The student-produced electronic portfolio in craft education

The authors studied primary school students’ experiences of using an electronic portfolio in their craft education over four years. A stimulated recall interview was applied to collect user experiences and qualitative content analysis to analyse the collected data. The results indicate that the electronic portfolio was experienced as a multipurpose tool to support learning. It makes the learning process visible and in that way helps focus on and improves the quality of learning. © ISLS.Peer reviewe

Collaborative Design Work in Technology Education

Peer reviewe

An exploratory study into everyday problem solving in the design process of medical devices

We investigated accounts of how individuals in public and private organisations operating in the medical device industry use different forms of capital (social e.g. networks and cultural e.g. knowledge) to solve design based problems. We define capital as resources embedded in social networks, knowledge or economic wealth (Bourdieu, 1986). Data were collected from interviews and written diaries from individuals involved in the design process of medical devices using interpretative analysis. Inferences made from our analyses suggested that individuals working in organisations who successfully solve problems may do so by using both social and cultural capital and so may be more likely to engage in innovative activity than others. These exploratory findings suggest workers in large organisations may have the capability to use a greater level of in-house social and cultural capital, whereas those in smaller organisations may be more reliant on high levels of social capital in order to ‘tap into’ cultural capital beyond organisational boundaries

Creating Sources of Inspiration through eCollage, the FEA Model, and a Future Visioning Concept Design Project

This article presents an approach to creating sources of inspiration through a collabora-tive concept design that was developed and observed during a future visioning concept design project concerning the theme of “performance wear,” which was conducted at the University of Helsinki for second-year textile student teachers. During the project, the stu-dents created future scenarios; used the functional, expressive, and aesthetic (FEA) con-sumer needs model for apparel design (Lamb and Kallal in Cloth Text Res J 10(2):42–47, 1992) when considering what performance wear could be like in a future scenario; and cre-ated digital collages (eCollages) to present their concepts. In the course that followed the concept design project, the students designed and made actual clothes using the concepts developed during the concept design project as one of their sources of inspiration. The outcomes of the process are described in this article through four research questions: (1) What type of future scenarios did the teams create, what types of eCollages did the teams make, and how did the teams use information and communication technologies (ICT) in their collages? (2) How did the use of eCollages enrich the concept presentations? (3) How were the three dimensions of the FEA model utilized and presented in the eCollages and team presentations? (4) How did the future visions of the concepts and the eCollages act as sources of inspiration in the students’ clothing designs? Five of the six teams studied created a global future scenario that envisioned the world as a dystopia. The high level of technical and visual executions of all the eCollages was surprising. The ECollages played an important role in every team presentation and enriched them considerably. The FEA model, on the other hand, both provided a supporting framework for the concepts and guided the students to direct their attention to apparel within their future scenarios, as well as to consider different dimensions of it. The concepts especially inspired students to create aesthetic elements to their design and to consider the expressiveness and functionality of the garments from the concept’s perspective. The students also challenged themselves to find technical solutions to design ideas they created through being inspired by the concepts. Furthermore, the students often described gaining inspiration from the story or atmosphere of the concept or other non-visual elements of it, and thereby it seems that our approach indeed succeeded in promoting multi-sensory inspiration.Peer reviewe

Epistemic mediation, chronotope, and expansive knowledge practices

In this poster we examine the role of epistemic mediation in technology-mediated collaborative learning. We argue that participants in technology-mediated learning deal with amplified, temporally integrated and spatially merged semiotic resources, constituting specific chronotopes. The cultivation of such chronotopes, characterized by the creation of epistemic artifacts that crystallize cognitive processes and re-mediate activity, requires expansive learning efforts that transform the entire activity system. Investigation of such chronotopes seems a promising line of inquiry in CSCL. © ISLS

Strengthening the conceptual foundations of knowledge building theory and pedagogy

The term "knowledge building," introduced in the late 1980s, has gradually acquired a distinctive meaning within the family of constructivist approaches in education. It refers to the creation of knowledge as a public good. It represents a positive answer to questions raised in a 1994 paper: "Can a school class, as a collective, have the goal of understanding gravity or electricity? Can it sustain progress toward this goal even though individual members of the class may flag in their efforts or go off on tangents? Can one speak of the class-again, considered as a community, not as a mere collection of individuals-achieving an understanding that is not merely a tabulation of what the individual students understand?" New concepts such as Hakkarainen's "epistemic mediation," Stahl's "group cognition," Scardamalia and Bereiter's "improvable ideas" and their distinction between "belief mode" and "design mode" offer insight into how community advances in understanding are achievable