: Strategic sensemaking through design

This paper reports on an ongoing investigation into one aspect of the design thinking phenomenon, namely the use of designed artifacts — sketches, renderings, graphics, models and prototypes — as symbolic objects in strategy making and implementation. It examines the conceptual overlap between design and the strategic cognition perspective, which considers cognitive processes and structures involved in strategic decision making, particularly the phenomenon of sensemaking. It is primarily a theoretical exploration, but draws on two short testimonies from designers. The specific conceptual connection between design practice and strategic cognition theory is potentially valuable to business leaders and managers involved with innovation, design management and strategic decisions. Preliminary findings suggest sensemaking activities by designers generate innovative future concepts with far-reaching strategic implications; designed artifacts aid sensemaking and sensegiving by management in exploring new business opportunities and directions. This paper is an early draft of a fuller account to be published in 2013 (AIEDAM Special Issue, Spring 2013, Vol.27, No.2, Studying and Supporting Design Communication, Edited by: Maaike Kleinsmann & Anja Maier)

Performative ontologies. Sociomaterial approaches to researching adult education and lifelong learning

Sociomaterial approaches to researching education, such as those generated by actornetwork theory and complexity theory, have been growing in significance in recent years, both theoretically and methodologically. Such approaches are based upon a performative ontology rather than the more characteristic representational epistemology that informs much research. In this article, we outline certain aspects of sociomaterial sensibilities in researching education, and some of the uptakes on issues related to the education of adults. We further suggest some possibilities emerging for adult education and lifelong learning researchers from taking up such theories and methodologies. (DIPF/Orig.