The Learning Sciences at Penn State Talk series is an occasional series of talks sponsored by the dolcelab (Design Of Learning, Collaboration, & Experience), and is hosted by Dr. Chris Hoadley, College of Education, and College of IST.
April 17, 2006, Deborah Tatar, Virginia Tech. (3:30-5:00pm, Cybertorium, IST Bldg.) (flyer)
Playground Games and the Dissemination of Control in Computing and Learning
Teachers organize classroom activities so that control can pass to appropriate parties easily in both plan-full and emergent ways that aid the learning process. Yet when computer scientists go to implement classroom support systems, their first thought often appears to be to create a tightly controlled hierarchy in which the teacher is continually necessary for "inertial guidance", that is, promoting, evaluating and authorizing every step for every student. Few current examples exist of distributed control in computation that rise to a level of demonstration understandable by non- programmers, nor do programmers really understand what kinds of control are negotiable and what must be fixed in classroom contexts. Additionally, there is little readily available imagery to describe the properties that systems with distributed controlled ought to or could have.
Sept. 25, 2005, Karin Danielsson, Umeå University, Sweden (12-1pm, 201A IST Bldg.) (flyer)
Users as participants in real-life design projects: Designing educational computer games with and for teenagers
This seminar includes a brief introduction of the research performed at the department of Informatics at Umeå University. And continues to report on three exploratory studies, the aim of which was to practically employing Participatory Design concepts and methods during design of learning environments. The first study presents a research project where the objective was to design and implement a mobile learning environmentfor off-campus students within higher education, with good or very good knowledge of personal technologies. The data presented is generated from a longitudinal study, where our work since 2000 has been directed towards the understanding of mobile technologies and their use in the social context of distance learning. Results gathered from this project lay the foundation for further studies, performed within short-time real-life design projects. The objective in the later studies was to address challenges when applying PD in commercial product development projects. The studies include design of entertaining educational computer games. First, during the spring of 2004, an educational web-based game was developed for the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company, with the aim to encourage teenagers to reflect upon gender aspects in society. Second, during winter 2004/2005 a web based educational computer game was developed for the Swedish Parliament. The aim of the game was to educate teenagers of the work performed by the Swedish parliament. Experiences from these projects will be presented during the seminar.
Jul. 18, 2005, Yael Kali & Tamar Ronen Fuhrmann, Technion, Israel
The Design Principles Database: Bridging Between Research and Design
Traditional reports about design efforts in educational technology usually focus on successful artifacts rather than on lessons learned throughout the design process. Additionally, such reports lack accessibility to a variety of concrete examples organized in a communicable and systematic manner.
The online Design Principles Database was developed as an infrastructure for educational software designers to publish, connect, discuss and review design ideas. It has the potential of enabling designers to build on the successes and failures of others rather than reinventing solutions that others have struggled to develop. The database is intended to be built by and serve the community of designers. We also envision other audiences such as teachers and curriculum developers customizing and tailoring existing instructional materials, as well as graduate students learning about, and contributing to the design field.
Currently, Design Principles have been contributed to the database by leading designers from various institutions (e.g. University of California, Berkeley, Concord Consortium, Georgia-Tech, Northwestern University, University of Michigan, North Carolina State University, Indiana University, Stanford University, Cornell University, Vanderbilt University, and SRI).
The talk will focus on studies that explore the use of the database by experienced designers, as well as by graduate students who are learning how to design educational software.
Oct. 14, 2004, Wim Jochems & Rob Koper, Open University of the Netherlands
Jochems slides |
Koper slides |
Koper paper
Mar. 23, 2004, Nikol Rummel, University of Freiburg
Copyright © 2004-5 Christopher Hoadley. Last updated 25 Sep 2005.