Learning by Making

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Collaborative Design Practices in Technology Mediated Learning

The present article examines how practices of computersupported collaborative designing may be implemented in an elementary classroom. We present a case study in which 12-year-old students engaged in architectural design under the guidance of their teacher and a professional designer. The students were engaged in all aspects of design processes, such as analysing the design of existing houses, analysing the building site, determining building volume, design facades, and floor plans; they formed seven teams, each of which had its own house to design. The data-analysis relied on the Knowledge Forum database, consisting of students’ notes, pictures, sketches, and photos. The participants’ quantitative contributions to the database were analyzed with Analytic ToolKit which underlies Knowledge Forum. A qualitative content analysis was performed to the KF notes produced by the student teams; a theory and data-driven approach for categorizing the content of the notes was employed. The results revealed that the student teams considered various design constraints and familiarized themselves with their own building site and regulations regarding their permitted building volume. They constructed environmental models and scale models, and made the calculations of gross floor volume; scale drawings were inserted to KF’s Environmental Model view as pictures and texts. The results indicated that parallel working with conceptual (design ideas) and material artefacts (architectural models, prototypes of apartments, figures) supported one another. The intent was that involving students in modeling practices would help them build domain expertise, epistemological understanding, and skills to create and evaluate knowledge. Further, implications for designing technology-mediated collaborative design processes are discussed

Kollektiivinen luovuus, yhteisöllinen oppiminen ja itsensä ylittäminen

Artikkelin tarkoituksena on kiteyttää oppimistieteellisen tutkimuksen tuloksia suhteessa tulevaisuuden tietoa luovan yhteiskunnan asettamiin oppimisen ja asiantuntijuuden haasteisiin. Missä määrin on mahdollista venyä sellaisten älyllisten ja luovien haasteiden kohtaamiseen, joiden perinteisesti oletettiin edellyttävän poikkeuksellisia kykyjä ja lahjoja. Akateeminen itseluottamus on koetuksella, koska lähes jokaiselta ihmiseltä vaaditaan sellaisten asioiden oppimista elämänsä aikana, joiden oppimista hän ei ehkä pitänyt itselleen lainkaan mahdollisena. Kun oppijalle tarjoutuu mahdollisuus oppia vaativia taitoja yhteisöllisen osallistumisen välityksellä, hän saa pääsyn asiantuntijakulttuurin kiteytyneisiin kulttuurisen oppimisen kokemuksiin ja hänelle tarjotaan kehittyvään taidontasoonsa suhteutettua ja räätälöityä tukea, hän voi oppia lähes mitä tahansa. Pitkäaikainen intensiivinen osallistuminen tiedonluomisen projekteihin kasvattaa yksilöä asteittain ylivoimaisten haasteiden kohtaamiseen. Koska suurimmat oppimisen haasteet liittyvät ihmisen minuuteen, inhimillisten vahvuuksien sosiaalisella tunnustamisella on itsensä ylittämisen kannalta kriittinen merkitys. Kaiken kaikkiaan oppimistutkimus tarjoaa myönteisen kuvan ihmisen oppimisen ja kehityksen mahdollisuuksista.Peer reviewe

Keksivä oppiminen : Teoreettiset perusteet

This chapter introduces a knowledge-creating learning framework that provides the theoretical foundation of invention pedagogy. Invention projects involve the deliberate pursuit of open-ended invention challenges through complex, iterative, and emergent processes. Because the envisioned epistemic objects, specific process stages, relevant knowledge, and final productions are not known at the beginning but are gradually determined through self-organized personal and collaborative efforts, the invention process tends to be nonlinear in nature. Pedagogic guidance, scaffolding, and orchestration of invention pedagogy require that both students and teachers learn to cope productively with uncertainty, improvise to solve open-ended problems, develop novel skills and competencies, and end up with objects and artifacts that may not have been foreseen—or even foreseeable—in the beginning. Teachers and their teams must learn to design and orchestrate invention processes, guide nonlinear pedagogic processes, and cultivate associated professional practices. The chapter examines theoretical background, epistemic objects, epistemic practices, and orchestration processes involved in invention processes.Peer reviewe

Bringing Practices of Co-Design and Making to Basic Education

The purpose of this study was to analyze five student teams’ (Grade 7) co-design processes that involved using traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing, designing, and making complex artifacts. A methodological framework for analyzing makercentered learning, by relying on ethnographic video data and participant observations, was developed. The study examined the extent to which young students are able to productively participate in creative design and making activities. The results indicated that four of the five student teams successfully engaged in the co-invention processes. The importance of a shared epistemic object of co-design was prominent on every team. Some teams experienced challenges in organizing collaborative processes and the team size appeared to have a significant effect in this regard. The successful teams were able to take on complex and multifaceted epistemic and fabrication-related challengesPeer reviewe

Line by line, part by part : collaborative sketching for designing

While sketching has an established role in professional design, its benefits and role in design education are subjects that invite research and opinions. We investigated how undergraduates studying to become design educators and textile teachers used sketching to generate and develop design solutions in a collaborative setting. The students were given an authentic design assignment involving three detailed tasks, one of which was 2D visualisation by sketching. Adopting a micro-analytical approach, we analysed the video-recorded visualisation session to understand how teams used sketching to collaborate and to generate and develop design solutions. To that end, we set three research questions: (1) What ways of collaborative working are reflected in actions of sketching? (2) In what ways do sequences of collaborative sketching contribute to designing? (3) What kinds of collaborative sequences of sketching advance designing? Our analysis identified three collaborative ways of sketching (co-ordinated, collective and disclosed) and confirmed that sketching is an important facilitator of mutual appropriation, adaption and adoption. Next, we identified three ways of contributing to designing, as well as three functions and six capacities for advancing designing. Our analysis shows that sketching can lead to invaluable advances in designing, although each team had its own way of using and benefiting from sketching. We further consider that the teams' diverse sketching processes and rich content owed, at least in part, to the task structure and imposed constraints. We continue to see sketching as an important design tool, one among many.Peer reviewe

Hands on Design : Comparing the use of sketching and gesturing in collaborative designing

This study explored the remaining potential of gestures as creative tools for collaborative designing. We compared novice designers' use of sketching against gesturing in early ideation and rough visualisation. To preserve the kinesic character of gestures, we developed a detailed video analysis method, which revealed that the majority of sketching and gesturing was complementary to speech. Sketching was important for defining complicated structures, while gesturing was frequently used for all aspects of designing. Moreover, we identified that the level of collaboration – the level and immediacy of sharing one's ideas for others – is an important factor. As an underrepresented phenomenon in the design literature, the meaning of collaboration unearthed here leads to unmistakable conclusions regarding the nature of gesturing, to the process of learning design, and to the use of design tools. Most notably, gesturing offers a complementary creative dimension - kinaesthetic thinking - which invites us to communicate and share instantaneously.Peer reviewe

Design Thinking in Elementary Students’ Collaborative Lamp Designing Process

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Balancing structure and flexibility : Teacher’s orchestration in collaborative long-term inquiry

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Bringing maker practices to school : tracing discursive and materially mediated aspects of student teams' collaborative making processes

The present investigation aimed to analyze the collaborative making processes and ways of organizing collaboration processes of five student teams. As a part of regular school work, the seventh-grade students were engaged in the use of traditional and digital fabrication technologies for inventing, designing, and making artifacts. To analyze complex, longitudinal collaborative making processes, we developed the visual Making-Process-Rug video analysis method, which enabled tracing intertwined with social-discursive and materially mediated making processes and zoomed in on the teams' efforts to organize their collaborative processes. The results indicated that four of the five teams were able to take on multifaceted epistemic and fabrication-related challenges and come up with novel co-inventions. The successful teams' social-discursive and embodied making actions supported each another. These teams dealt with the complexity of invention challenges by spending a great deal of their time in model making and digital experimentation, and their making process progressed iteratively. The development of adequate co-invention and well-organized collaboration processes appeared to be anchored in the team's shared epistemic object.Peer reviewe