Aalborg Universitet

PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING FOR THE 21st CENTURY

New Practices and Learning Environments
Christiansen, Ellen Tove; Kuure, Leena; Mørch, Anders; Lindström, Berner

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2013

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Christiansen, E. T., Kuure, L., Mørch, A., & Lindström, B. (Eds.) (2013). PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING FOR
THE 21st CENTURY: New Practices and Learning Environments. (1 ed.) Aalborg Universitetsforlag.

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 PROBLEM-BASED
LEARNING FOR
THE 21st CENTURY
Edited by
Ellen Christiansen
Leena Kuure
Anders Mørch &
Berner Lindström
PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING
FOR THE 21st CENTURY
NEW PRACTICES AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Edited by
Ellen Christiansen
Leena Kuure
Anders Mørch &
Berner Lindström

AALBORG UNIVERSITY PRESS

PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING FOR THE 21st CENTURY
New Practices and Learning Environments

Edited by Ellen Christiansen, Leena Kuure, Anders Mørch &

Berner Lindström

1. Edition, Open Access publication

© The authors and Aalborg University Press, 2013

Layout: Hofdamerne ApS // Cecilie von Haffner & Lea Rathnov

ISBN: 978-87-7112-117-9

Published by:
Aalborg University Press
Skjernvej 4A, 2nd floor
9220 Aalborg
Denmark
Phone: (+45) 99407140
[email protected]
forlag.aau.dk

This publication is financially supported by Nordforsk funded project, contract 28401,

‘Teaching Problem-Based Learning in virtual environments’.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permis-
sion in writing from the publishers, except for reviews and short excerpts in scholarly publica-
tions.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

General introduction 5
Ellen Christiansen, Leena Kuure, Anders Mørch & Berner Lindström

PART I: DESIGNING FOR LEARNING

1 Supporting self-directed learning with cultures of

participation in collaborative learning environments 15
Gerhard Fischer

2 Language learning as dialogue and participation 51

Hannele Dufva

3 Designing for sustainable pedagogical development

in higher education language teaching 73
Juha Jalkanen & Peppi Taalas

4 Designing problem-based learning in virtual learning

environments – Positioning teachers as competent
practitioners and designers 101
Thomas Ryberg

5 Common conceptions of mobile phones in school settings 129

Torbjörn Ott

PART II: CASE STUDIES IN TEACHING

6 Virtual labs as context for learning

– continuities and contingencies in student activities 161
Emma Petersson, Annika Lantz-Andersson & Roger Säljö

7 Futures for language learning and teaching practices 191

Linda Bradley & Sylvi Vigmo
8 Social bookmarking and tagging in a biology class 211
Niklas Karlsson, Petter Karlström, Ola Knutsson
& Berner Lindström

9 Teaching PBL with Web 2.0

– a case study of possibilities and conflicts 235
Nina Bonderup Dohn & Lillian Buus

10 Guiding towards genuine participation

– language learning and new technologies 259
Leena Kuure, Tiina Keisanen & Maritta Riekki

PART III: EXTENDING THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

11 Bridging modes of learning in a virtual learning environment 285

Kevin Mogensen, Janne Gleerup, Simon B. Heilesen
& Anders Siig Andersen

12 Problem-based learning and mutual development in software

product development 307
Renate Andersen & Anders I. Mørch

13 Musically skilled gamers’ use and expressions of knowledge

of music and music making when playing Guitar Hero 337
Jens Ideland

14 Problem-based learning as a double driver for learning

– for students and external partners 265
Marianne Lykke & Tom Nyvang

Authors 393
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Ellen Christiansen, Leena Kuure, Anders Mørch & Berner Lindström

The title of this book, Problem-Based Learning for the 21st Century: New
Practices and Learning Environments, announces a challenge that has
shaken up the world of education since the advent of the Internet: Ed-
ucation has become available to everyone with Internet access and the
ability to read and write, and the cultural and personal inclination to do
so – anywhere, anytime. Monopolies and control systems will gradually
break down while new ones are emerging. Moreover, this is experienced
by all teachers on a day-to-day basis in a variety of ways. This book is
about the struggle of teachers to keep up with and build new practices
and, last but not least, to bring forth actual teacher experience reflected
through the lens of problem-based learning.
From 2010–2012, a Nordforsk-funded network of researchers called
Teaching problem-based learning in virtual environments with participants
from fourteen universities in four Nordic countries has been collaborat-
ing to exchange experiences and find ways to cope with the challenges. At
five seminars, we shared knowledge about teachers’ work conditions and
self-management in relation to Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Vir-
tual Learning Environments (VLEs). The network dubbed itself SCANDLE
(Scandinavian Approach to the Design of Learning Environments).
This edited volume marks the outcome of our work at the seminars,
informed by our discussions and the decisions we made. It draws together
a collection of empirical studies and design initiatives in problem-based
learning in virtual and collaborative learning environments. The cases are
from within and outside formal educational settings, and as such repre-

5
sent and to some extent promote various stages in the life-long learning
process of individuals.
The book as a whole is a multidisciplinary effort, and the chapters
draw on multidisciplinary research. For example, many of the design ini-
tiatives build on the ideals of the ‘Scandinavian approach’ to information
system development and user-centred design, focusing on user participa-
tion in design, quality outcomes, and prototyping (iterative design with
end-user feedback (Greenbaum & Kyng, 1991). The researchers give ex-
amples of how the pedagogy of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) has been
adopted and extended in different ways, e.g., by making use of new tech-
nologies and social media. Some of the cases transcend the dichotomy of
formal and informal learning by making use of technology platforms for
participation that apply in multiple contexts (school, work, and leisure to
name the most prominent appearing in our studies).
PBL is not a new pedagogy or research area. The development of
this paradigm has gone on for more than 40 years. It is a student-centred
pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience
of collaborative problem solving, i.e., reaching a solution or clarifying a
problem by interacting with peers and teachers. Students learn strategies
for critical thinking, information seeking, and knowledge sharing. They
acquire shared knowledge in personally meaningful ways. The goals of
PBL are to help the students develop flexible knowledge, problem iden-
tification and problem-solving skills, self-directed learning, and effective
collaboration skills (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Working in groups, students
identify what they already know, what they need to know, and how and
where to access new information that may lead to the resolution of the
problem. The role of the instructor is not to teach a predefined and fixed
curriculum, but to facilitate learning by supporting, guiding, and mon-
itoring the learning process. PBL represents a paradigm shift from tradi-
tional teaching and learning philosophy (Hung, 2011), which is more
often lecture based. The methods and concepts for teaching PBL dif-
fer from traditional classroom-based teaching, being more in line with
case-based instruction in professional education and workplaces, e.g., in
business and medicine (Schmidt, Rotgans & Yew, 2011). However, most
of the research in PBL has been carried out in educational institutions
(Barrett & Moore, 2010). Survey studies of PBL have identified different

6
ways of setting up and running problem-based learning courses using
technology in a variety of ways (Savin-Baden & Wilke, 2006), and ap-
plying PBL across disciplines and countries. Despite this, PBL researchers
have focused mainly on educational settings and comparing f2f to online
PBL. This book provides examples from multiple contexts for problem-
based learning, such as informal (out of school) settings and the use of
web-based technologies to mediate PBL.
The approaches to PBL presented in this volume show a new direc-
tion for the development of PBL pedagogy: from small-group work with-
in a classroom to larger and more open-ended communities of inquiry
that sometimes begin within, extend beyond, and sometimes ‘spin-off,’
from the classroom. Jenkins (2007) predicted the trend of ‘extending the
classroom’ with the notion of ‘participatory culture’ that he saw would
force educators to support the development of a new set of social skills
and cultural competencies for twenty-first-century education. The most
important of these were the abilities to carry out play, simulation, per-
formance, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective
intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, and nego-
tiation (Jenkins, 2007). The major objective of teaching and learning
in this environment is to foster a culture in which learners have the op-
portunity to actively participate in open-ended problem solving. These
cultures of participation (Fischer, 2011) take into account that problems
have no stopping rules and that problem solvers cannot aim at optimal
solutions. Instead, they need to settle for satisficing solutions (Simon,
1996), which means they should remain open and be allowed to devel-
op over time (e.g., not constrained by fixed class hours). Searching for
information and expertise via the Internet in conjunction with problem
solving with peers, is one example of the approach to the PBL we profile
(Mørch, 2013).
The issues of PBL we have identified have been the subject of joint
scrutiny and discussions at five seminars in the SCANDLE Network 2010-
12. At the Aalborg kick-off seminar, we mapped out the landscape of
teaching problem-based learning in virtual environments in the Nordic coun-
tries; at the Oslo seminar the theme was Scaffolding critical reflection, where-
as at the Gothenburg seminar we discussed the Scandinavian approach to
PBL. In Jyväskylä, we asked ourselves: Can we design futures for participa-

7
tion and learning? Finally, in the concluding seminar in Copenhagen, we
discussed the position of Teaching analytics.
This book is divided into three parts. The first asks what digital ped-
agogy is and how to design for it. The second part reports from a variety
of case studies within education, using innovative mediating technology
or design initiatives. The third part describes ways to ‘extend’ the learning
environments beyond formal educational settings. Although presented
separately and sequentially, several of the chapters address share concerns
and interweave themes and material from other parts and chapters.
Designing ways of teaching within the new, collaborative, learning
environments has not yet been established as part of the curriculum in
most teachers’ professional training (i.e., digital pedagogy); teachers have
to learn it as they go along. To formalize a digital pedagogy, we need
concepts, procedures, and ways to conceptualize the problems being ad-
dressed. In order to do this, teachers need a community in which they
can reflect and discuss the dramatic changes we are all facing, and the
contributions in Part I of the book provide input for this discussion.
Gerhard Fischer examines first different collaborative learning environ-
ments, portraying the challenges and opportunities they have revealed
for the future. The chapter aims at transcending narrow frameworks
for learning, directing focus towards new and different kinds of learn-
ing opportunities. Hannele Dufva discusses the notions of language and
learning, arguing for a holistic perspective. She also speaks for distribut-
ed classrooms that would allow the learners’ trajectories to reach across
informal and formal contexts. Juha Jalkanen and Peppi Taalas show how
teachers may also be designers when challenged to employ digital learn-
ing environments. They conceptualize this practice so that other teachers
in the same situation can prepare themselves for a similar experience.
In the next chapter, Thomas Ryberg presents the CoED method, which
has successfully helped groups of teachers design curricula in new digital
learning environments. This is accomplished by helping them develop a
shared language for change of practice. Finally, Torbjörn Ott’s analysis of
the public debate around the adoption of digital technologies in educa-
tion in Sweden creates a picture of the multivoicedness of this debate in
the Nordic countries, which can enable teachers to better confront the
media storms with which they are faced in the public debate.

8
 Part II of the book introduces different case studies in teaching. The
emergence of new technologies and widened access to social media has
increased the affordances of communication and collaboration technolo-
gies. Emma Petersson, Annika Lantz-Andersson, and Roger Säljö explore
critically virtual labs as a context for learning about ocean acidification.
They highlight the nature of the activities applied in the lab as well as
the role of the teacher as essential in identifying opportunities for learn-
ing. Three of the chapters in the second part highlight the importance
of considering pedagogic thinking among current teachers or teachers
to be. Linda Bradley and Sylvi Vigmo discuss the blurring of traditional
borderlines between learning sites and how this may transform the ways
of language learning. They discuss how the practices of everyday life in
terms of the use of digital media and the practices of education in school
do not easily meet. In their chapter, Nina Bonderop Dohn and Lillian
Buus draw upon an extended version of The Collaborative E-learning De-
sign Method (CoED) in order to address the issue of empowering teach-
ers to carry out action research and develop their understanding of the
challenges and potentials of Web 2.0 in PBL settings. Leena Kuure, Tiina
Keisanen, and Maritta Riekki likewise focus on a participatory project in
guiding language students to anticipate language learning with new tech-
nologies and in envisioning their own changing roles as teachers. Further-
more, in their case study on social bookmarking and tagging in a biology
class, Niklas Karlsson, Petter Karlström, Ola Knutsson, and Berner Lind-
ström show how digital media may be applied in the classroom to bridge
the gap between the learners’ everyday thinking and scientific definitions.
They propose that the procedure of tagging enables creation of boundary
objects, where students’ understanding and scientific definitions meet.
Part III of the book deals with extending the learning environment
and addresses unconventional educational settings. The three chapters
suggest the contours of problem-based learning in the ‘wild’. The chap-
ter by Kevin Mogensen, Janne Gleerup, Simon B. Heilesen, and An-
ders Siig Andersen discusses bridging formal and informal learning,
joining learning by instruction in school and learning by apprenticeship
in companies. The authors propose bridging the two learning environ-
ments with a user-driven innovation model, mediated by a web-based
learning environment. The process of user-driven innovation involves

9
extensive participation and interaction of apprentices, teachers, masters,
journeymen, and researchers. In the following chapter, Renate Andersen
and Anders Mørch adopt a similar model, to which they refer as mutual
development. This depicts a relationship between two communities of
practice, or, alternatively, two activity systems, with respect to commer-
cial products and services, namely end users (customers) and professional
developers. Mutual development is a model for how this interaction can
occur. It is based on a case study of customer-initiated software product
development, illustrated by the analysis of interview data with developers
and end users. Next, Jens Ideland describes a purely self-directed learning
environment, Guitar Hero, which is a ‘hands on’, engaging, game-like
learning environment for playing the chords of a guitar to accompany
a rock music tune. This type of environment shows, first of all, the im-
portance of engaging the learner, of identifying tasks that are motivating
him. Secondly, when this has been accomplished, new opportunities for
learning emerge and their design can be addressed. In the final chapter,
Marianne Lykke and Tom Nyvang address PBL in an organizational set-
ting, i.e., when the students’ learning revolves around real-life problems
provided by organizations outside the university. They discuss how re-
al-world problems can provide opportunities for learning. The goal of the
chapter is to provide a bridge from university to industry by researching
how identical problems are treated in the two different contexts.

10
References
Barrett, T., & Moore, S. (2010). New approaches to problem-based learn-
ing: Revitalizing your practice in higher education. London: Rout-
ledge.

Fischer, G. (2011). Understanding, fostering, and supporting cultures of

participation. Interactions, 18, 3 (May 2011), 42-53.

Greenbaum, J., & Kyng, M. Eds. (1991). Design at work: Cooperative de-
sign of computer systems. Hillsdale, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum Associates.

Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2004). Problem-based learning: What and how do

students learn? Educational Psychology Review 16 (3): 235–266.

Hung, W. (2011). Theory to reality: A few issues in implementing prob-

lem-based learning. Educational Technology Research and Develop-
ment 59 (4), 529–552.

Jenkins, H. (2007). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture:

Media education for the 21st century (Part Two). Nordic Journal of
Digital Literacy 2, 97-112.

Mørch, A.I. (2013). Information seeking and collaborative knowledge

creation: Exploring collaborative learning in customer service work and
software product development. Computer supported collaborative
learning at the workplace. Eds. S.P. Goggins, I. Jahnke, & V. Wulf. New
York: Springer, 293-313.

Savin-Baden, M., & Wilke, K. (2006). Problem-based learning online.

Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Schmidt, H.G, Rotgans, J.I., & Yew, E.H.J. (2011). The process of prob-
lem-based learning: what works and why. Medical Education 45 (8),
792–8.

Simon, H.A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial. Third edition. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press.

11
 PART I

DESIGNING FOR LEARNING

SUPPORTING SELF-DIRECTED
LEARNING WITH CULTURES OF
PARTICIPATION IN COLLABORATIVE
LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Gerhard Fischer

Introduction
Different kinds of problems require different kinds of learning approach-
es and different socio-technical environments to support them. Outside
the classroom, much learning and problem solving takes place as indi-
viduals explore personally meaningful problems and engage with each
other in collaborative activities while making extensive use of media and
technologies. Many past educational systems have been built on the as-
sumption that teaching is necessary for learning to occur (Thomas &
Brown, 2011); that teaching and learning are inherently linked (Wenger,
1998); and that a curriculum can and should be developed to create a cul-
tural literacy (Hirsch, 1988). In such a culture, teachers taught learners
about the world and learning was conceptualized as an isolated process
of information transmission and absorption. It ignored the fact that in
today’s world, more and more knowledge, especially advanced knowl-
edge, is acquired well past the age of formal schooling, and in many situ-
ations through educational processes that do not center on the traditional
school (Illich, 1971).
This paper focuses on different perspectives about learning. Rich
landscapes of learning are needed to cope with complex, systemic prob-
lems. They provide a theoretical framework to argue for the importance
of self-directed learning and cultures of participation in which all learners
can not only obtain information but can also actively contribute informa-
tion. To support these approaches, collaborative learning environments
are needed because outside the classroom, much learning and problem

15
framing and solving takes places as individuals engage with each other
and use resources and tools that are available in the surrounding environ-
ment (Resnick, 1987).

Problems and Engagement: Making Learning a Part of Life

The twenty-first century brings with it a large collection of problems and
challenges: environmental degradation, energy sustainability, economic
disparity, and the disappearance of local cultures in the age of globaliza-
tion, to name just a few. Can ‘ordinary’ people do more about addressing
these problems than reading about them in newspapers and online? Is
voting for a handful of candidates every few years the ultimate in public
participation?
Richer landscapes for learning creating new theoretical frameworks
are needed to cope with major problems our societies are facing today
including:

»»problems occurring in the context of idiosyncratic, personally

meaningful activities in which people take control of their own
learning, decide what would be valuable to them and what they
want to learn (illustrated by the two narratives below);

»»problems of a magnitude which individuals and even large teams

cannot solve (example: to model all buildings in the world in
3-D as addressed by Google SketchUp and 3D Warehouse; see
the Examples Section)

»»problems of a systemic nature requiring the collaboration of many

different minds from a variety of backgrounds (example: urban
planning problems as addressed by the Envisionment and Dis-
covery Collaboratory; see the Examples Section);

»»problems being poorly understood and ill-defined and therefore

requiring the involvement of the owners of these problems,
because they cannot be delegated to others (example: software
design problems as tackled by the open source software devel-
opments); and

16
 »»problems modeling changing and unique worlds being depen-
dent on open, living information repositories and tools (exam-
ple: courses-as-seeds; see the Examples section)

The following two narratives illustrate two specific activities in idiosyncrat-

ic areas of interest in which learners want to learn rather than have to learn.

Narrative 1: Costume Play (Cosplay)

Shea is a young adult who has developed a deep interest in ‘Cosplay’, a
type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accesso-
ries to represent a specific character or idea. Characters are often drawn
from popular fiction in Japan, but recent trends have included American
cartoons and science fiction, as well as other pop culture and role play.
Shea spends a large amount of her free time working with a group of
friends designing and sewing their own costumes. Much of their effort
is focused on preparation for special events such as Nan Desu Kan, an
annual anime convention (which has grown from 200 attendees in 1997
to 21,000 in 2010; see http://ndkdenver.org/info). These events provide
an opportunity to show off participants’ work and creativity as well as to
socialize with and gain inspiration from other Cosplayers, ranging from
those who purchase their costumes to those who also design and create
their own garb.
Shea’s interest began when she was a preteen. Her social group be-
came interested in anime, viewing Sailor Moon videos and subsequently
role playing Sailor Moon characters. This led to other activities, such
as drawing new characters and costumes and writing their own stories.
Shea’s own interest in writing grew through these activities, with the ad-
ditional impact of her interest in history that expanded as she strove to
place some of her fictional stories into specific historical contexts and
wanted to provide as much historical accuracy as possible.
During college, Shea and her friends decided to combine her sewing
skills and their design/sketching skills to create their own costumes, be-
ginning with simple attempts for their first Nan Desu Kan. In subsequent
years, much more elaborate efforts evolved into a year-round activity with
a weekly sewing night. To avoid being overburdened with sewing, espe-
cially as additional members joined the group, Shea taught her friends

17
how to sew their own costumes, and she migrated to more of an ad-
visory role on many of the individual projects. Additionally, resources
for Cosplay activities include forums at http://cosplay.com and extensive
information on sewing techniques at numerous Web locations. Much
information is learned and shared at the peer level as well as through local
resources, such as sewing and hobby stores.

Narrative 2: Rocket Construction

October Sky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Sky) is an interest-
ing film based on a true story illustrating many aspects of self-directed
learning: a personally motivating event (seeing the Sputnik in the sky)
serves as a source of interest in rockets and space science for boys in a
coal mining town. The group pursues this interest and eventually wins
the top prize at a national science fair. For all members of the group, this
engagement represents a life-changing experience.
What additional opportunities would exist today to lower the
threshold that supports such engagement? The four boys would be able
to explore a wide variety of choices and tools for learning: the available
courses, lectures, or movies on sites such as iTunes U, Udacity.com, or
the Khan Academy; introductory college courses in astronomy offered
on OpenCourseWare sites; sites such as Instructables.com offering ideas
about building and operating a rocket; articles on Wikipedia or in books
recommended by the readers at Amazon.com; or niche communities that
share their interests.
Even though these resources are available today, the lack of guid-
ance, mentoring, or organization of learning may not result in many
successful learning outcomes, an issue briefly elaborated upon further in
the chapter, as the trade-off between support and freedom of choice in
learning activities.

Rich Landscapes for Learning

As the demands for learning undergo a period of profound transforma-
tion, there is a need for exploring innovative multidimensional aspects of
learning. Figure 1 provides an overview of the multidimensional aspects
of learning followed by a brief description of the essential issues related
to the different aspects.

18
 Fig. 1. Multidimensional Aspects of Learning

Who Learns: People at different stages. Learners may be students in

different grades and institutions (ranging from K-12 to university educa-
tion); persons working in industry; or curious citizens attempting to un-
derstand more about the world surrounding them. Some of the learners
may be beginners, in which case general and uniform introductory cours-
es may serve them well. Other learners may have a very rich knowledge
background and very specific objectives requiring more individualized
instruction.

Why Learn: Different Objectives. Some people learn because they need
to pass a test or fulfill the requirements of a course in school or universi-
ty; others learn because they are passionate about some activity (Collins
& Halverson, 2009) as illustrated by the two narratives in the previous
section.

What to Learn: Exploring Personally Meaningful Problems and Ac-

quiring Basic Skills and Core Competencies. In formal learning en-

19
vironments, students’ learning is determined to a large extent by a cur-
riculum. Learners encounter few opportunities to gain experiences by
exploring personally meaningful problems that need to be identified and
framed. The engagement with personally meaningful problems should
be complemented with learning opportunities to acquire the basic skills
and core competencies for the twenty-first century (Collins et al., 2014).
These competencies do not consist primarily of learning and memorizing
facts, but should be focused on 1) acquiring and using information; 2)
identifying, organizing, planning, and allocating resources; 3) collaborat-
ing with others; and 4) working with a variety of technologies.

How to Learn: Learning in Different Ways. Learning in today’s world

must be conceptualized as an inclusive, social, informal, participatory, and
creative lifelong activity. Many problems (specifically design problems)
are unique and ill-defined and the knowledge to address them is not ‘out
there’ requiring contributions and ideas from all involved stakeholders.
Learners in such settings must be active contributors rather than passive
consumers and the learning environments and organizations must foster
and support mindsets, tools, and skills that help learners become empow-
ered and willing to actively contribute (Fischer, 2002; von Hippel, 2005).

Where to Learn: At the Right Places. Historically, schools provided the

setting where individuals engaged in learning. The seeds of a new edu-
cation system can be seen in the explosive growth of home schooling,
workplace learning, distance education, adult education, and a variety of
design spaces (museums, zoos, environmental centers, educational tele-
vision and videos, computer-based learning environments, and Internet
cafes). Research on everyday cognition demonstrates that formal learn-
ing in schools and informal learning in practical settings have import-
ant differences (National Research Council, 2009). What we discover
about learning in schools is insufficient for a theory of human learning:
schools are often focused on individual cognition, on memorization, and
on learning general facts, whereas learning in the world at large needs to
rely on shared cognition, use of powerful tools and external information
sources, and situation-specific competencies (Resnick, 1987).

20
When to Learn: At the Right Time. Information overload and the rapid
pace of change in our world have created new problems and new chal-
lenges for learning and education. People will have to keep acquiring new
knowledge and skills throughout their lifetimes as their lives and jobs
keep changing. New approaches are needed to circumvent the unsolv-
able problems of coverage and obsolescence. Learning on demand (Fischer,
1991) is a promising approach for addressing these problems because it:
1) contextualizes learning by allowing it to be integrated into work rather
than relegating it to a separate phase; 2) lets learners see for themselves
the usefulness of new knowledge for actual problem situations, thereby
increasing the motivation for learning new things; and 3) makes new in-
formation relevant to the task at hand, thereby leading to more informed
decision making, better products, and improved performance.

With Whom: Transcending the Individual Human Mind. Systemic

problems require more knowledge than any single person possesses be-
cause the knowledge relevant to either frame or resolve these problems is
distributed among stakeholders coming from different disciplines (Fisch-
er & Sugimoto, 2006). The ‘Renaissance Scholar’ (meaning a person who
is knowledgeable in all relevant fields) no longer exists (Csikszentmihalyi,
1996). To deal with complex multidisciplinary problems, people need to
use the powerful tools technology provides for finding, analyzing, ma-
nipulating, and communicating knowledge. Bringing together different
and often controversial points of view to create a shared understanding
among these stakeholders can lead to new insights, ideas, and artifacts.
In the past, most computational environments have focused on the needs
of individual users. Our research has evolved from empowering ‘Renais-
sance Scholars’ in specific domains (e.g., with domain-oriented design
environments) to creating shared understanding among ‘Renaissance
Communities’ as communities of interest (Fischer, 2013a). Bringing to-
gether people with different background knowledge and different value
systems, overcoming the biases and barriers of their separate languages,
integrating different educational experiences, and eliminating the lack of
reward structures will not be an easy undertaking.

21
Self-Directed Learning
In traditional classrooms in schools where knowledge transmission is
from teacher to students and based on instructionist approaches, students
are not required to be active learners and can be passive recipients: all
the information or knowledge related to learning is automatically trans-
mitted through a teacher, irrespective of the students’ needs or problems
even if they are in their classrooms. In such situations, learners are not
motivated to learn. In contrast, if learners solve their own problems for
their own sake, they try actively to acquire required knowledge and skills.
Therefore, active learning happens when learners are self-directed to learn
for themselves by means of their need to solve authentic or personally
meaningful problems.
Most learning that takes place outside of an instructionist classroom
can be characterized as follows: humans are engaged in some activity (an
action such as working, collaboratively solving a problem, or playing);
they experience a breakdown and reflect upon it (e.g., the piece of knowl-
edge missing, the misunderstanding about the consequences of some of
their assumptions). Schön (1983) called this reflection-in-action. Because
self-reflection is difficult, a human coach, a design critic, or a teacher
can help the learner to identify the breakdown situation and to provide
task-relevant information for reflection. Our own work has explored the
possibility using computational critics (Fischer et al., 1998) to provide
some of this support when humans are not present. Critics make argu-
mentation serve design; that is, they support learners in their own activ-
ities.
Self-directed learning can be characterized as follows:

»»it is less structured than instructionist learning;

»»it is in many cases a group or joint activity;

»»the goal of the activity is determined by the learner who has a

choice of topic, time, and place;

»»the activities are self-paced; and

22
 »»it is captivating and fun and there are frequent ‘flow’ experiences
(Csikszentmihalyi 1990).

Engagement and support for self-directed learning are critical when

learning becomes an integral part of life – driven by a desire and need to
understand something or to get something done instead of merely solv-
ing a problem given in a classroom setting. A lifelong learning perspective
implies that schools and universities need to prepare learners to engage in
self-directed learning processes because this is what they will have to do
in their professional and private lives outside the classroom.
Self-directed learning has many similarities to problem-based learn-
ing, an instructional method in which students learn through facilitated
problem solving (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Both approaches attempt to mo-
tivate people to become lifelong learners and effective collaborators. Our
research in self-directed learning (supporting people in choosing their
own problems) conceptualizes learning independent of learning objec-
tives and themes defined by a curriculum; thereby, it emphasizes problem
framing in addition to problem solving and allows people to focus on
personally meaningful problems that may vary greatly rather than being
defined and structured by a curriculum.

Cultures of Participation
Cultures of participation can address the problems articulated earlier in
the chapter: they have unique productivity resources, unique diversity
potential, and engage ownership of problems, which is important be-
cause ill-defined problems cannot be delegated.

Defining Characteristics of Cultures of Participation

In the past, the design of most media emphasized a clear distinction be-
tween producers and consumers (Benkler, 2006). The rise in social com-
puting (based on social production and mass collaboration) has facilitated
a shift from consumer cultures (specializing in producing finished artifacts
to be consumed passively) to cultures of participation (in which all people
are provided with the means to participate and to contribute actively to
personally meaningful problems) (Fischer, 2011). Important characteris-
tics of cultures of participation are shown below. Examples from which

23
these criteria are derived are explored in Porter (2008) and Preece and
Shneiderman (2009).

»»People will participate in personally meaningful problems.

»»Potentially only a small number of participants will contribute,

but all must believe and have the means when they are motivated
to contribute.

»»Extensive support mechanisms are required to create low barriers

for creating and sharing contributions with others.

»»To become viable and be successful, it is critical that a sufficient

number of participants take on the more active and demanding
roles.

»»To encourage and support migration paths towards more demand-

ing roles, mechanisms are needed that lead to more involvement
and motivation, and facilitate the acquisition of the additional
knowledge required by the more demanding and involved roles.

»»Reward structures (reputation economies, accumulation of so-

cial capital) are important as motivators that encourage people
to contribute.

Self-Directed Learning in Cultures of Participation

The creativity potential is grounded in user-driven innovations supported
by metadesign environments that take advantage of breakdowns as sourc-
es for creativity and exploit the symmetry of ignorance, meaning that all
stakeholders are knowledgeable in some domains and ignorant in others
(Arias et al., 2000). To increase the creativity potential of cultures of par-
ticipation requires diversity, independence, decentralization, and aggrega-
tion. Each participant should have some unique information or perspec-
tive (diversity). Participants’ opinions are not determined by the opinions
of those around them (independence). Participants are able to specialize
and draw on local knowledge (decentralization). Mechanisms exist for

24
turning individual contributions into collections and private judgments
into collective decisions (aggregation). Additionally, participants must be
able to express themselves, requiring technical knowledge on how to con-
tribute; they must be willing to contribute, and must be allowed to have
their voices heard.
Cultures of participation are related to other conceptual frame-
works, specifically to communities of practice (Lave, 1991; Wenger, 1998)
and expansive learning (Engeström, 2001; Engeström & Sannino, 2010).
Cultures of participation complement and transcend communities of
practice with their focus on exploiting the creativity potential of commu-
nities of interest (Fischer, 2001) by supporting the integration of multidi-
mensional expertise. They address new frontiers for expansive learning as
postulated by Engeström & Sannino (2010).
Perhaps the biggest challenge for future studies and theorizing in
expansive learning comes from the emergence of what is commonly char-
acterized as social production or peer production (Benkler, 2006). In so-
cial production or peer production, activities take the shape of expansive
swarming and multidirectional pulsation, with emphasis on sideways
transitions and boundary crossing.

Social Distribution and Epistemological Distribution in Cultures of

Participation
Cultures of participation can add to different kinds of contributions to
create new kinds of artifacts and learning opportunities.
Social distribution makes activities more fun, more motivating, and
shares the burden of coping with large problems (‘getting the job done
effectively and more quickly’), as illustrated by the information environ-
ments created by mass collaboration in table 1 and by the 3D Warehouse
instance shown in the Examples section. In such settings, contributors
can work individually and the work to be done is modularized into ob-
jects and activities doable by one person. This enables production to be
incremental and asynchronous, pooling the efforts of different people
with different capabilities, who are available at different times (Benkler,
2002). The heterogeneity of the community allows contributors with
diverse levels of motivation to collaborate by contributing modules of
different sizes, whose production therefore requires different levels of ex-

25
pertise and motivation (Preece & Shneiderman, 2009).
Epistemological distribution is required to support people cope with
systemic problems that are tightly coupled and transcend the individual
human mind (Arias et al., 2000). These problems are tightly coupled and
cannot be modularized into parts that individuals can solve independent-
ly. Face-to-face environments supported by tabletop computing environ-
ments (as illustrated by the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory
in the Examples section) are best suited to deal with such problems, as
distances between contributors create significant barriers to the frequency
and richness of communication and to reconciling ambiguities (Olson &
Olson, 2001).

Metadesign: Nurturing and Supporting Cultures of Participation

Cultures of participation are facilitated and supported by a variety of dif-
ferent technological environments (such as the participatory Web (‘Web
2.0’), tabletop computing, and domain-oriented design environments),
all of which contribute in different ways to the aims of engaging diverse
audiences, enhancing creativity, sharing information, and fostering the
collaboration among users acting as active contributors and designers.
They democratize design and innovation (von Hippel, 2005) by shifting
power and control toward the users, supporting them as both designers
and consumers (‘prosumers’) and allowing systems to be shaped through
real-time use.
Metadesign (Fischer & Giaccardi, 2006) is focused on ‘design for
designers’. It creates open systems at design time that can be modified
by users acting as codesigners, requiring and supporting more complex
interactions at use time. Metadesign is grounded in the basic assumption
that future uses and problems cannot be completely anticipated at design
time, when a system is developed. At use time, users will invariably dis-
cover mismatches between their needs and the support that an existing
system can provide for them. Metadesign contributes to the invention
and design of socio-technical environments in which users can express
themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities. It is a particu-
lar instantiation of the ‘Scandinavian approach’ to system design (Green-
baum & Kyng, 1991) and it shares many objectives with the ‘Maker’
culture (Anderson, 2012).

26
 Metadesign supports cultures of participation as follows:

»»Making changes must seem possible. Contributors should not be

intimidated and should not have the impression that they are
incapable of making changes; the more users become convinced
that changes are not as difficult as they think they are, the more
they may be willing to participate.

»»Changes must be technically feasible. If a system is closed, then

contributors cannot make any changes; as a necessary prerequi-
site, there need to be possibilities and mechanisms for extension.

»»Benefits must be perceived. Contributors have to believe that what

they get in return justifies the investment they make. The ben-
efits perceived may vary and can include professional benefits
(help for one’s own work), social benefits (increased status in a
community, possibilities for jobs), and personal benefits (engag-
ing in fun activities).

»»The environments must support tasks in which people engage. The

best environments will not succeed if they are focused on activi-
ties that people do rarely or consider of marginal value.

»»Low barriers must exist to sharing changes. Evolutionary growth

is greatly accelerated in systems in which participants can share
changes and keep track of multiple versions easily. If sharing is
difficult, it creates an unnecessary burden that participants are
unwilling to overcome.

»»Defining the role of metadesigners. They should use their own

creativity in developing socio-technical environments in which
other people can be creative by shifting from determining the
meaning, functionality, and content of a system to encouraging
and supporting users to act as designers. They must be willing to
share control of how systems will be used, which content will be
contained, and which functionality will be supported.

27
Metadesign allows significant modifications when the need arises. It re-
duces the gap in the world of computing between a population of elite
high tech scribes who can act as designers and a much larger population
of intellectually disenfranchised knowledge workers who are forced into
consumer roles.

Establishing New Discourses: Motivation, Control, Ownership, Au-

tonomy, and Quality
Cultures of participation are establishing new discourses, including the
following:

Motivation. Human beings are motivated by different things. We act

not only for material gain, but for psychological wellbeing, for social in-
tegration and connectedness, for social capital, for recognition, and for
improving our standing in a reputation economy. The motivation for
going the extra step to engage in cultures of participation is based on the
overwhelming evidence of the IKEA effect (Ariely, 2010), where people
are more likely to favor a solution if they have been involved in its genera-
tion even though it might not make sense otherwise. Creating something
personal (such as hand-knitted sweaters and socks, home-cooked meals),
even of moderate quality, has a different kind of appeal than consuming
something of a possible higher quality made by others.
Cultures of participation rely on intrinsic motivation for participa-
tion by providing contributors with the sense and experience of joint
creativity, by giving them a sense of common purpose and mutual sup-
port in achieving it, and, in many situations, by replacing common back-
ground or geographic proximity with a sense of well-defined purpose,
shared concerns, and the successful common pursuit of these.

Control. Cultures of participation support users as active contributors

who can transcend the functionality and content of existing systems. By
facilitating these possibilities, control is distributed among all stakehold-
ers in the design process. There is evidence that shared control will lead
to more innovation (von Hippel, 2005): ‘Users that innovate can develop
exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their
(often very imperfect) agents.’ (A similar argument surfaced in the inter-

28
view with the geoscientist described earlier). Cultures of participation
erode monopoly positions held by professions, educational institutions,
experts, and high-tech scribes (Fischer, 2002).

Ownership. Our experiences gathered in the context of the design, de-

velopment, and assessment of our systems indicate that cultures of par-
ticipation are less successful when users are brought into the process late,
thereby denying them ownership, and when they are ‘misused’ to fix
problems in addressing weaknesses of systems that the developers did not
fix themselves.

Quality. Many teachers will tell their students that they will not accept
research findings and argumentation based on articles from Wikipedia.
This exclusion is usually based on considerations such as: ‘How are we to
know that the content produced by widely dispersed and qualified individu-
als is not of substandard quality’? The online journal Nature (http://www.
nature.com/) has compared the quality of articles found in the Encyclo-
pedia Britannica with Wikipedia and came to the conclusion that ‘Wiki-
pedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries’.
There are many more open issues about quality and trust in cultures of
participation to be investigated, including: 1) the existence of errors, re-
sulting in learners acquiring the important skill of always being critical
of information rather than blindly believing in what others (specifically
experts or teachers) say; and 2) ownership as a critical dimension, where
the community at large has a greater sense of ownership and thereby is
more willing to put an effort into fixing errors.

Examples of Collaborative Learning Environments in Different Ap-

plication Domains
This section describes three different collaborative learning environments
that illustrate different challenges and opportunities for learning and en-
gagement in order to support specific aspects of a rich landscape for learn-
ing. The theoretical framework articulated earlier in the chapter does not
dictate or provide recipes for effective learning environments but creates
frames of references and perspectives for guidance, design, reflection, and
experimentation with self-directed learning and cultures of participation.

29
Collaborative Efforts in Large Scale Projects
This section provides an overview of a sample of environments created by
cultures of participation (see Table 1) with unique features with one of
them (SketchUp and 3D Warehouse) described in some detail.

SketchUp, 3D Warehouse, and Google Earth: Sharing 3-D Models.

Google is interested in modeling the whole world in 3D and uses Google
Earth for exploring this world (see figure 2 for an example). Howev-
er, he developers at Google cannot achieve this objective by themselves.
The most feasible approach is engaging the whole world in this major
undertaking by developing and supporting cultures of participation. To
do so poses a number of challenging problems for participants acting
as active contributors. They need to learn 1) SketchUp, a high function-
ality environment for 3D modeling (http://sketchup.google.com/); 2)
the mechanisms of how to share 3D models by uploading them from
SketchUp to the 3D Warehouse; and 3) how to download models from
the 3D Warehouse and from SketchUp and view them in Google Earth
if the models have a location on earth. In order to motivate and empower
enough people, we have explored, in close collaboration with researchers
from Google, new learning mechanisms for SketchUp to allow users who
want to contribute to learn how to do so by reducing the ‘thickness’ of
the input filters.
The 3D Warehouse (http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/) is
an information repository for the collection of models created by all users
who are willing to share their models; it contains tens of thousands of
models from different domains. It supports collections to organize models
and supports ratings and reviews by the participating community. It lets
viewers connect with the owners of models. It has weak input filters such
as content policies, mechanisms to ensure the quality of user contribu-
tions such as tagging and ratings, and an emerging set of output filters such
as search support and different sorting algorithms. It is integrated with
SketchUp as the design environment and Google Earth as a viewing en-
vironment that has the capability to show 3-D objects, which consist of
users’ submissions and were developed using SketchUp.

30
Site Objectives and Unique Aspects

Open Source a success model of decentralized, collaborative, evolutionary

development

Wikipedia web-based collaborative multilingual encyclopedia with a sin-

gle, collaborative, and verifiable article; authority is distributed
(http://www.wikipedia.org/)

iTunes U courses by faculty members from ‘certified institutions’; con-

trol via input filters; material cannot be remixed and altered by
consumers (http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/)

YouTube video sharing website with weak input filters and extensive
support for rating (http://www.youtube.com/)

Encyclopedia of documentation of the 1.8 million known living species; devel-

Life (EoL) opment of an extensive curator network; partnership between
the scientific community and the general public (http://www.
eol.org/)

SketchUp and repository of 3-D models created by volunteers organized

3D Warehouse in collections by curators and used in Google Earth (http://
sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/)

Scratch learning environment for creating, remixing, and sharing

programs to build creative communities in education (http://
scratch.mit.edu)

Instructables socio-technical environment focused on user-created and

shared do-it-yourself projects involving other users as raters
and critics (http://www.instructables.com/)

PatientsLikeMe collection of real-world experiences enabling patients who

suffer from life-changing diseases to connect and converse
(http://www.patientslikeme.com/)

31
 Ushahidi tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency
and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories;
originated in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists
during crises (http://www.ushahidi.com/)

Stepgreen library of energy-saving actions, tips, and recommendations by

citizen contributors for saving money and being environmen-
tally responsible (http://www.stepgreen.org/)

Table 1. Environments Created by Cultures of Participation

with Unique Features

Figure 2 shows the downtown area of the city of Denver in 3-D. We are
assessing the effectiveness of different reward structures in motivating us-
ers to participate in the collaborative effort in modelling the whole world,
including recognition by the community gained by featuring the best
models on Google Earth.

Fig. 2. Downtown Denver in 3-D

32
The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC)
The EDC (Arias et al., 2000), representing a socio-technical environment,
is a long-term research platform that explores conceptual frameworks for
democratizing design in the context of framing and resolving complex
urban planning by bringing together participants from various back-
grounds in face-to-face meetings. The knowledge to understand, frame,
and solve such problems does not exist in advance, but is constructed and
evolves during the solution process. The EDC incorporates a number of
innovative technologies, including tabletop computing, the integration
of physical and computational components supporting new interaction
techniques, and an open architecture. It has proven to be an ideal envi-
ronment to study and support metadesign and social creativity by mak-
ing all voices heard.
During the last decade, in our research into the EDC as it fosters
and supports cultures of participation within collaborative design activi-
ties, we have observed the following:

»»Each urban-planning problem is unique: it has to take into con-

sideration the geography, culture, and population of specific lo-
cations.

»»More creative solutions to problems can emerge from collective

interactions with the environment by heterogeneous communi-
ties (such as communities of interest, which are more diverse than
communities of practice).

»»Boundary objects are needed to establish common ground and

establish shared understanding for communities of interest.

»»Participants must be able to express naturally what they want to

say.

»»Interaction mechanisms must have a ‘low threshold’ for easy par-

ticipation and a ‘high ceiling’ for expressing sophisticated ideas.

»»Participants are more readily engaged if they perceive the design

33
 activities as personally meaningful by associating a purpose with
their involvement.

Obstacles to the further investigation of the above observations lie in the

difficulty of democratizing the design of the EDC (von Hippel, 2005)
by providing more control to the participants. Currently, EDC devel-
opers have to customize the system at the source-code level to reflect the
specific characteristics of the city and its urban planning problems. As
urban planning deals with ill-defined problems, the domain- and con-
text-specific knowledge is sticky, tacit, and difficult to transfer from local
urban planners to the EDC developers. Figure 3 illustrates how the EDC
supports problem-framing and problem-solving activities by bringing
together, in face-to-face meetings, those individuals who share a com-
mon problem . The EDC supports reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983):
the horizontal table represents the action space and the vertical displays
represent the reflection space. A problem is discussed and explored by
providing participants with a shared construction space in which they

Fig. 3. Face-to-Face Collaboration in the EDC

34
interact with computationally enhanced physical objects that are used
to represent the situation. Computer-generated information is projected
back onto the tabletop construction area, creating an augmented reality
environment. This construction in the tabletop environment is coupled
with information displayed on a vertical electronic whiteboard relevant
to the problem currently being discussed. A key aspect of the EDC that
makes it a critical and unique component (and sets it apart from other
environments such as the Google 3D modeling environment) is the need
and emphasis on the collaborative construction of artifacts rather than on
the sharing of individually constructed items.

Courses-as-Seeds: Nurturing and Supporting Communities of Learn-

ers
A culture of participation perspective for learning and education is fo-
cused not on delivering predigested information to individuals, but on
providing opportunities and resources for learners to 1) engage in au-
thentic activities, 2) participate in social debates and discussions, 3) cre-
ate shared understanding among diverse stakeholders, and 4) frame and
solve personally meaningful problems. It is grounded in the fundamental
belief that all humans have interest in and knowledge of one or more
niche domains and are eager to actively contribute in these contexts.
Over the last decade, we have reconceptualized and reinvented our
teaching activities and grounded them in socio-technical environments in
which 1) communities of mutual learners act simultaneously as learners
and as active contributors (based on the assumption that being a teacher
or a learner is not an attribute of a person but an attribute of a context);
2) peer-to-peer learning is supported and teachers act as ‘guides on the
side’ rather than as ‘sages on the stage’; and 3) courses are considered as
seeds rather than finished products (Fischer, 2002).
Courses-as-seeds (dePaula et al. 2001) is an educational model that
explores metadesign in the context of fundamentally changing the nature
of courses taught in universities. Its goal is to create a culture of informed
participation (Fischer and Ostwald 2005) that is situated in the context
of university courses and transcends the temporal boundaries of semes-
ter-based classes. The major role for new media and new technologies
from a culture-of-participation perspective is not to deliver predigested

35
information and nonchangeable artefacts and tools to individuals, but
rather to provide the opportunity and resources for engaging them in
authentic activities, for participating in social debates and discussions,
for creating shared understanding among diverse stakeholders, and for
framing and solving personally meaningful problems.
Over the last decade, our teaching objectives and practices have
increasingly sought to reconceptualize learning in courses from a cul-
tures-of-participation perspective. Our courses use wikis as course in-
formation environments (for examples, see http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/
~gerhard/courses). Traditionally, the content of a course is defined by the
resources provided by instructors (such as lectures, readings, and assign-
ments), but in courses-as-seeds, the instructor provides the initial seed
rather than a finished product. By involving students as active contribu-
tors, courses do not have to rely solely on the intellectual capital provided
by the instructors but are enriched on an ongoing basis by the contribu-
tion of all participants.
Courses-as-seeds represents a community-of-learners model (Rogoff
et al., 1998) and explores new middle ground between adult-run and
children-run education. All participants are active and the more skilled
partners (experienced teachers and coaches) can provide leadership and
guidance. The learners have opportunities to become responsible and or-
ganize their own learning, exploit their previous interests, and sustain
their motivation to learn by having some control over their contributions.
The courses-as-seeds model represents a system of values, attitudes,
and behaviours that differ radically from the traditional educational cul-
ture in which courses are conceived as finished products and students
are viewed as consumers. Courses-as-seeds creates a culture based on a
designer mindset that emphasizes habits and tools that empower students
to actively contribute to the design of their education (and eventually to
the design of their lives and communities).

Challenges and Opportunities

Our attempt to explore rich landscapes of learning emphasizes that dif-
ferent approaches complement rather than replace each other. Self-di-
rected learning and cultures of participation will not mark the end of the
lecture, but they are important alternatives to end the monopoly of the

36
lecture. This section briefly discusses some challenges and opportunities
associated with self-directed learning and cultures of participation.

Making Learning a Part of Life with Self-Directed Learning

Learning and education should be a distributed lifelong process by which
one learns material as one needs it. New conceptualizations of learning
are needed to circumvent the difficult problems of coverage (i.e., trying
to teach people everything that they may need to know in the future)
and obsolescence (i.e., trying to predict what specific knowledge someone
will need or not need in the future). Learning should be part of living,
a natural consequence of being alive and in touch with the world, and
not a process separate from the rest of life (Rogoff & Lave, 1984). What
learners need, therefore, is not only instruction but access to the world
in order to connect the knowledge in their head with the knowledge in
the world (Norman, 1993), and a chance to play a meaningful part in it.
Table 2 contrasts and summarizes different aspects of school learning and
lifelong learning (Fischer, 2000; Resnick, 1987).

School Learning Lifelong Learning

emphasis ‘basic’ skills learning as a fundamental aspect of

life
given; well-defined constructed; ill-defined
problems
focus on problem solving focus on problem framing and prob-
lem solving
new topics defined by curricula, as- arise incidentally, need-to-know, on
signed-to-learn, decontex- demand, contextualized
tualized
structure pedagogic or logical struc- interests, problems, work activities;
ture learning often takes places without
teaching
knowledge in the head; distributed; use of tools and external
cognition individual cognition; information resources;
general learning shared cognition;
situation-specific competencies

37
 roles expert-novice model; reciprocal learning;
teacher and learner = f{per- teacher and learner = f{context}
son}
teachers expound subject matter engage in guided discovery learning
(‘sage on the stage’) (‘guide on the side’)
learners consumers active participants
mode instructionism design; making; constructionism
(knowledge absorption) (knowledge construction)

drawbacks decontextualized, not sit- important concepts are not encoun-

uated tered

Table 2. A Comparison of Different Conceptualizations

of School Learning and Lifelong Learning

In formal learning environments, learning is often restricted to the solu-

tion of well-defined problems. Lifelong learning includes these approach-
es but also transcends them by supporting self-directed learning in the
context of realistic, open-ended, ill-defined problems.
Lifelong learning is a continuous engagement in acquiring and ap-
plying knowledge and skills in the context of self-directed problems and
should be grounded in descriptive and prescriptive goals such as:

»»learning should take place in the context of authentic, complex

problems (because some learners will refuse to quietly listen to
someone else’s answers to someone else’s questions);

»»learning should be embedded in the pursuit of intrinsically re-

warding activities;

»»learning-on-demand needs to be supported because change is

inevitable, complete coverage is impossible, and obsolescence is
unavoidable;

»»organizational and collaborative learning must be supported be-

cause the individual human mind is limited; and

38
 »» skills and processes that support learning as a lifetime habit
must be developed.

A Challenging Design Trade-Off: Support versus Freedom of Choice

Self-directed learning provides learners with the freedom to pursue per-
sonally meaningful questions (two specific examples are provided by the
narratives in the Examples section). This creates the fundamental chal-
lenge of addressing the dual objective of giving learners enough freedom
to become active in the process of pursuing personally meaningful prob-
lems, and giving them enough guidance so that their activity results in the
construction of useful knowledge and artifacts and support when they
encounter breakdowns. Teachers can provide guidance much more easily
in an instructionist classroom in which they discuss problems and present
knowledge with which they are familiar. This familiarity may not exist
when learners engage in their self-directed learning activities.
The same trade-off between support versus freedom of choice gov-
erns the distinction between two computational learning environments:

»»intelligent tutoring systems (Anderson et al., 1995), in which the

problem is given by the teacher or the system, and

»»interactive learning environments such as LOGO (Papert, 1980),

in which tools are provided that allow learners to explore prob-
lems of their own choice.

Intelligent tutoring systems can provide substantially more support be-

cause the designers of the environments know (at design time) the types
of problems on which the learners will work (at use time). In interac-
tive learning environments, little support is given when a learner is stuck
since they support autonomous learning. In order to support self-direct-
ed learning, the environments need to be augmented with mechanisms
(such as domain-oriented design environments, critiquing systems, and
context-awareness) that can offer help and support for learners who get
stuck or who do not know how to proceed when the information needs
to be contextualized according to the task at hand and to the learner’s
needs and interests (Fischer et al., 1998).

39
Drawbacks of Cultures of Participation
Cultures of participation open up unique new opportunities for mass
collaboration and social production, but they are not without drawbacks.
One such drawback is that humans may be forced to cope with the burden
of being active contributors in personally irrelevant activities that can be il-
lustrated by ‘do-it-yourself ’ societies. Through modern tools, humans are
empowered to perform many tasks themselves that were done previously
by skilled domain workers serving as agents and intermediaries. Although
this shift provides power, freedom, and control to customers, it also has
forced people to act as contributors in contexts for which they lack the
experience that professionals have acquired and maintained through the
daily use of systems. Professionals also have the broad background knowl-
edge to do these tasks efficiently and effectively, for example, companies
that offload work to customers.
More experience and assessment is required to determine the design
trade-offs for specific contexts and application domains in which the ad-
vantages of cultures of participation -- extensive coverage of information,
creation of large numbers of artefacts, creative chaos where all voices are
heard, reduced authority of expert opinions, and shared experience of so-
cial creativity -- will outweigh the disadvantages, including accumulation
of irrelevant information, wasting human resources in large information
spaces, and lack of coherent voices. The following research questions need
to be explored:

»»Under which conditions is a fragmented culture with numerous

idiosyncratic voices -- representing what some might character-
ize as a modern version of the ‘Tower of Babel’ and others might
call refreshingly diverse insights -- better or worse than a uni-
form culture that is restricted in its coverage of the uniqueness of
local identities and experience?

»»If all people can contribute, how do we assess the quality and
reliability of the resulting artifacts? How can curator networks
effectively increase the quality and reliability?

»»How can we avoid the problem of participation overload (poten-

40
 tially a more serious problem than information overload)? Being
an active contributor requires more effort and more time than
being a passive consumer. Active contributors are often domain
professionals, competent practitioners, discretionary users, and
engaged citizens — all of them experiencing numerous demands
on their time.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Massive, Open, Online Courses (MOOCs) are receiving worldwide atten-
tion as a means to revolutionize education. The interest and hype around
MOOCs are reflected by phrases such as ‘Most Important Educational
Technology in 200 Years’ and public attention has moved beyond aca-
demic circles. Most of the discussions surrounding MOOCs have been
grounded in economics and technology, with few considerations coming
from the learning sciences. MOOCs are

»»‘massive’ because they are designed to enroll tens of thousands of

students (and have done so in numerous cases);

»»‘open’ because anybody with an Internet connection can sign up;

»»‘online’ because they are available on the Internet and refer not
only to the delivery mode but to the style of communication;
and

»»‘courses’ because they do not only deliver content (as was the case
with MIT’s Open Courseware) but include all aspects (lectures,
forums, peer-to-peer interaction, quizzes, exams, and creden-
tials) associated with courses.

Over the last few years, numerous MOOC providers (including MIT’s
and Harvard’s edX project (http://www.edxonline.org/) Coursera (https://
www.coursera.org/) and Udacity, (http://www.udacity.com/) two private
companies founded by faculty members associated with Stanford Univer-
sity), are shaping and organizing numerous MOOC developments.
There are currently two major developments: 1) cMOOCs focusing on

41
knowledge creation and generation; and 2) xMOOCs focusing on knowl-
edge transmission and delivery (that are getting most of the attention).
A description and overview of currently existing MOOCs is provided at
http://www.mooc-list.com/.
Important potential strengths of MOOCs are:

»»an innovative, new effort that is shaking up all learning institu-

tions (they changed the distribution method, but in many cases
not the actual product);

»»generating a discussion that transcends the narrow confines of

academic circles;

»»making the knowledge of some of the world’s leading experts

from the best universities available to anyone free of charge;

»»attracting and affecting large numbers of people;

»»experimentation with different approaches (e.g., standalone ver-

sus hybrid course, course with fixed time duration versus courses
to be taken anytime, etc.); and

»»serving as a forcing function for residential, research-based uni-

versities to reflect and focus on their core competencies.

Following are important potential weaknesses of MOOCs:

»»By focusing on lectures, they often provide only a change in

form, not in content (the new technology component makes
lectures appear innovative, but the additional enrichment ac-
tivities are still quite limited). Participating in a MOOC is not
too different from ‘traditional’ teaching: a teacher talks and stu-
dents listen, an approach that we characterized as ‘gift wrap-
ping’ (Fischer 1998).

»»By virtue of their very low teacher/student ratio, MOOCs are

42
 no substitute for intensive, interactive, small-group learning sit-
uations.

»»They were unable to create a community of mutual learners in

the classroom, in which the roles of the teachers and learners
were not assigned to specific individuals but to specific contexts;
the teachers acted as ‘guides on the side’ rather than as ‘sages
on the stage’ and learners were given many opportunities to be
active contributors.

»»The instructionist nature of most xMOOCs is not well suited

to aspects of learning that grow out of longer-term mentored
relationships and self-directed learning, i.e., settings in which
learners of all ages take advantage of new learning opportunities
in order to pursue their own personal interests, made available
by innovative technologies.

»»They provide little support for self-directed learning and cultures

of participation.

Interesting questions to ask based on these developments are (Fischer

2013b):

»»What is covered by MOOCs? (free, open, and large-scale, offering

learning analytics opportunities based on very large numbers of
participants), and

»»What is not covered by MOOCs? (focused on a traditional model

of an instructionist classroom, and thereby providing little sup-
port for self-directed learning, debate and discussions, and re-
flective conversations).

MOOCs enrich the landscape of learning opportunities and they have

the potential to reduce the digital divide by providing education for ev-
eryone. They challenge residential, research-based universities to reflect,
define, and emphasize their core competencies. They move away from

43
large lectures, where learners listen to teachers, toward active learning
environments characterized by personal attention from teachers and with
opportunities for participation, thereby looking beyond the simplicities
of information to the complexities of learning.

Conclusions
People are different, with different wants and needs specifically with re-
spect to learning. New media provide the foundation for socio-technical
environments in support of a rich landscape of learning. The research
activities documented in this paper are focused on creating frames of
reference to assess the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
to learning with a focus on self-directed learning and cultures of par-
ticipation in the context of collaborative learning environments. These
approaches enable learners to control their own learning, allowing them
to decide what they consider important and valuable and what they want
to learn rather than have to learn.
The future of why, what, how, when, where, and with whom peo-
ple learn is not out there to be discovered, but it needs to be designed.
The learning sciences and the designers of new, theoretically grounded
socio-technical environments should consider this objective the ‘grand
challenge’ of their research agenda.

Acknowledgements
The ideas, concepts, arguments, and system developments described in
this paper have been developed jointly over the last two decades with for-
mer and current members of the Center for Lifelong Learning & Design
(L3D) at CU Boulder (http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu). Hal Eden and Mi-
chael Eisenberg deserve a special thank you for their major contributions.
The research was supported in part by the following grants from
the National Science Foundation: 1) REC-0106976 ‘Social Creativity
and Meta-Design in Lifelong Learning Communities’; 2) IIS-0613638
‘A Meta-Design Framework for Participative Software Systems’; 3) IIS-
0709304 ‘A New Generation Wiki for Supporting a Research Communi-
ty in Creativity and IT’; 4) OCI-1028017 ‘CDI-Type I: Transformative
Models of Learning and Discovery in Cultures of Participation’; and 5)
IIS-1111025 ‘SoCS: Theoretical Frameworks and Socio-Technical Sys-

44
tems for Fostering Smart Communities in Smart Grid Environments’.
Some parts of this paper were developed with the support of a
‘Chair of Excellence’ fellowship granted to the author by the University
Carlos III of Madrid and Banco Santander.

45
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50
LANGUAGE LEARNING AS DIALOGUE
AND PARTICIPATION

Hannele Dufva

Introduction
Today, we see how globalization, with its cultural flows, and technology
with its new developments constantly create new types of contexts and
new kinds of language practices. Thus it would not be unreasonable to
say that language itself is changing. Also, these large-scale changes create
new environments for learning languages, and these environments, po-
tentially, will influence how we conceptualize learning itself. Thus, as the
contexts and usage change, it is possible that the theoretical basis of lan-
guage learning needs to be rethought. Further, this gives us a reason for
rethinking the pedagogical practices of language education. This paper
discusses the two central concepts of second and foreign language learn-
ing research -- ’language’ and ’learning’ -- and the potential consequences
of how their reconceptualisation might influence practices of language
education and pedagogy.
To redefine ‘learning’, we need to transcend the traditional dichot-
omy between social and cognitive descriptions that has been typical for
second language acquisition (SLA) research. In recent years, we have ob-
served a movement from the strict cognitivism of the early SLA towards
socially oriented arguments, some of which have turned out to be exclu-
sively social in their position. As an alternative to these polarized views,
language learning will be regarded here as a social-cum-cognitive process:
an activity in which the social and the cognitive are involved and in-
tertwine. A holistic view is advocated, in which cognition is not placed
‘internally’ in the learner’s brain, but is extended to ‘external’ activity in

51
the social and physical environment. Here, I will draw on arguments
from the following sources: Vygotskyan and neo-Vygotskyan views (e.g.,
Lantolf, 2000; Lantolf & Thorne 2006); systemic psychology (Järvilehto,
1994, 2006); distributed views on cognition (Cowley, 2004, 2006; Stef-
fensen, 2009); ecological views (Gibson, 1970; van Lier, 2004, 2007);
and the Bakhtin Circle dialogism and neo-dialogism (Linell, 2009; Duf-
va, 2010; Dufva et al., 2011).
It will be argued that learning is distributed cognitive activity. This is
to say that the individualist notion of learning is rejected and argue that
learning occurs in collaboration with and is mediated by other people
and/or by different tools and artefacts of the social world1. As language or
linguistic resources are being shared in the activities in which people par-
ticipate, they are also constantly recycled. What is important to note is that
this process is not seen as transfer of information from ‘outside’ to ‘inside’.
Learning is not regarded as an acquisition of abstract forms but as linguistic
resources being appropriated by persons participating in a certain activity.
The reconceptualization of ’language’ below draws upon the recent
debates in which the traditional twentieth-century concepts have been
dismantled and deconstructed (see also, e.g., Makoni & Pennycook, eds.
2007). However, I will focus in particular on the dialogically oriented
views of language and the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia. It will be
argued that to emphasize the dynamicity and relationality of language,
language learning should be regarded as appropriating different situated
practices, or heteroglossic languaging.

Learning: a social-cum-cognitive and mediated process

To see learning as a social-cum-cognitive -- or distributed -- process rejects
the Cartesian interpretation in which cognitive refers to ‘internal’ actions
and social to ‘external’ ones. The view challenges both the cognitivism of
early SLA (second language acquisition) studies but also those contempo-
rary socially-based arguments that fail to give an account of the individ-
ual person and his cognizing. Cognitivism that was characteristic of the

1 The view that is discussed here does not exclude the aspect of language as an embodied and
material process or that this is not, strictly speaking, a social world but a material one. For the sake
of brevity, the argument for the material basis will not be developed here.

52
traditional SLA studies was influenced to a great degree by Chomskyan
thought and rationalist philosophy. It turned away from the arguments
that included the social world (social interaction, societal circumstances).
The new social focus, however, has frequently resulted in the failure to
consider the cognitive aspects; for a more detailed discussion, see Dufva
(2010). Here, I will aim at showing that both aspects can be included to
form a new, non-Cartesian and holistic viewpoint on learning.
To see mind and observable activity as inherently connected is not
at all a new idea: it was a strong presence in L.S. Vygotsky’s work and
the sociocultural tradition that followed. Pointing out that one needs to
study the history and development of cognitive phenomena in order to
understand them, Vygotsky himself aimed at showing that human mind
is social in origin and that ’higher cognitive faculties’ for intellect, rea-
soning, and learning are essentially collective in origin. The social world,
with its artefacts, tools, and patterns of social action that have developed
over time as a collective effort of mankind, is the natural environment of
each infant and each child respectively develops his intellect and reason-
ing in social and collaborative activity. Therefore the social world cannot
accurately be described as ‘external’: it is also the cognitive world -- or
cognitive workspace – into which each of us is born and in which we
continue to operate.
If we go on using words such as ’social’ and ’cognitive’, they are not
to be understood in their Cartesian sense. ‘Social’ does not refer to ex-
plicit interaction with other people or to the societal sphere as ‘external’
context, but is also a feature of human activity that is traditionally under-
stood as cognitive or psychological. As Lantolf (2004, pp. 30-31) notes,
sociocultural theory is not a theory of the social or cultural aspects but,
actually, a theory of mind.
Therefore, it is seen as unhelpful to continue the reductionist ar-
guments of either cognitivism or the radical extremist views of socially
oriented paradigms. Between cognitive and social worlds there exists a
reciprocal relationship that was also a central theme in Voloshinov’s phi-
losophy of signs. Voloshinov (1974, pp. 33-41) argues that outer signs,
inherently connected with ideology, need to be ‘engulfed’ by inner signs.
There is an interplay between the inner and the outer signs: outer signs
gain their life force by becoming inner signs when appropriated by per-

53
sons, while inner signs are returned to the outer dialogue when uttered.
Drawing upon these arguments, language learning can be seen as process
of recycling of the socially and culturally available linguistic resources; see
also Dufva et al. (2011).
When analysed dialogically, linguistic signs have two aspects: while
being ‘ideological’ as to their content, they need to have materiality in
order to be mediated. As Voloshinov (1973, p. 26, pp. 90-91) observes,
human consciousness needs ‘gesture, inner word, outcry’ to become man-
ifest. Thus language needs to be spoken, written, signed, or mediated by
using other potential means of expression, that is, by different mediation-
al means. If we use the Vygotskyan sociocultural formulations, the lan-
guage environments involve symbolic artefacts, language itself being the
prime example, but also material artefacts: books, pens, paper, and com-
puters. Regarded in this light, language learning is a mediated process in
which different mediational means are at play: these include textbooks,
classroom interaction, teacher-directed talk and the various resources to
which language learners are exposed, such as gaming or watching televi-
sion, in out-of-school contexts.
As this view of learning does not regard mediation as transfer of in-
formation from ‘outside’ to inside, it is natural to continue the argument
that the environment is not an ‘external’ scene but part of the learning
process itself. We could say that the environment is part of the cognitive
working space of the person(s) involved.

Learning: a systemic, ecological, and distributed process

Where does learning occur, then? It was commonplace to understand
the cognitive processes as happening in the individual’s mind and/or lan-
guage being stored and processed in its linguistic components, as the
rationalist Chomskyan argumentation put it. Today, many researchers
implicitly identify learning with social interaction and do not go beyond
describing what happens there. Both positions base their arguments on
the interpretation of social and cognitive as external and internal, and are,
as I would like to argue, led astray in this. If we consider where cognizing
happens, or where language learning occurs, we should not look into the
black box of the (internal) mind, or seek direct equivalents in the human
brain, or identify cognizing with the behaviours in social interaction.

54
 The views expressed within early sociocultural and dialogical per-
spectives by thinkers such as Bakhtin, Voloshinov, and Vygotsky do pro-
vide some of the philosophical and psychological starting points. These
views find support from other, more contemporary lines of thought.
These make it possible to re-examine various issues and aspects of learn-
ing (e.g., how memory works) that were previously given a cognitivist
analysis and remodel them in frameworks such as systemic psychology
(Järvilehto, 1998), ecological psychology (Gibson, 1970; van Lier, 2004)
or distributed cognition (Cowley, 2006; Steffensen, 2009) that go be-
yond the individual and/or his brain.
These views suggest a need to extend the research focus beyond the
individual, something that was recognised already, and importantly, by
Vygotsky. The importance of other people is present in Vygotsky’s notion
of learning -- ‘first external, then internal’ -- is the thought that learners
have a ‘zone of proximal development’ in which they proceed, supported
by others -- parents, teachers, and peers. The perspective is also present
in the concept of scaffolding that draws upon Vygotskyan thinking but
is developed by Jerome Bruner. As neither Vygotsky nor the contem-
porary research sharing this perspective assumes a Cartesian separation
between mind and activity, it is clear that we do not talk about giving ‘in-
put’ to learners. Rather, we talk about ‘sharing’ resources with them. As
Suni (2008) has shown in her study of conversation between native and
non-native speakers, native speakers can share their linguistic resources
with non-natives in the joint cognitive working space that is created in
talk.
Further, Järvilehto (2012) argues that the organism and its environ-
ment should not be regarded in terms of two systems but one. In not sepa-
rating environment from the mental activity of the organism, Järvilehto’s
views provide a theoretical basis for understanding memory and, at the
same time, for some aspects of language learning. In Järvilehto (1994, pp.
154-155) the metaphor of memory as an internal storage is challenged.
His argument is that the processes of remembering should be studied by
regarding not only the ways in which the organism itself is organized,
but should also expand the perspective to include the environments of
both present and past. Memory, then, does not refer to a place, location,
or storage, but rather, remembering, the ability to operate in the current

55
environment relying on the environments in one’s past. When we learn
something new, there is a change in the organization of the organism-en-
vironment-system.
If we accept Järvilehto’s (1994) argument, the metaphor of ‘inter-
nal language storage’ with its ‘mental representations’ should be rejected.
Instead, ‘mental knowledge’ can be considered as action potential. This
view may sound radical at first: against the classic cognitivist assump-
tion of language learning as ‘internalisation’ -- acquisition of rules and
items – learning now is seen as a process in which the persons develop
in their ‘skilful linguistic action’ (Cowley, 2012) the potential to detect
different linguistic resources present and their ability to act upon these as
affordances (van Lier, 2004). Today, we have not developed fully ideas of
how to reconceptualise the mental knowledge of language or a person’s
language proficiency. Still, a tentative argument can be presented that
language proficiency is not to be modelled as internal, individual, (semi)
permanent knowledge of rules and items. Rather, the theoretical argu-
ments seem to suggest that it might be regarded as processual knowledge,
which consists of essentially situated and dynamic skills that allow learn-
ers to operate across time and space.
Järvilehto’s (2006) perspective of learning extends beyond the bor-
ders of the individual organism-environment systems, that is persons: ‘All
efficient learning presupposes the participation of both the teacher and
the pupil (or the trainer and the trainee)’. Järvilehto’s views resonate with
other non-individualist, or ‘extended’, perspectives on cognition (e.g.,
Hutchins, 1995; Cowley, 2006). These argue that cognition is ‘spread’
among the participants, is ‘shared’ by them, or ‘emerges’ in the interac-
tivity between the human agent(s) and the resources / tools present. Thus
also the ability to learn language – either first or additional ones – can be
understood as ways in which human agents are capable of perceiving and
acting in their different linguistic environments, with other people and
artefacts present.

Language: What is it that is learned?

Criticism of ‘language’ as a system
Another set of questions is concerned with how to define ‘language’. That
is, what is the object that learners set out to learn? What is the object

56
of teaching at school and other institutions that provide instruction in
languages? When one looks both at the research of language learning and
the pedagogical discourses and practices, one finds several persistent met-
aphors and dominant conceptualisations. These include 1) the influence
of written language and literacy, 2) the impact on the national language
ideologies and 3) the influential Saussurean view of language as an (ab-
stract) system. These ideas have led to the idea that learners are supposed
to internalize a system of abstract rules and contextless lexical entities. For a
critical discussion, see Dufva et al. (2011).
The written language bias of linguistic inquiry has promoted the
idea that units of ’language’ are similar to those found in written forms of
language (for criticism, see, e.g., Linell, 2005; see also Voloshinov, 1973).
A literacy-based, written language bias can also be found in the ways
languages are taught and language proficiencies are assessed. The written
word is strongly present in classrooms where textbooks and literacy-based
ideals still rule. For a survey in the context of Finland, see, e.g., Luukka
et al. (2007). Also, learners’ proficiencies are still often evaluated and
assessed by literacy-based standards in spite of the continuing critical dis-
cussion. Thus it is almost inevitable that the written language bias is pres-
ent also in language learners’ beliefs. In their studies on foreign language
students’ conceptualisations -- with learners’ self-portraits, narratives and
questionnaires as data -- Kalaja et al. (2008) have found a consistent pres-
ence of textbooks and written materials. Their findings suggest that learn-
ers see that their goal as learning the contents of textbooks, grammars,
or dictionaries, that is, the decontextual descriptions of language rather
than how to use language. These beliefs are no doubt advanced by the
textbook-centred practices of foreign language classrooms, but they are
also supported by the discourses, metaphors, and vocabularies of linguis-
tic research.
Another idea that has been much criticized during recent years is how
we have regarded languages as internally homogeneous entities, still cat-
egorically different from others. This idea of language, influenced by the
ideologies of nation states, not only conceptualizes languages as boundar-
ied entities (Finnish, French, German) but also promotes a monolingual
bias, an ideology that still often dominates the educational discourses and
language classrooms where borrowing, hybridity, and mixing are ‘wrong’

57
and where use of more languages than one may be judged as pedagogically
unfavourable. Further, the assumed stability and singularity of norms and
the entailing policy of ‘one correct answer’ is maintained in classrooms,
exams, and language tests. The alternative views advocate subjecting the
norms and language use to negotiation, and not only for tolerating but
also promoting ‘translanguaging’ in the classrooms (see, e.g., Blackledge
& Creese, 2010).
The third notion that needs a rediscussion is whether language as
(an abstract) system consisting of, e.g., syntax, morphology, phonology,
and lexis, should actually be seen as the goal of the language learner. It
has been commonplace in the study of language learning as a process in
which a language system is internalized. However, as has been pointed out
by many authors since Voloshinov (1973), a system of this kind is neces-
sarily an artefact produced by the linguist’s analysis: a selective description
of the formal properties of language use. Valuable as they may be, these
artefacts are not to be confused with the actual reality of language use or
‘first-order languaging’ (see, e.g., Cowley, 2005; Steffensen, 2009); gram-
mars -- whether linguistic or pedagogical -- inevitably select, summarise,
and reduce the material they choose to describe and systematize.
It should be also pointed out that the conventional linguistic and
grammatical descriptions may not be adequate at all to describe the pro-
cesses by which language users actually operate. Although it has been
exceedingly popular in (psycho)linguistic research to speak about mental
grammars and internal lexicons, the metaphor may be faulty in many
senses: as both the early dialogical and sociocultural arguments (see, e.g.,
Voloshinov, 1973, p. 38) and recent research seem to indicate, the nature
of mental language knowledge is very much an open question. To this
point, Steffensen (2009) argues that ‘there is no reason to posit internal
representations of linguistic units’. With Cowley (2011, p. 21) we can say
that language is to be found not in one’s internal storage, but with ‘the
resources of the world’s language stores’.
Finally, if language proficiency is seen in terms of decontextualised
formal knowledge, the repercussions involve a decontextual approach in
language teaching. It is at the very core of the conservative tradition of
language teaching to focus the classroom practices and homework rou-
tines on decontextual practices, to focus on memorising grammatical

58
rules, lexical items, and formal translation equivalents. Instead of seeing
situated and contextual practices as their target, the learners grow to dis-
associate the ‘knowledge of language’ from its use.

The viewpoint of heteroglossic languaging

The contemporary discussion around the notion of ‘language’ often stress-
es its dynamic qualities, and also, many scholars point to its relational char-
acter. The dynamicity -- the flow-like character -- of language is present
in the formulations of language as languaging (Maturana, 1995; Becker,
1991). For a closer discussion, see Dufva and Pietikäinen, (forthcoming);
as communicative activity (Thorne and Lantolf, 2007); as doing (van Lier,
2004); and as practices (Pennycook, 2010). Many new formulations also
frequently embed a notion of language use (and learning) as collaborative
or systemic activity. If these qualities of language are highlighted, it seems
to follow that, implicitly, the views also highlight functional and mean-
ingful elements rather than formal and structural ones. In all, language is
regarded as a purposeful rather than a mechanical process -- and it may
well be regarded as ‘the game rather than the building blocks’.
Here, I will draw particularly upon the linguistic arguments of the
Bakhtin Circle and the notion of languaging. I will suggest that the goal
of the learners is to appropriate language practices that are heteroglossic
in nature. The implication of the notion of heteroglossic languaging is to
see the learners’ goal not in learning a ‘language’ (as a singular entity),
but learning situated usages (practices). In this, both the quality of doing/
action and the essential diversity of language usages is highlighted. This
seems to indicate that doing things with language and participating in
different types of activities are at the core of language learning and should
also be a focus of teaching.
With its ‘concretist’ and contextual perspective, the arguments of
the Bakhtin Circle help us to regard language as use but also to claim
that language use is about something. Arguing that language is tied to
its use and its social context at large, Voloshinov (1973, p. 70) says that
‘words are always filled with content and meaning drawn from behavior
or ideology’. Thus language use relates to the ways language is used in the
community but also to concrete situations where people use language to
express personal meanings.

59
 The contextual emphasis is not only theoretical, but leads to a view
that language in context should be at the core of language education. In
his criticism of Saussurean concept of language, Voloshinov (1973, p. 69)
actually comments on language teaching, arguing that students should
become acquainted with linguistic forms only in their concrete contexts
and situations. In a similar vein, grammar is also regarded as a contextual
and stylistic phenomenon. As Bakhtin (2004, p. 12) says, ‘One cannot
study grammatical forms without constantly considering their stylistic
significance. When grammar is isolated from the semantic and stylistic
aspects of speech, it inevitably turns into scholasticism’. These few com-
ments on early dialogism are echoed today in many contemporary discus-
sions on the principles of language teaching (van Lier, 2012).
A related observation is that the Saussurean preference for invariance
is replaced by Bakhtin’s insistence on the importance of diversity and
variation, and by his view of language as heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981, p.
291). To simplify, this means that there is no ‘language’ but rather ‘lan-
guages’ -- that is, all sorts of usages that vary across different contexts,
speakers, and modalities and that are liable for change and diversification
over time. If language is regarded as heteroglossic, the goal of learning a
language-as-a-boundaried-system becomes an impasse, as do the single
norm policies exerted in the classroom. The view pushes us to consider
language as activity or practices that differ both contextually and modal-
ity-wise.

Language learning:
Theoretical considerations and pedagogical implications
Language learning as recycling
To summarise the views presented above, language use and learning can
be regarded as social (inter)activity and (distributed) cognitive (inter)activ-
ity, without making a Cartesian distinction between social and cognitive.
Language use emerges in (inter)activity in an environment where differ-
ent resources -- both artefacts and people -- will be used. The processes
of (inter)activity is where and also how language learning happens, by
the power of social, observable practices but also by the power of activity
that is produced by distributed cognition (Cowley, 2006). There is much
cutting-edge research available on how people in healthcare (Steffensen

60
et al., 2010) or in dance (Kirsh, 2010) achieve cognition in interactivity
that is embodied in nature, but the context of language learning and
teaching is largely unstudied.
I would like to stress in particular, however, that we should not fail
to take into account the individual and personal aspects of cognizing
that are for so many reasons important in the research of learning. First,
we need to be able to explain the aspects of each particular person as a
language learner. Second, although we aim at understanding learning as
interactivity or as a distributed process, we also need to consider that this
interactivity emerges from the efforts of participating agents or subjects.
Without the agents, there is no interactivity. I will refer to these personal
and subjective qualities here as agency.
Consequently, agency can be conceptualized here as the ways in
which learners (as organism-environment-systems) perceive and act upon
the different environments in which they are involved. Agency is thus not
an individual property in the sense of the Cartesian, rationalist reading,
but a relational faculty that has a strong personal component and back-
ground. First, as persons, we are uniquely positioned in time and space
(Bakhtin, 1993), and we each have different learning paths or learning
histories as language learners. As language learners we also have different
preferences, abilities, and qualities of how to connect to environments.
Second, we are also members of different cultural and linguistic com-
munities and, in a sense, we are products of particular cultural-historical
developments, working under particular social constraints. Third, we are
also embodied agents in the universal sense of human beings: thus at-
tached, in various ways of embodiment, to our physical environment(s).
Agency is thus essentially a concept that describes the human ability to
connect. But it also seems to be a useful concept as it can easily be given a
‘positive’ reading: in other words, it may be a pedagogically wise concept
that can be used to mediate an atmosphere for learning as action and
activity.
Thus, language learners are regarded as agents who relationally en-
gage with different resources provided by the linguistic environments and
turn these into affordances. Defined originally by James J. Gibson (1979,
p. 127), affordances are ‘what (the environment) offers the animal, what it
provides or furnishes, either for good or ill’. In particular, van Lier (2004)

61
has continued to argue for the importance of this concept for language
education and pointed out that affordances need to be understood as
relational. This means that linguistic resources as such are not yet affor-
dances, what is needed is a connection – involving a process of noticing
and perhaps reflection -- between the learner and the resource. It is thus
the reciprocal relationship between an agent and a resource that makes
something into affordance.
To continue, learning is not considered as internalization. Instead, I
will be using the word appropriation to refer to the notion of learning that
highlights participation and dialogue: whatever learners learn, part of it
remains ‘out’ as a shared property of the societal and cultural languaging,
while part of it becomes one’s own. This is a dialogue of recycling in the
Bakhtinian sense:

The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’

only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his
own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his
own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment
of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and im-
personal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that
the speaker get his words!), but rather it exists in other people’s
mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s inten-
tions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it
one’s own (Bakhtin, 1981, pp. 293-294).

Thus, as suggested above, there may not be any need to hypothesise an

internal ‘language’ (in the sense of grammar and lexicon). Instead, agents
must be allowed different processual skills of interactivity that help them
to respond and take initiative in different types of situations, at the same
time relying on their experience of situations encountered in one’s own
past. To go back to Bakhtin’s notion of words, we might imagine that
it is not words in their formal and decontextual sense that we learn, but
rather, how to interpret usages in concrete situations, how to use them
meaningfully, but also, necessarily, how to perform different types of ar-
ticulations and manual operations that are involved in language use in
different modalities (speech, writing, typing, etc.). It needs to be said

62
that what we can say at present is largely hypothetical, and that we need
substantial research to support the arguments. It can be suggested that
the skills by which we understand and use language are largely procedural
and context-sensitive, not static and abstract in nature.
As to the question of how humans learn languages, we have some
clues. When we say metaphorically that language practices are ‘recycled’,
this means that they are borrowed from others through participation in
diverse social practices, copied for further use, and reused in appropriate
situations. The view can be associated with the recent research avenues
on imitation, copying, and repetition. As the neurological evidence shows,
individual agents have a mechanism, the mirror neurons (Arbib, 2002),
for imitating and copying the others’ behaviours, an ability that is not ex-
clusively human (see, e.g., Gross, 2006 for primates’ capacity to imitate).
Suni (2008) shows how interaction between second language learner and
native speaker can be seen as a forum for shared attention, shared cogni-
tion, and as a step for the learner to share the ‘native’ language repertoire
by negotiations of meaning and repetition.
Importantly, one needs to note that repetition should not be re-
garded as mechanical copying. It is also, to varying degrees, regeneration
and relocalisation. Language practices are appropriated, made one’s own,’
populated with own intentions’ as Bakhtin (1981) put it. Each speaker
has a unique voice in the sense of articulation, but also more metaphori-
cally: words will be adjusted according to the perspective of the speaker;
they will be uttered in contexts other than the original; and they may be
modified to serve quite different purposes. Thus speakers in many ways
-- both meaning wise and articulation wise -- personalize the public lin-
guistic resources when they add them to their personal repertoires. Lin-
guistic resources undergo ‘fertile mimesis’, to borrow Pennycook’s (2010)
expression. There will be modifications, by creative and playful practices,
innovations by novel usages, hybridity by converging usages, diversified
use when communities diverge, and ‘copying errors’ by random or re-
peated mistakes.

Language pedagogy
The way to develop language education in institutional contexts is to
reconsider many of the fundamental metaphors and also many of the

63
practices. The ways of speaking are powerful: if we stop using metaphors
such as learning as ‘internalization’ and language as ‘grammar and lexi-
con’, and start using expressions of learning as ‘activity’, ‘doing’, and ‘par-
ticipation’ and language as practice, this also gives the learners different
expectations. However, the learners also need to be engaged in activities
and practices: doing things in language, through language, and with lan-
guage. This can be done in any classroom, but the language pedagogy
could -- and should -- give more thought to how to combine the practices
at school with out-of-school activities.
Thus to reconsider the conceptualisations of language and learning
means to give some thought to the practices of pedagogy and teaching as
well. It is obvious enough that there are several good examples, some of
them dating back many years, and that in some cases everyday practices
may have been ahead of the theoretical developments. It would seem
timely now to establish a firm connection between theory and praxis in
order to develop both: it is a dedicated goal of (critical) applied linguistics
to see that not only are the outcomes of research ‘applied’, but that the-
oretical developments are genuinely informed by societal circumstanc-
es and existing practices. The theoretical views discussed above resonate
with research and/or pedagogy on, e.g., language awareness (van Lier,
1995), authenticity, extended notions of learning as formal and infor-
mal (Benson and Reinders eds., 2012), learning in virtual environments
(Zheng & Newgarden, 2012), and various others.
With the enhancement of the learners’ agency as the main goal
and the development and sophistication of their linguistic repertoires in
mind, the pedagogies should nurse aspects that encourage participation.
For that, both perception and action need to be addressed: on one hand,
it is important to enhance the ability to notice and reflect different fea-
tures of both language and learning, and, on the other hand, the skills of
action and participation are similarly necessary. I will sketch below some
aspects that might be highlighted in contemporary pedagogies.
Take heed of learning opportunities. First, learners should notice the
linguistic resources around them and learn to reflect upon different mat-
ters that are linguistic, interactive, or cultural in nature. Thus language
awareness is precisely as social as it is a cognitive phenomenon: learners
are encouraged to reflect upon their development in context. As the be-

64
liefs of learners may act as tools for further action (Alanen, 2003), the
‘negative’ ones work against learning. Far too often learners simply miss
learning opportunities because they are ‘misled’ by conventional notions
of language and learning. Learners may see themselves as ‘poor learners’,
the language skills as ‘non-useful’, or the language in question as ‘unpleas-
ant’ (see, e.g., Kalaja et al., 2011).
Expand your learning environments. One popular misconception is
that learning of languages takes place at school and/or it is a process led
by a teacher (Aro, 2009). As many new directions, both in research and
in pedagogy, point out, learning does not happen only in school, but
that informal and formal contexts and ways of learning can be mixed and
mingled. Thus the learners should understand that they can also bridge
the gap, bringing in knowledge and skills acquired in other contexts and
environments.
Become a language detective. Many learners need tasks that activate
their ability to notice and detect linguistic resources and opportunities for
learning in their different environments, not only in the context of school
or institutions, but in different face-to-face and virtual contexts of their
everyday life. From being a novice language detective, one can go on to
becoming a proper Sherlock Holmes with his skills of deductive reasoning
and sharp intelligence. Such tasks that invite learners to compare, dissect,
find patterns and regularities while, at the same time, observing irregular-
ities and abnormalities that work towards heightened language awareness
(van Lier, 1995).
Become an anthropologist. Learners could be trained as anthropolo-
gists: sending them to do fieldwork in virtual and non-virtual environ-
ments alike, to make observations of cultural behaviors and the under-
lying norms, to take notes or write diaries. In all tasks of this kind, the
learners work in specific environments with specific types of languaging,
always tied to the context. By observing language use, students learn
about language use and its diversity and variations -- which can be sub-
jected to discussion in the classroom -- but they also learn actual language
use themselves.
Become a participant. From observation and along with observation,
any learner needs to become an increasingly active participant in various
contexts and modalities. What are the means of encouraging agency, par-

65
ticipation, and dialogue? Collaborative tasks, group work, crowdsourc-
ing, social media … and also simply talking. The new developments in
linguistics and cognitive science that aim at dismantling the individualist
view of learning are also unanimous in their view of interactivity and
collaboration as considerable strengths in many different types of tasks.
Do languaging. While it may be futile to erase the conceptualization
of a ‘language’ -- after all, this is how different educational institutions
conceptualise and practice it -- it may be useful to encourage learners to
see language as doing, action, and activity. Doing is -- if we believe ar-
guments that have been presented above -- learning. Pedagogically, ‘lan-
guaging’ could simply mean doing all sorts of things with language. This
does not refer to ‘productive’ activities alone, such as speaking or writing.
‘Receptive’ activity, such reading, listening, or watching, is also active in
nature, and is thus languaging. (For the active view on perception, see,
e.g., Noë, 2004.)
Do multimodal languaging. To continue, if we say that language use
in different modalities is important, we in a way we go back to the tradi-
tional Four Skills (of reading, writing, speaking, and listening). This view
positions itself against teaching where formal decontextualized knowl-
edge is given a primacy, but it also raises questions about views that are
biased either towards literacy or oral communication skills. The hetero-
glossic, contextual view suggests -- as do observations on contemporary
language use -- that not only different modality-specific, but also multi-
modal usages, should be at the core of instruction.
Do metalanguaging. Finally, a word of caution may be in order here:
the view noted above does not exclude traditional grammar or the acqui-
sition of theoretical or structural knowledge of language. Rather, the per-
spective gives these a new position and imagines new types of activities.
Thus it is almost inevitable that we need to see metalinguistic activities as
a part of our language curricula. However, in these activities one should
stress tasks that tap into the learners’ language awareness and develop
their skills of noticing, reflection, and analysis. Those views that speak
of grammar as ’grammaring’ are a good example (e.g., Larsen-Freeman,
2003; van Lier, 2007).

66
Conclusion
By rethinking concepts of language and learning and by regenerating the
pedagogical practices and materials, we invite learners to ‘enter upon the
stream of communication’ as Voloshinov (1973, p. 81) said. Ideally, what
could be achieved is ‘distributed classrooms’, the idea that learners’ tra-
jectories could reach across both informal and formal contexts. As to the
learners, the aim is that each learner has the potential to develop a strong
personal language learner agency that helps him or her to proceed to-
wards what has been chosen as a personal goal, either an institutional one
of a proficiency diploma or a degree or a more personal one of becoming
a member in their chosen language community. The following example,
from an interview of a language learner, may illustrate how languages are
best learned along doing:

I’ve been lost and found my way in French, I’ve taught myself
how to make goulash in German, I’ve discussed relationships in
English and I’ve cleaned fish in Swedish’. (Translated from the
Finnish) (Dufva et al., 1996).

Acknowledgements
Research funded by Academy of Finland:
‘Dialogues of appropriation’ https://www.jyu.fi/hum/laitokset/kielet/
index_html/dialogues

Research funded by Finnish Cultural Foundation:

‘Agency and languaging’ https://www.jyu.fi/hum/laitokset/kielet/agency

67
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DESIGNING FOR SUSTAINABLE
PEDAGOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN
HIGHER EDUCATION LANGUAGE
TEACHING

Juha Jalkanen & Peppi Taalas

Introduction
In the field of education, as well as in language teaching, major efforts
have been undertaken to support and encourage teachers to use informa-
tion and communication technologies (ICTs) in their classroom. All this
has been done with a policy-level goal of a permanent transformation in
educational practices. However, very few of these initiatives and plans
have had sustainable effect on teachers’ pedagogical practices (Cuban,
2001; Taalas, 2005). In retrospect it can be assumed that this is at least
partly due to the lack of ownership of the change processes, of their ob-
jectives, and even more importantly, of their benefits to an individual
teacher (Fullan, 2007a; Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009).
Amidst the rapid and unforeseen changes in society, learning has be-
come the very core of all societal activities and functions (OECD, 2000).
Globalisation, increasing mobility, labour market changes, and fast tech-
nological development all have had a tremendous impact on how our
lives and the context in which we live have become more multicultural,
multilingual, and multimodal.
This chapter builds on our recent research into onsite pedagogical
development in higher education language teaching (Jalkanen, 2010; Ta-
alas, 2005). We will argue that there is a growing need for a better under-
standing of the mechanisms of change and to develop research method-
ologies and approaches that enable us, together with teachers, to develop
and create new practices. The central concepts in this chapter are agen-
cy, expertise, sustainability, and organisational learning, which we place

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within a design framework for pedagogical development with qualitative
evaluation tools. These concepts are operationalised in an organisational
context where research and development are combined to create a dy-
namic environment for action.

Changing operational environment

Language education, too, is under pressure to change, renew, and rethink
its practices, structures, and learning goals. Technologisation alone has
greatly changed the way in which our social networks are shaped and
developed, the way we communicate and use language, and the way in
which we study or work (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Gee 2004; Hargreaves,
2003; Jenkins, 2006; Kern, 2000; Pennycook, 2010; Weller, 2011). The
concept of knowledge has simultaneously changed: an increasing number
of people have access to information and knowledge, and, particularly in
Western society, we are also relatively free to produce and share informa-
tion.
The interpretation by Lankshear and Knobel (2003) of two par-
allel but conflicting mindsets outlines the conflicting views on the ex-
isting practices and transforming practices of education, existence, and
thinking. In the world described in the first mindset, people operate in
a traditional way, and technology has primarily an instrumental value. It
enables the use of new kinds of communication media and ensures that
citizens have access to information, but the conceptions regarding the
nature of knowledge and learning have remained largely unchanged. In
this society products are still material, and society aims to educate citizens
who have sufficient knowledge and skills to produce these products. The
world thus appears rather similar to what it used to be; it is only slightly
more technological. By contrast, the second mindset of a postindustrial
knowledge society differs fundamentally, according to the authors, from
the first mindset. This new world is characterised by unpredictability and
change. In addition to material products, the operation of societies is
increasingly based on immaterial products, and their character and di-
versity are difficult to predict. Economic success depends increasingly on
one’s ability to create, productise, and sell different services, expertise,
knowledge, and skills. The entire society operates in a more networked
and collaborative manner. Indeed, knowledge and expertise are possessed

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not only by individuals but ever increasingly by communities. The na-
ture of knowledge is collective and shared, no longer stable, ad hoc, and
bound to institutions.
In a postindustrial knowledge society, technology does not only have
instrumental value, but it affects above all people’s activities with texts,
language, and other people (see also Kress, 2003). The operating culture
is characterised by interaction, speed, and multimodality. It is important
to understand that people’s participation in different multilingual and
multicultural communities also shapes their identities and relationship
to the surrounding world. Furthermore, this changes and affects the way
in which individuals interpret the world and participate in it in different
languages and media (see, e.g., Lankshear & Knobel 2006; Kern 2000).
These kinds of practices should not be isolated from language teaching at
schools (including teaching mother tongue), and they should not be seen
as separate and irrelevant even from learning and competence develop-
ment. This is supported by Scardamalia and Bereiter as they highlight the
static attitude of schools to information and knowledge (Scardamalia &
Bereiter, 2006). They talk about ‘knowledge of ’ and ‘knowledge about’
as two very different approaches to teaching and learning. They claim
that the content offered at school is superficially ‘nailed’ to texts books,
exams, and curricula, which only seldom is constructed into authentic
and meaningful knowledge for the learner.
This prompts us to rethink and reform language teaching and learn-
ing pedagogies but also to develop research methods that take into ac-
count the complexity of the research setting and that give support to
more sustainable structures of change to develop as part of the research
and its implications for teaching and learning. These methods should
include teachers as codesigners and codevelopers of their own work. This
way, the development efforts are neither top-down nor bottom-up, but
something in between, something that takes place in the space created
in the development process. So far, the development has often happened
outside the classroom, during data collection visits in the classroom, or in
a ‘researcher’s chambers’, and the teachers are the recipients of the results
if the results ever reach them.

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Conceptual framework
The most central concept in this chapter is the notion of design, which
carries different meanings and refers to different aspects and perspectives
of the development process and the research around it. Pedagogical de-
sign refers to the act of structuring and analysing the teaching practices
and their outcomes in a given teaching setting. Organisational design, in
turn, highlights the processes taking place and planned for the develop-
ment of organisational learning, development of new structures, and the
act or rethinking of current practices. The interplay of these concepts is
discussed at the end of the chapter.

Dynamics of sustainability in education

Sustainability is a complex concept as it has various connotations, some
of them even political. Although there has been prominent research in-
terest in educational change for the past few decades, the issue of sustain-
ability has, however, remained largely unexplored. More recently, it has
become a research agenda of its own, and the meaning of sustainability
has also evolved. Whereas in the 1980s and early 1990s sustainability re-
ferred mainly to the maintenance of innovation (Rogers, 2003; Elmore,
1996), the contemporary definitions stress the dynamic nature of sustain-
ability (Fullan, 2005; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Docherty et al., 2009),
often linked with ecological metaphors. The role of higher education as
a change agent for sustainability is also acknowledged (Gough & Scott,
2007). A great body of literature dealing with sustainability is concerned
with environmental issues, but common ground for all sustainability re-
search is the orientation toward future.
Sustainability in the educational context seems to be threatened,
especially in situations where an initiative has the aim of permanent-
ly changing current practices while the practitioners see it only as one
event in the flow of never-ending initiatives and interventions. In many
cases, the existing structures in the school or teaching organisation are
not negotiated properly nor are they aligned with the goals due to the
lack of systemic thinking. According to Senge (2000), most schools are
drowning in events and simply resort to quick fixes to survive the day-to-
day pressures. This creates an ‘attention-deficit culture’ in which people
become very skilled at solving crises instead of looking for ways to pre-

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vent them. In this way, they lose sight of the cause and effect chain and
concentrate on correcting problems instead of the reasons behind them.
This in turn creates an environment where development cannot become
sustainable and there are very slim chances of establishing permanent
practices at any level of the organisation.
Many teachers do take part in various development projects and
initiatives. Bielaczyc (2006, 302), however, states that long-term devel-
opment work calls for a theory-level understanding of the reasons why
certain practices are effective for learning while others are not. The theo-
retical aspect is often lacking in school-based development projects and
can partly explain why many of these development projects are short
lived and over when the funding ceases or when the project has come to
an end.
In this paper, we define sustainability as informed and future-ori-
ented decision making that incorporates being proactive (rather than
reactive) in designing for future development. Moreover, we emphasise
the dynamic nature of sustainability. In other words, the point is not to
push for a continuous change or to maintain something that has been
developed earlier, but rather to respond to the changes taking place in
the operational environment. Creating sustainability is a collaborative
endeavour that places learning at its core (Shani & Docherty, 2003). As
Docherty et al. note (2009, p. 11), learning-based change for sustain-
ability underpins organisational change for sustainability. In our context,
the major changes in the operational environment are the transforming
student body and the heterogeneity of it combined with the media rich
environment within which students live, study, learn, and work.

Organisational development
It seems evident that learning has become a condition of survival for organ-
isations in modern society (Engeström, 2001; Senge, 1990; Taalas, 2005).
In the early 1990s, Senge introduced the learning organisation model
based on systemic thinking. According to him (1990, p. 3), learning organ-
isations are ‘organisations where people continually expand their capacity
to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns
of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where
people are continually learning how to learn together.’ Since the 1990s, a

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vast body of research on learning at work has drawn from theories of situ-
ated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). However, in recent
years, discussion has arisen about whether new kinds of theories for organi-
sational learning are needed as work life has become increasingly complex
and multidimensional (Blackler, 2009; Engeström, 2009; Wenger, 2010)2
. Respectively, Engeström, Kerosuo, and Kajamaa (2007) point out that
‘some recent studies of organisational transformations have begun to ap-
proach learning as a more multilayered, multisited and temporally dis-
persed phenomenon, simultaneously both incremental and radical´.
In organisational learning, the subject of learning is often the in-
dividual. According to Senge (1990, p. 139) ‘organisations only learn
through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee
organisational learning but without it no organisational learning occurs’.
As Huysman (2000) notes, Argyris and Schön (1978), for example, talk
about organisations while in fact they are referring to learning individuals
within organisations. The subject of learning can, however, be a com-
munity or an operational system from which case learning emerges as
an expansion or transformation of activity (Engeström, 1987/2001). In
line with the preceding view, Huysman (2000, p. 315) defines organisa-
tional learning as ‘the process through which an organisation constructs
knowledge or reconstructs existing knowledge’. As noted by Boreham
and Morgan (2004, p. 308):

[M]ost contemporary researchers define learning as organiza-

tional to the extent that it is undertaken by members of an orga-
nization to achieve organizational purposes, takes place in teams
or other small groups, is distributed widely throughout the orga-
nization and embeds its outcomes in the organization’s system,
structures and culture.

This is also echoed by Docherty et al. (2009, p. 10), who state that in
sustainable development learning ‘must take place at all levels in the orga-

2 Even though Argyris and Schön, and Engeström come from very different backgrounds and
traditions, they do have some similarities, for instance, their interest in the work of Bateson
(1972).

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nization: the individual, collective, and organizational levels, and indeed,
beyond that … ‘.
Profound changes have taken place in ways we access, consume, and
produce information. The accelerating pace of technological develop-
ment highlights the importance of proactive action instead of reactive
or, as Senge’s (1990) states, more generative learning is needed to ensure
sustainability along with adaptive learning. In other words, pedagogical
development should be in advance of technological development, not the
other way around. Thus, this is an organisational challenge since many
educational organisations lack the structures of supporting learning at
work. It is also worth noting that, while learning, organisations also cre-
ate their futures. Similarly, Engeström (2009, p. 58) goes on to say:

People and organizations are all the time learning something

that is not stable, not even defined or understood ahead of time.
In important transformations of our personal lives and organi-
zational practices, we must learn new forms of activity which are
not yet there. They are literally learned as they are being created.

However, the problem is that, due to the dynamic nature of change, there
is no such thing as a competent teacher, as Engeström (2009) declares. In
this view, organizational development endeavours are based on learning
together rather than training. This approach indicates a shift from con-
tent-based designs to activity-based designs, in which the ability to gain
ownership and authorship of the activity is the key. This kind of a shift
requires agency, and therefore we suggest that agency should be placed in
the central focus of organisational and professional learning.
To summarise, the challenge is in combining the ‘Engeströmian’ and
‘Sengeian’ perspectives into a functional frame of action and analysis.
Where Engeström states that change is dynamic, fluid and unpredict-
able, Senge reminds us of the importance of understanding the systemic
nature of change and to see all levels of action affected by change efforts.
Engeström talks about the artefacts around which the (group) learning
activity takes place, whereas Senge talks about the individual’s need to
understand the purpose of activity. Engeström also highlights the impor-
tance of cultural and historical aspects in understanding development.

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All in all, both of these views are relevant and important and genuinely
complement, not conflict with, each other.

Agency and expertise

A growing interest has been placed on designing environments that
support the development of agency in the learning process (Ellis, Ed-
wards, and Smagorinsky, 2010; Lipponen and Kumpulainen, 2011).
Agency is a central concept in learning and in becoming an expert. It is
directly linked to concepts related to self-regulation and learner autono-
my (see Hunter and Cooke, 2007; Benson, 2001). Expertise and being
an expert are complex concepts. From the point of view of competence
and knowledge, expertise is built on three areas of knowing/knowledge:
theoretical knowledge and understanding, practical knowledge includ-
ing self-regulation, and reflective and metacognitive knowledge (Bereiter,
2002; Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1992). There are various subconcepts
under the main concept of expertise; for instance, an adaptive expert may
refer to the behaviour of a person who is constantly willing and able to
extend his or her expertise outside the core competences and become a
novice once again (see Bransford et al., 2006). This behaviour is charac-
terised by a desire and ability to discover new solutions and interpreta-
tions. Schön (1983), in turn, talks about the reflective practitioner who
is able to become aware of and criticize his or her tacit understandings
through reflection, which is a basis for professional learning.
In this chapter we have framed the concepts of expertise and agen-
cy in a three-tier concept of access, ownership, and authorship. These
concepts portray a level of agency in relation to the ability to create and
design pedagogical activities that incorporate new types of elements that
support learning – in this case, various technologies. Access refers to the
stage where the teacher has in general good access not only to technolo-
gy, but also to different examples of integration in the form of activities
and plans. Ownership in turn happens where the teacher starts to feel in
control of the constant change and uncertainty of school and classroom
events. S/he feels that there is territory to explore and that there are no
right or wrong solutions to the way in which teaching should be orga-
nized and structured. Authorship can be considered the highest level of
agency, and autonomy in dealing with change -- trying out new things –

80
is actually transforming not only the teachers’ outlook on classroom prac-
tices, but the way in which learners are offered opportunities for taking
charge of their own learning. The stages aren’t always clearly separated,
nor is the expanding teachers’ thinking always tied to certain behaviours
or goals. We use these concepts as tools for analysing and understanding
what actually happens during the different phases of pedagogical devel-
opment.

Opportunities and challenges in onsite research

The starting point for the research is two-fold:

»»As members of the organisation in question, we are interested in

organisation structures and processes that contribute to sustain-
able pedagogical development.

»»As educational researchers, our interest is in the learning process-

es involved in the development work.

Consequently, the research prods into the cluttered reality of collabo-

rative pedagogical development in a language teaching organisation in
higher education. This is done through examining aspects of different
local development projects in which authors have been involved in dif-
ferent ways. Documenting the development processes from an organ-
isational perspective also allows us to go beyond the end products and
investigate the learning trajectories and the tensions involved. One of our
main concerns and interests is to see if and how we can create coherence,
continuity, and structure for development in the teachers’ increasingly
fragmented and turbulent work.
Conducting the onsite research described in this chapter raises many
methodological questions. First of all, the researchers have a dual role,
as they are simultaneously members of the organization and researchers
conducting research into the organisation. Second, because the objective
of the research is to produce a sustainable infrastructure for pedagogical
development and workplace learning, traditional means of data collection
are too narrow for capturing the multilayered process of action. The data
collection should ideally result in data that both accounts for the learn-

81
ing processes and helps the organization to adjust its actions. Third, the
research must have a solid theoretical foundation that is also adaptive to
the complex organisational context within which the research takes place.
Finally, the number of cases under the lens of investigation is limited,
which has to be taken into account in the description of research ethics.

Design-based research
Design-based research (DBR) has been proposed as a research approach
that can help bridge the gap between research and practice (van den Ak-
ker et al., 2006) as it seeks to explain how design functions in authentic
settings. However, Engeström (2007) very rightfully criticizes design ex-
periments for being too superficial. According to him, ‘[t]he emphasis is
on completeness, finality, and closure may be partly explained by the idea
of design experiments as “refinement”. The implication is that the re-
searchers have somehow come up with a pretty good model which needs
to be perfected in the field’. He claims that no model is ever finished or
ready, but in a constant state of change. He draws on von Hippel and
Tyre (1995, p. 12) for support and continues to claim that an approach
such as this overlooks the fact that one might never ‘get it right, and
that innovation may be best seen as a continuous process, with particular
product embodiments simply being arbitrary points along the way’. The
approach adopted in this chapter adheres to this idea.
Design-based research is often described as a development and re-
search process that transpires in an iterative cycle of design, enactment,
analysis, and redesign (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). Mixed
methods can be applied to collect and analyse data; the approach does
not in itself dictate certain methodological choices. In the current study,
the design-based research approach has been complemented with narra-
tive research methods (Webster and Mertova, 2007).
Design-based research has a dual objective: on the one hand, it seeks
to respond to local needs, for example, by developing the learning envi-
ronment. On the other hand, it strives to increase our understanding of
learning (Barab and Squire, 2004; Barab, 2006; Design-Based Research
Collective, 2003). In other words, DBR as a research strategy allows for
conducting research on multiple sites, timescales, and levels. The ob-
jectives are intertwined and can be considered as the main feature of

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design-based research in addition to its iterative nature. As Barab and
Squire (2004, p. 5) note, the ‘design-based research strives to generate
and advance a particular set of theoretical constructs that transcends the
environmental particulars of the contexts in which they were generated,
selected, or refined’. Furthermore, the researcher’s role is dynamic: s/he
can function as the teacher or cooperate with the teacher (Barab, 2006;
Confrey, 2006), as is the case in this study. We see these principles as key
from the perspective of the research project in question.
The design-based research approach allows for multilayered research
design and use of data. On the organizational development level, a qual-
itative analysis took place. The field notes written by the researcher were
translated into a narrative that was then used as a basis for the analysis
of the process. To promote the validity of the findings, the analysis and
interpretations were discussed by the two researchers.

Problem-mediated approach to pedagogical development

The ability to pose relevant questions, set up problems, and develop
plausible solutions have been considered elements of high level expertise.
In the contemporary knowledge society, collaborative problem solving
is a key feature of expertise (Engeström et al., 1995). Even if this chap-
ter does not directly adapt problem-based learning as an approach or
method, we strongly see a link between our conceptual framework and
PBL. As PBL is defined as an ‘approach to structuring curriculum which
involves confronting students with problems from practice which pro-
vide a stimulus for learning’ (Boud & Feletti, 1997, p. 15), our research
setting aligns very well with the core idea. Our development projects can
be seen as the curriculum within which the teachers taking part in the
study are faced with problems where they have to reflect on their cur-
rent practices to create and combine new approaches and solutions. The
problems mediate pedagogical thinking and can be shared, discussed,
and analysed. The mediation process functions as a lens through which
all participants focus on the same themes and issues. Eventually and as
an outcome of the process, the teacher’s learning becomes visible in the
transformed activity.
The model introduced here is derived from the design-based research
process; thus, it is an outcome of this research. However, for the sake of

83
clarity it is described here as a foundation for discussion of the process in
section 7.

Fig. 1. Problem-mediated approach to pedagogical development.

The first step of the process is selecting the course to be developed that
works as the mediating tool for problem-solving activity. The process
structure has been influenced by the ideas presented by Cope and Ka-
lantzis (2000), by Engeström’s concept of expansive learning (1987), and
finally by the Linköping PBL model (Abrant Dahlgren et al., 2005). The
first stage of the cycle is design, within which the development design
problem is negotiated between the teacher and the researcher. The key
principle is that the development work is initiated by the teacher, but the
object of the activity is negotiated. Following the definition of the prob-
lem, ideas for development are brainstormed. Brainstorming is based on
constructing existing pedagogical knowledge. Based on the ideas devel-
oped in the brainstorming session(s), an initial design for the course is co-
constructed. The design is the basis for the development of new practices.

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 In the next stage, the design becomes an action, as it is reconstructed
in the actual classroom situation. A prerequisite for establishing the new
design is that it is negotiated with the students. The negotiation process
requires a clarification of the learning objectives (both shared and indi-
vidual) and the alignment of the objectives to the new practices. During
the enactment stage, the design is processed by the teacher and the stu-
dents. In this phase, the researcher acts mainly as an observer.
The third phase of the cycle is analysis. Reflection on the new prac-
tices and the new design lay the groundwork for selecting a focus area for
a more detailed analysis. This phase includes a literature review conduct-
ed by both researcher and teacher, combined with regular meetings for
discussion. Data collected during the course are analysed in light of the
focus area, and the results are aligned with educational theory. The results
are the basis for redesigning the course for the next cycle. Redesign begins
with a redefinition of the design problem.
The development phases have their counterparts in the design-based
research design. Research stages are placed on the inner cycle. The prob-
lem-based approach and the design-based research are very similar in the
way in which the activities are organised within a predefined cycle of
activities. Both approaches lead to a deeper understanding of the issue or
theme introduced at the start of the process, and both aim at deepening
the theoretical underpinnings of the issue.

Language teaching organization as the context for action

Following the idea of multimodal pedagogy (Taalas, 2005), an e-learning
platform3, Moodi, has been in development since 2003 at the University
of Jyväskylä. The development has been coordinated by Peppi Taalas and
her coauthor has also been actively involved in the development process.
The most significant goal motivating the development work has been
to encourage teachers to rethink their pedagogical designs in terms, for
instance, of the core content and working modes. The environment itself
is not locked within a certain pedagogical ideology but rather allows the

3 We use the term e-learning platform (also platform) here to refer specifically to the technolog-
ical construct. In our view, it becomes a virtual learning environment (VLE) or to some extent a
personal learning environment (PLE) as a result of the pedagogical practices taking place.

85
teacher to make new constructs and learning paths quite freely for the
learners.
To initiate a discussion about learning environments and pedagogi-
cal practices, the new platform was introduced to teachers in May 2009.
The introduction was made by explaining the pedagogical thinking be-
hind the creation of the platform. With the help of case examples, the
teachers were given a walk thru as to how things might be done different-
ly and even in an exciting way. After the first presentation, more than 20
teachers expressed their interest in hearing more, and some even sched-
uled a personal meeting to look at their course plans to see how these
could be developed further using the platform.
The meetings with teachers led to a development of several courses.
The courses represented different ways to integrate technology into teach-
ing practices: some of the courses took place completely online where-
as others expanded the face-to-face teaching space into virtual environ-
ments. In the following section we will examine aspects of these cases in
greater detail.

Pedagogical development in the design framework

This section draws on several local development cases within which the
authors have been involved and within which the problem-mediated de-
sign framework has been developed. In this exploration, we will discuss
emerging issues in the development work in the light of our conceptual
framework.

Rethinking expertise in the design work

Recent research on agency and expertise supports the view that some
workplace activities are too complex to be managed individually (see,
for instance, Edwards, 2011). This can be considered to be the case in
developing new kinds of structures and practices for language teaching
and learning. The teachers and researchers involved are all experts in their
own fields, but the new practices and structures are an unknown territory
and thus require new kinds of expertise that do not yet exist. Against that
background we suggest that combining different kind of expertise at dif-
ferent stages of the design process fosters the creation of new pedagogical
artefacts (both conceptual and material) that go beyond contemporary

86
uses of tools and environments and aim at the transformation of practices
and cultures. The notion is well aligned with the concept of an adaptive
expert discussed above. This line of thinking has been the point of depar-
ture for the design work.
Traditionally, designing a course is a process that relies to great extent
on a teacher’s individual expertise. In the organization in question, we have
established a new staff profile, namely, the post of a pedagogical developer4.
This new staff role has been introduced to teachers as a resource for
rethinking existing practices and developing new ones. From the expert
point of view, this has provided teachers with an opportunity to bring
different kinds of expertise into pedagogical development. It can thus be
seen as an organizational resource.
In this approach the course design functions as a kind of ‘boundary
object’ for the shared meaning that can be further negotiated. Therefore,
to construct a space for sharing expertise, the course design needs to be
created at an early stage (step 3 in the model). The course design, then,
facilitates the pedagogical discussion. Whereas different kinds of artefacts
have been created to guide the design work and to construct a shared un-
derstanding of the process, the most significant artefact that has mediated
the negotiation of meaning has been the course design itself. During the
design process the teachers and the researchers discussed questions that
relate to language learning in a broader sense than merely activities, tasks,
or course materials. Drawing upon this observation, we claim that the
course design mediates the teacher’s pedagogical thinking and makes it
accessible for the researcher5.
In terms of agency, this stage could be seen as the construction of
access (discussed above). When the new course design is coconstructed
and negotiated, ownership and authorship of the design as well as the
process are expected to develop.

4 The pedagogical developer is the same as the other author of this chapter. For the sake of
clarity he is referred to in the text as a researcher. When we talk about researchers, we mean the
both authors.
5 This can be compared to the pedagogical discourses that teachers often echo when discussing
their beliefs and perceptions of pedagogical concepts. Either way, it is a question of researcher’s
interpretations.

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 In our minds, expertise is considered as situational, and the reper-
toire of expertise expands as the development process unfolds. In this
case it means that during the development process the stakeholders gain
a deeper understanding of the new practices, processes, and structures
that eventually become a part of their expertise. This form of profession-
al learning takes place through reflection on the action. However, the
notion of expertise can also be a barrier to professional learning. For in-
stance, shared space for expertise might be constrained if a teacher resists
taking the position of an adaptive expert and holds onto the position of
being an expert.

Research and development intertwined

Retrospectively we can identify three kinds of resources with which our
project has provided the teachers: technical, pedagogical, and profes-
sional. In practice, the technical resources meant that the teachers were
provided with individual and ad hoc assistance in constructing new vir-
tual spaces for their teaching. This was needed in many cases due to lack
of time or technical skills. The pedagogical resources, in turn, provided
the opportunity to expand the horizon of pedagogical possibilities by
combining different kinds of expertise in the design process (as discussed
above). Finally, the professional resources were operationalized in this
case in the form of design-based research.
Some members of the organization who were involved in the
development work were also interested in engaging themselves in re-
search on the development work, and the cooperative nature of de-
sign-based research provided an opportunity to make use of it as a re-
source for professional learning. In the stage of analysis, the data were
analysed by the teachers and the researcher in a collaborative manner6
. During the data analysis sessions, different types of expertise were com-
bined: the teachers were experts in the content area they were teaching
and the researcher was the expert in learning in multimodal settings. To
mediate the discussion during the data sessions, the researcher provided

6 For information on teachers engaging in research as professional development, see Honan

(2007).

88
the teachers with relevant literature – and vice versa.
The flexibility of the development setting also allowed involving
more people in the stages of enactment and analysis. Some future teach-
ers were interested in engaging in data collection and conducting their
theses on the development work. As their research progressed, the issues
arising were discussed with each other, which presented opportunities for
professional learning.
From the design perspective, the development work has staked a
claim for research-based pedagogy. Following the design-based research
strategy, the design has been theoretically supported, but the research has
also contributed to the understanding of the design in context.
Dissemination of the results in peer-reviewed academic journals and
conferences have served three purposes: first of all, it has supported teach-
ers’ academic careers and made the professional learning visible in that
sense. Second, the new practices have been negotiated with the academic
community to ensure a scientific quality of the development work, and
third, the dissemination has documented the development work as part
of organisational activity.

Sustainable pedagogical development

The pedagogical development described in this chapter has been under-
way for three years. During that time, several courses have been devel-
oped in different ways. The guiding principle in the development work
has been supporting t he construction of agency in the development set-
ting. Following the principles of design-based research, the development
work has taken place in iterative cycles, and the organization-level under-
standing of how to guide and support the process has increased.
The introduction of new pedagogical practices and structures is usu-
ally followed by conflicts within working and learning cultures. These
tensions between the old and the new are arenas for mutual learning and
from which new cultures of learning and working emerge. Thus, it is by
analysing these tensions and conflicts that we begin to understand the
enacted design, its affordances and its constraints. In retrospect, it seems
that it is of utmost importance to support critical reflection between the
development cycles. In the development process, critical reflection has
taken place in discussions between the teachers and the researcher. In line

89
with our view of sustainability, recognizing the points where the direction
of the development needs to be adjusted is one of the most important
aspects of the process.
Teachers often claim that the lack of certain technical skills prevents
them from using technology for pedagogical purposes (cf. Sulla, 1999),
but despite the major efforts to develop teachers’ ICT skills, only a little
transformation has taken place on the level of pedagogical practices. The
underlying idea has been to help the teachers to eventually become famil-
iar with the e-learning platform, not as a technological tool but as a vehi-
cle to expand the teachers’ pedagogical thinking and learning opportuni-
ties for the students. The focus was heavily on pedagogical development
and to ensure it, the teachers were not expected to handle the technolog-
ical side but were offered technological assistance. Instead, technological
competence and autonomy in using the platform were built gradually
during the process. This approach establishes the evolution of pedagogy
as the sustainable element.
The design process has also been discussed with the administration
to ensure support and interest on the organisational level. As has been the
case before in the larger development undertakings at the organization,
the development goals have always been combined with administrative
commitment for allocating time and resources needed for the work.

Discussion and conclusions

The aim of this chapter was to examine learning trajectories and emerging
tensions in the pedagogical development work within the organisational
context. A set of development cases was examined from the perspectives
of expertise, research and development, and sustainability.
The chapter adheres to the notion that designing for sustainable de-
velopment necessitates a systems view of the learning setting that is, in
this case, the organization. This view takes into account different contex-
tual variables while acknowledging the unpredictable nature of learning.
In other words, the development is planned and carried out together with
teachers and the larger organisational goals and factors in mind, while
also recognising the possibility that something completely unplanned
and unexpected might emerge as a result. Due to this complexity it is
not possible to pinpoint the moments where learning takes place without

90
more intense methods for data collection in place. Instead, this chapter
has tried to provide a description of the process from the researcher’s per-
spective and some snapshots of the different parts of the process.
The rapid pace of changes is often exhausting for teachers whose
main responsibility is to teach and to ‘produce results’ in one form or
another. Learning how to use new tools is not really part of the job, and
opportunities and time for pedagogical development are not always avail-
able. For that reason, we have originally started to develop the kind of
activity-centred design framework that places the teacher’s capacity to act
(agency) in the central focus and emphasises the negotiation of meaning
where the teacher is encouraged and expected to bring his or her own
pedagogical thinking to the discussion. The development of the frame-
work has been complemented with organizational resources, such as the
post of pedagogical developer.
By looking at the teachers’ design practices, it is possible to see pat-
terns of change and presume how change takes place. The development
process as we have discussed it here supports the view that, in the devel-
opment work, agency and expertise are relative and progress from access
to ownership to, finally, authorship. This, however, presupposes that the
teachers are offered the chance of being codesigners and the teachers are
willing to take on that task. As a result of the cooperation between the
teacher and the researcher, something new is created and new practices
emerge. At this point, it can be only assumed and predicted that these
new practices have sustainable elements on the microlevel.
At the organisational level, both the pedagogical and technological
resources were allocated for the development work as needed, and it is
important to ensure that both are available for the teachers whenever they
are needed. A constant dialogue between the teachers and the adminis-
tration is needed to ensure the goals are negotiated and renegotiated as
things progress.
The dissemination of these new practices takes place more natural-
ly through academic channels, i.e., journals and conferences, but not as
horizontally within the organisation. However, our preliminary observa-
tions indicate that the dissemination has made the new practices more ac-
cessible to other teachers, too. This can be interpreted from the fact that,
following the dissemination of our different cases, many of the teachers

91
have contacted the researcher and have proposed collaboration in terms
of pedagogical development.
Drawing on these results, we argue that designing research-based,
dynamic teaching and learning environments supports sustainable edu-
cational development. Most, if not all, development work should be built
on teachers’ existing pedagogical thinking, and not on the objectives laid
out in the research and development project. During the research-based
design process the teachers need to share freely their current thinking
and course designs, and, likewise, and the researchers need to share their
thoughts. When this happens, a negotiation of meaning will take place,
and a shared understanding can be reached. As Fullan (2007b) advises,
it might be useful to tone down the term ‘professional development’ and
start talking about ‘professional learning’.
In this chapter we have described a research setting that is still very
experimental and exploratory. The results so far seem quite encouraging
even if only time will tell how sustainable the practices developed during
this research will be. Nevertheless, we feel it is crucial that more research
is done in the area. The research should focus specifically on the mech-
anisms involved in supporting and developing authorship as part of the
sustainable development of teaching. For instance, qualitative accounts
of the negotiation of meaning in the development work could provide
some new insights into the dialogic relationship between teachers and
researchers.

92
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DESIGNING PROBLEM-BASED
LEARNING IN VIRTUAL LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS – POSITIONING
TEACHERS AS COMPETENT
PRACTITIONERS AND DESIGNERS

Thomas Ryberg

Introduction
In recent years Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) or Learning Man-
agement Systems (LMS) have been widely adopted within Higher Educa-
tion and other educational domains. However, it seems that these wide-
spread changes have had more effect on administrative practices than
on fundamentally reshaping pedagogy. Many proponents of technolo-
gy-enhanced learning (including myself ) view technologies as vehicles or
opportunities for reshaping existing pedagogies, typically toward more
active, student-centred, dialogical, collaborative, and knowledge-creating
modes of learning. However, the pedagogical realities of VLE implemen-
tation seem to include less radical pedagogical changes (Dalsgaard, 2006;
Hannon, 2012; Jones & Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2009; OECD, 2005).
Often VLEs become more or less static repositories containing course
descriptions, curricula, readings, lecture notes, and slides with only little
interaction, collaboration, and critical dialogue. As described by Dirck-
inck-Holmfeld & Jones (2009), this has led many e-learning pioneers to
view VLEs as retrograde step in terms of pedagogical development. This
is reflected in current debates about Personal Learning Environments
(PLEs) (or social software and Web 2.0) vs. Virtual Learning Environ-
ments. In this debate, particularly in the blogosphere, we find loud calls
for a shift away from institutionally controlled, walled-garden and static
VLE-silos, as these are said to enforce a ‘traditional’, teacher-centred ped-
agogy of transfer where students consume and reproduce existing knowl-
edge. The alternative is presented as a move towards student-owned and

101
controlled PLEs, which are positioned as reflecting a ‘progressive’, stu-
dent-centred pedagogy where students become collaborative producers of
knowledge. In particular, Web 2.0 technologies have become the rhetori-
cal lever for realising these techno-pedagogical changes, as Web 2.0 tools
are key ingredients in notions of PLEs as loosely coupled collections of
personally owned tools for students’ self-directed or collaborative learn-
ing (Attwell, 2007; Dalsgaard, 2009; Drexler, 2010).
I agree there are good reasons to fundamentally revisit pedagogical
practices within higher education and move toward student-centred col-
laborative learning and knowledge creation. Likewise, I agree that Web
2.0 technologies have tremendous potential for education. I argue, how-
ever, that we should be very careful in assuming that ‘new’ technologies
will automatically lead to such changes. We run the risk of falling into the
technological determinist trap of assuming that the next ‘technological
fix’ will generate a wave of pedagogical change within institutions, while
the history of e-learning or networked learning teach us otherwise (Sel-
wyn & Grant, 2009; Selwyn, 2012). I believe there is a need to step back
from discussing advanced tools and reflect more on the role of teachers
in these debates, and how we can support them in these processes of
change. In particular, I feel this is important and timely, as much of the
rhetoric around Web 2.0 basically reiterates well-established pedagogical
ideals, particularly those associated with PBL as observed by Dohn and
Johnsen (2009) and Dohn (2009). For example, Aalborg University has
practiced a radical student-centred PBL pedagogy since 1974 and online
programmes based on this pedagogy since the 1980s (McConnell, Hodg-
son, & Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2012). Additionally, it might be worth re-
calling that VLEs or other web-based technologies, which are now argued
to embody a ‘teacher-driven’, ‘instructional’ pedagogy, were envisioned to
transcend and change just such pedagogies.
The lack of pedagogical transformations may have many different
causes within and across institutions, but a general observation is that
many teachers find it difficult to meaningfully adopt new technologies
into their practices (Hatlevik, Ottestad, Høie Skaug, Kløvstad, & Berge,
2009; Holm Sørensen, Audon, & Twedell Levinsen, 2010). It should
be noted that my purpose is not to locate teachers as the source of the
problem, as this is not an issue that concerns only ‘teachers’. Rather, it

102
is a part of the larger ecology of implementing in organisations what
Bygholm and Nyvang (2009) call new ‘educational technology infra-
structures’. Furthermore, one of the central problems seems to be the
very assumption that new technologies will ‘automatically’ drive peda-
gogical changes. While great economical investments have been made
in the acquisition of hardware and network infrastructures, the need to
simultaneously educate and help teachers to make pedagogically mean-
ingful use of the technologies has been somewhat neglected (Hatlevik
et al., 2009; Holm Sørensen et al., 2010). Therefore, my aim in this
chapter is not to locate teachers as ‘a problem’, but rather as a part of the
solution.
Shifting from an instructional or teacher-centred pedagogy towards,
e.g., a Problem-Based Learning approach is not just a matter of adopting
new, collaborative technologies or environments. More fundamentally
it is about changing the power relations and accountability-structures
between students and teachers (Tambouris et al., 2012). Such changes
are not merely about ‘using new technologies’, but more fundamentally
about changing and renegotiating organisational and individual practic-
es, identities, and beliefs about learning. This encompasses a change of
tools, but also includes potentially changing more deeply seated ideas
and practices of what it means to be a teacher or student. Therefore,
there is a need to have a more thorough debate of what we might mean
by student-centred learning or, rather, Problem-Based Learning, which
is of particular relevance to this book. And there is a need to develop
conceptualisations and mediating artefacts that can help teachers in navi-
gating this landscape, supporting them in redesigning their teaching and
learning practices.
Thus, I focus on teachers as competent practitioners and designers,
and argue that, rather than viewing technologies as the vehicle or lever
for change, we should look at mediating design artefacts (Conole, 2010)
as ways of promoting teacher-driven innovation of their own educational
practices.
In this chapter I therefore present and discuss the CoED method,
which I view as a mediating design artefact. The CoED method is a spec-
ification or inspirational guide for how to conduct design-oriented work-
shops that help practitioners and designers in designing (online) learning

103
courses, modules, or other educational activities. However, the method
also involves steps that prompt the participants to collaboratively discuss
and reflect on their more deeply seated values and beliefs about learning
(which are often more diverse than participants expect). In this chapter
I present, discuss, and analyse experiences with the CoED method as a
mediating design artefact. I discuss its role in facilitating teacher-driven
innovation of learning designs with a particular focus on PBL in virtual
learning environments. I initially present a view of PBL as practiced in
Aalborg University and the principles associated with this model. How-
ever, this is an approach that is deeply embedded in the whole organisa-
tion (practiced university wide) and also a rather ‘radical’ PBL-model,
both in terms of students’ ownership of the problem and the temporal
extent of the collaboration process. Implementing a similar model would
probably be out of reach of most teachers or even teacher teams, as it
would include larger organisational and institutional changes. I, there-
fore, offer a theoretical discussion and conceptualisation of PBL, which
can be helpful in understanding and designing for varied types of PBL
practices. This conceptualisation was also used as part of the CoED work-
shop described in our example.

A conceptual model to understand different types of PBL practices

PBL is most often positioned as a student- or learner-centred pedagogy
focusing on learners’ active and often collaborative creation of knowl-
edge through engaging with real-world problems or cases. While PBL
has become a widely adopted concept, there is a wide range of different
(and sometimes conflicting) interpretations of what PBL is. It is not a
commonly agreed upon concept, but rather encompasses a number of
different interpretations and practices (Kolmos & Graaff, 2003; Ryberg,
Glud, Buus, & Georgsen, 2010)”container-title”:”International Journal
Of Engineering Education”,”collection-title”:”International Journal
Of Engineering Education”,”page”:”657-662”,”volume”:”2003”,”is-
sue”:”19”,”abstract”:”Problem-based learning (PBL.  

As even superficial inspection of a few of the available sources

can reveal, the label `PBL’ is used to cover an amazing diversity
of educational practices, ranging from problem-oriented lectures

104
 to completely open experiential learning environments aimed at
improving interpersonal relations (Kolmos & Graaff, 2003, p.
657).

Different articulations of PBL range from presenting students with math

problems or cases during a lecture, to models where students work collab-
oratively for months on addressing self-chosen, real-world problems, as
is the case with the Aalborg University model of PBL (Barge, 2010; Kol-
mos, Fink, & Krogh, 2004). I initially present this model and associated
principles as a paradigm case of what is meant by PBL and student-cen-
tred learning. In this model, at least in theory, the idea is that the prob-
lems and projects with which students work are mandatory parts of the
curriculum, rather than the curriculum being limited to course curricula
and decided mostly by teachers or institutions.

The Aalborg PBL model

At Aalborg University (AAU), a particular PBL model has been employed
as a university-wide pedagogical approach since the University’s inaugu-
ration in 1974 (although with some variations). In AAU students work
with problem-based projects every semester. This means that half their
time (15 ECTS) is allocated to and assessed through courses and course
work. The remaining time (15 ECTS) is used on and assessed through
the project work and report. Furthermore, courses are designed to sup-
port the students in their problem-oriented project work by providing
introductions to relevant theories and methods that students can poten-
tially employ in their project work. The project reports usually number
approximately one hundred pages and document and reflect the process
of a group of students solving or addressing the problem. The project
work lasts 3-4 months, in which the students go through different types
of enquiry: problem identification, problem formulation, theoretical and
methodological inquiry, data collection, analysis, and discussion. In this
way the project work is quite similar to, e.g., the process of doing research
(albeit on a smaller scale). This model has more recently been formally
described in a number of principles. For the purpose of this chapter I
focus on the principles stated in relation to the ‘educational vision’ of
PBL. These are: problem orientation, project organization, integration of

105
theory and practice, participant direction, team-based approach, collabo-
ration, and feedback (Barge, 2010).
Problem orientation: Refers to the idea that problems or questions
should always serve as the basis for the learning process. Problems can
take different shapes within different fields, e.g., purely theoretical or
practical; often, however, it is an important component that the students
themselves identify, formulate, and are genuinely interested in the prob-
lem. Project organization: The written project and work process is the
means through which the students address the problem and realise the
articulated educational objectives. The project refers to both the prob-
lem-based enquiry the students go through and the final written report
(the product). Integration of theory and practice: Faculty members and
project supervisors facilitate the students’ process of connecting the spe-
cifics of the project work to broader theoretical, methodological, and
practical knowledge embedded in the curriculum; it is part of courses
and course work. From this integration, students may better see how the-
ories and empirical/practical knowledge interrelate. Participant direction:
One of the key principles is that it is the group of students who define the
problem and make key decisions relevant to the successful completion of
their project work. Team-based approach: The vast majority of students’
problem/project work is conducted in groups of three or more students.
Collaboration and feedback: Students use supervisor and peer critique to
improve their work throughout the process of the project work. The abil-
ities to collaborate, give feedback, and reflect are important outcomes of
the PBL model in terms of the students’ learning, i.e., the principles of a
team-based approach are important.

Mapping various PBL-practices – a conceptual model

The Aalborg PBL model is one particular interpretation and orches-
tration of PBL among many others. In addition, it is a quite ‘radical’
model in terms of participant/student control; additionally, because it is
applied as a university-wide approach, it has a huge impact on how the
curriculum of programmes is structured, and is embedded in the physical
and administrative infrastructures of the university (e.g., space for group
meeting rooms). Thus, adopting a similar model full scale is an organiza-
tional change process rather than a matter of adopting a particular peda-

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gogy in a course or programme (Graaff & Kolmos, 2007). Such a change
process would often be outside the reach of individual or even groups of
teachers. However, I believe that individual teachers or teacher teams can
be inspired by the principles and implement models that are similar to
the Aalborg PBL Model, although they might embed them on a smaller
scale. I therefore present a conceptual model, which can be helpful in
understanding and designing for different types of PBL practices.
In an attempt to capture central aspects of different orchestrations
of PBL, Barrows (1986) proposes three variables that can be used to dif-
ferentiate various PBL practices. The first concerns the design and format
of the problem: Is the problem given to the students or self-chosen, and
how open is the problem? Are students given a detailed description of the
problem along with references about how to solve the problem, or is the
problem more ill-defined enquiry. Secondly, Barrows distinguishes be-
tween whether the learning processes are teacher or learner directed. The
third variable concerns the sequence in which problems are given and
information acquired, in terms of whether cases/problems are provided
before or after additional information is presented.
Similarly, several authors argue that PBL is grounded in the be-
lief that problems should be the starting point for the learning process
(Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2002; Kolmos & Graaff, 2003; Savery, 2006; Sav-
in-Baden, 2007). In line with Barrows, these authors argue that import-
ant aspects of PBL are: the design of the problem, who formulates the
problem, and who is responsible for the major decisions in relation to the
problem-solving process (teacher or participant directed). They further-
more highlight the importance of experience learning, where students
build on their own experiences, and the notion of learning through active
engagement in actual practices or real-world problems involving research
activities, decision making, and writing.
Basically, it seems that different articulations of PBL can be ex-
pressed in terms of the distribution of power and responsibility between
teachers and students (Ryberg, Koottatep, Pengchai, & Dirckinck-Holm-
feld, 2006) e.g. is a problem given or identified? Who decides how to or-
ganise the problem solving process, and is there a definite solution to the
problem or is it open ended? Based on these distinctions, and building
on Ryberg et al. (2006), I propose that we can extract three important

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characteristics of PBL, which can be used to distinguish among and to
design various theoretical and practical constructions of PBL. I suggest
that we can distinguish between whether teacher or student has control
or ownership of the problem, the work process, and the solution. ‘The prob-
lem’ opens up questions about who controls or owns the formulation and
design of the problem: teacher, student or others. ‘The work process’ is
concerned with how working processes are organized and who controls
them. Who chooses in what way to investigate the problem (theories,
methods, empirical investigations, etc.)? Is the work process controlled
and designed by a teacher or the students? Finally, one can ask who owns
‘the solution’, meaning to what degree are the students expected to dis-
cover a predefined solution or as opposed to being involved in a process
of exploration and knowledge production. The three dimensions can be
thought of as stretched out between two ends of the continuum of teach-
er and participant control:

Fig. 1. Central dimensions of Problem-Based Learning

This conceptualisation can be used to understand or analyse different

practical articulations of PBL and has, for example, been adopted in
Tambouris et al. (2012) to describe and discuss the final design of differ-
ent online courses that were part of the EU-project EAtrain2. In Tam-
bouris et al. (2012) the model was used to depict graphically the degree of
teacher or student control over different elements in a course. However,
the model can be used equally as a conceptual design tool to promote
teachers’ reflections on existing and future practices. I shall return to this
in the case example, where I discuss how it was implemented as part of
the CoED method.

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The CoED Method
The Collaborative E-learning Design (CoED) method is a common
methodological framework initially developed by Nyvang and Georgsen
(2007) and further used and developed by Tom Nyvang, Marianne
Georgsen, Lillian Buus, Louise Nørgaard Glud, Jacob Davidsen, and me
as a loosely coupled CoED group or collective. The method is developed
with input from research on:

»»systems development and design – with a focus on designing

information and communication technology;

»»collaborative learning – emphasis is on designing for learning,

and learning through the design process; and

»»facilitation of creative processes – where the aim is to develop

something new.

Thus, the CoED method is inspired by existing theoretical frameworks

and methodologies, and incorporates practical methods for facilitating
creative processes (e.g., by drawing on known concepts, such as card sort-
ing and future workshops). The CoED method is a specification or inspi-
rational guide on how to conduct design-oriented workshops that help
practitioners and designers in designing (online) learning courses, mod-
ules, or other educational activities. It aims to support domain, qualifica-
tion level, and subject experts in designing targeted networked learning.
The emphasis is on bringing focus and structure to the early stages of the
design process; to develop design specifications and/or early prototypes
within few hours of work; and to support the collaboration between dif-
ferent types of experts and practitioners. For example, the aim could be
to bring together e-learning experts, teachers, and technologists in an
effort to create a number of high quality courses or modules (subject and
content-wise) that are also pedagogically and technically innovative. An-
other goal could be to bring together teachers from particular semesters
or programmes to develop online or blended learning courses in a newly
adopted Learning Management System.

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In the following I outline the principles and phases in the CoED method.
For a more thorough discussion of the theoretical and methodological
background to the method, we refer to earlier work (Buus, Georgsen,
Ryberg, Glud, & Davidsen, 2010; Nyvang & Georgsen, 2007).

CoED method – phases and principles

The CoED method facilitates a design process by following five overar-
ching principles and splitting the early design process into three phases.

Principles - the CoED method:

1. Facilitates conversations about e-learning design.

2. Structures conversations about e-learning design.

3. Produces design specifications and/or actual designs rapidly.

4. Involves e-learning experts, domain specialists and future users

of the e-learning design.

5. Involves at least two people in the design process.

The principles are relatively straightforward and act as guidelines for

the overarching purpose of the CoED method: To support structured
dialogues and concrete design activities among a diverse group of par-
ticipants (more than two), and ideally with participants from different
domains. Following principle number four, the design process ideally in-
volves learning experts, domain specialists, and future users of the learn-
ing design.

Phases

1. Focus the e-learning design process (presentation).

2. Identify overarching values and design principles (card sorting
and prioritisation).
3. Specify design (card sorting and design).

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To give an overview of the method, I describe briefly the purpose of
the three phases and go into more detail in the specific case examples
of how the activities in the phases have been carried out and adapted
to different contexts. The first phase is usually conducted as an ‘expert’
presentation, whereas the latter two phases involve different card sorting
and design tasks. However, the more specific organisation and content
of the workshop can and should be tailored with a view to the purpose
and context of the workshop.

First phase
The first phase of focusing the e-learning design process is intended to
be an ‘expert’ presentation of e-learning design. In this phase a present-
er, who is usually one of the workshop facilitators, may give an intro-
duction to general e-learning design principles, e.g., outlining differ-
ences between more content-oriented and more dialogical approaches,
the functionalities of a certain learning management system, particular
challenges of online learning, or focus on the meaning of collaborative
learning or Problem-Based Learning. The purpose is to provide some
central concepts and establishing common ground before entering the
design phase.

Second phase
In the second phase participants are tasked with a card sorting ex-
ercise. From a number of value cards (Fig. 2) with value statements or
learning orientations, the participants need to gradually boil down the
overarching design values and principles that should guide their own
design. Value statements can be, e.g., ‘collaborative learning’, ‘skill and
drill’, ‘open educational resources’, ‘reflection-on-action’, or the like. Of-
ten different value cards will reflect ‘contradicting’ or opposing values,
e.g., collaborative learning vs. individual learning, content vs. process,
teacher control vs. student control.

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 Fig. 2. Example of CoED Value Cards

Value cards are, however, often designed to be open ended, ambiguous,

or synonymous to prompt participants’ reflections and discussions, rather
than representing clear-cut values or learning orientations. The partici-
pants will finally have to choose, e.g., five value cards, which they believe
are the most important values and design principles. The purpose of the
phase is to engage the participants in discussion and reflections on the

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educational and pedagogical values or principles. Thus, the activity of the
phase aims at facilitating and structure conversations about e-learning
design.

Third phase
The third and final phase is a more concrete design task, where partic-
ipants use a number of design cards within three categories to actually
design a course, a module, or an activity (see Fig 3.). As a rule, posters
and pens are provided, as participants place the cards on the poster, add
extra cards they feel are missing, and present their final design as a visual
presentation. The design cards are grouped into three categories,where
we have often used a distinction among Resources, Activities, and Infra-
structure. Resources can be, for example, e-books, blogs, teachers, case
descriptions, or articles. Activities can be discussions, blogging, collabo-
rative writing, or supervision. The final category is (technical) infrastruc-
tures and can be, for example, intranet, wireless network, learning man-
agement systems, location-based services.
The purpose of this phase is to engage participants in the concrete
design of a course, module, or activity and use the design cards to prompt
reflections and visualise relations between, e.g., resources and activities or
the pedagogical intentions of using a blog for a particular activity. The
cards are there to remind participants of the vast amount of resources and
activities, which can be part of an online course, and how these should be
facilitated technically.
To support the practical work of running workshops based on the
CoED method, an online CoED card generator has been developed (see
http://old.ell.aau.dk/coed). The card generator basically produces an RTF
file with design cards and a header card. As mentioned, the design cards
fall into three categories, where users of the generator can choose the cat-
egories themselves (and use categories other than activities, resources, and
infrastructure). Under each of these categories, users can create as many
cards as they see fit (e.g., activities such as blogging, writing, discussing,
etc.).
In the following I present a practical example of how a CoED work-
shop has been organised and adapted, and how different decisions have
been made in terms of organisation of the workshop, for example, in

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 Fig. 3. Examples of design cards

terms of how value cards and design cards have been designed by the
facilitators and how the overarching goals of the workshops have been
framed.

Case Example:
Facilitating the Adoption of PBL Principles in Online Courses on
‘Enterprise Architecture’
In the following I present an example of a CoED workshop carried out
in relation to the EU-funded research project ‘Innovative Enterprise
Architecture Education and Training Based on Web 2.0 Technologies’
(EATrain2). The overarching aims of EATrain2 project were:

[...] to identify the training and educational needs of employees

in both public and private sector and university students regard-
ing EA and to fulfil these using innovative pedagogies and prac-
tices based on Web 2.0 technologies and active, problem-based
learning approaches.7

7 http://www.ell.aau.dk/research/projects-a-h/eatrain2/

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The EATrain2 project consortium was comprised of partners from six Eu-
ropean countries and stakeholders from business, the public sector, and
academia. It was composed of four main work packages (WPs), which
ran consecutively from January 2009 to December 2010 with half a year
allocated for each work package. The task of WP1 was to identify stake-
holders’ needs regarding Enterprise Architecture Training. The outcomes
were overviews of the relevant skills, knowledge, and attitudes of an En-
terprise Architect to be attained in courses within the university, public
and private sectors. The objective of WP2 (with which the author was
primarily involved) was to extend the work from WP1 by developing
a Problem-Based Learning methodology capitalising on Web 2.0 tech-
nologies. The learning methodology would then feed into the concrete
course production and platform development, which was the main task
of WP3. Three online pilot courses on ‘Enterprise architecture’ (designed
for business, the public sector and academia respectively) were developed,
run, and then evaluated as part of WP4.
For the purpose of this chapter, I do not mean to go deeply into
details about the project and the work conducted as part of WP2. This
work has been further described in Glud et al. (2010), Buus et al. (2010),
Ryberg et al. (2010), Tambouris et al. (2012). However, as part of the
learning methodology, we (the WP2 team8) conducted a CoED design
workshop with the intention of producing a number of preliminary
course designs primarily topicalising the use of Web 2.0 technologies and
appropriation of Problem-Based Learning principles.
We used the CoED method as our foundation, but customised the
orchestration of the workshop and the design and value cards in relation
to Web 2.0 learning, and the main principles of PBL. In relation to PBL
we used the conceptual model (fig. 4) to create some of the value cards
to specifically reflect the tensions between student and teacher control
and curriculum vs. problem orientation (e.g., working with real-world
problems vs. curriculum, student control vs. teacher control, problem
formulated by student/teacher, work process controlled by student/
teacher, solution owned by student/teacher). Other value cards were, e.g.,
individual learning, learning from theory, learning from practice, class-

8 Thomas Ryberg, Marianne Georgsen, Lillian Buus, Louise Nørgaard Glud, and Jacob Davidsen

115
room teaching, and copresence. Likewise, design cards were specifically
designed to reflect Web 2.0 activities, resources, and technologies (infra-
structures), such as microblogging, podcasting, geo-tagging, and social
bookmarking (but also cards such as formative assessment, tests, or infor-
mation retrieval).

First phase
In the first phase of the workshop (Focusing the e-learning design – 1
hour), the facilitators began by giving an introduction to key issues in
the pedagogical design of Web 2.0 mediated learning and Problem-Based
Learning. This was done to focus the attention on central issues that sur-
face when adopting Web 2.0 practices and Problem-Based Learning. In
relation to this, the conceptual model of PBL was introduced as a think-
ing and design tool (fig. 1).

Second phase
In the second phase (Identify overarching values and design principles –
1.5 hours) the participants were divided into two ‘course design’ groups
(private sector/academia) – and these groups were further divided into
two subgroups. In these subgroups they conducted the first card sort-
ing exercise using the value cards. The participants were initially asked to
put the various value cards into groups of 1) the most important, 2) the
important, 3) the less important, and 4) the unimportant (marked by
++, +, -, -- on an A1 poster; see Fig. 2). Following this, we asked them
to completely remove the cards from the categories less important and
unimportant. In the third part the subgroups within the private sector
and academia reunited and compared what they had placed in the cate-
gories ‘most important’ and ‘important’. Thereafter, the two groups had
to renegotiate and agree on five overarching values to guide their more
specific design. The particular organisation of this phase can vary and,
e.g., be split into more or less subphases of gradual refinement of the
values. Likewise, different categorisations and visualisation can be used
(e.g., concentric circles where favourite values are placed from centre to
the periphery or in a black hole).

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Third phase
In the third phase the participants continued the work in their two design
teams. Each group had a facilitator asking critical questions, in order to
support the group in formulating a design, which would reflect the five
core values. These were taped to a header card placed on the A1 poster,
which participants used to discuss and on which they placed their design
cards. The design cards were made according to the categories: resources,
activities, and infrastructure. The design results or preliminary designs
can be seen in figure 6. These tentative designs, however, were not the
most valuable outcomes of the workshop. One practical problem with
the workshop was that only a few of the participants would actually be
teaching the courses, and therefore had difficulties getting into more spe-
cific discussions of the course designs. However, several issues, tensions,
and contradictions surfaced during the discussions. Would it be possible
to do a PBL course without a teacher/facilitator? Were there contradic-
tions between the intentions of adopting PBL principles, Web 2.0 learn-
ing, and the forms of institutional assessment to which partners would
have to adhere? Were there tensions between the intended level of the
competences and the proposed designs?

Outcomes of the workshop

In this particular instance, the value of the applying the method was
not intimately connected to the actual designs that surfaced from the
workshop, as these were not very detailed (and therefore might not have
had strong impact on the final design). However, the contradictions and
tensions identified by the participants during the CoED workshop had
a broader impact on the continuing process of designing the courses.
These became ongoing topics of attention, and even though some of
the contradictions identified were difficult to resolve in practice (e.g.,
identified tensions between collaborative work and highly individualised
grading), they were helpful in ameliorating or reducing the tensions, as
teachers and course designers were conscious of these potential prob-
lems. Likewise, it became apparent during the discussion and design
phases that the different partners held very different ideas of how their
courses would be run and supported. These differences had not previ-
ously been transparent or articulated among the partners. Equally valu-

117
able were the participants’ discussions on the notion of PBL and their
different conceptualisations of how much ownership could be relegated
to the students, and what were the role and responsibilities of the teach-
er. In this particular instance of a CoED workshop, the important out-
comes were not really the initial and unfinished design posters that the
groups produced. However, the process of negotiating and reflecting on
others’ and one’s own values regarding teaching and learning were very
productive (Buus et al. 2010).

The potentials and limitations of the CoED method

The CoED method can support teams of teachers and other practitioners
in collectively renegotiating and designing, for example, the structure of
a course, a semester, or educational units at other levels of scale. It offers
a design specification or guide on how to conduct workshops that allow
teachers to come together, discuss, and negotiate their ideas, while it also
focuses on producing tangible and early prototypes for a course, all with
the help of a facilitator. In the case I have outlined, the designs were in
their earliest stages and premature, but in other cases, the CoED method
has been used to produce prototypes and designs that have been ongoing
objects of negotiation throughout a project (Nyvang & Georgsen, 2007).
As mentioned in relation to the EAtrain2 case, the particular designs may
not have had a deep, final structuring impact on the courses in terms of
design, but the tensions and contradictions that surfaced in the workshop
were common points of investigation and enquiry.
CoED is a very flexible method in the sense that value cards and
design cards can easily be redesigned to reflect a particular challenge. In
the case of the EAtrain2 project, we deliberately embedded in the value
cards the pedagogical tensions between student and teacher control over
various elements of problem and project-based learning, and we recon-
figured the design cards to focus on Web 2.0 technologies. In this way
we ensured or suggested that participants reflected on, for example, the
distribution of power between students and teachers.
I argue that particularly the CoED model’s focus on initial discus-
sions of values is a very useful exercise for teachers or teams of teachers in
trying to renegotiate their current ideas and align with others. This can
help teachers that might be teaching different subjects or are from differ-

118
ent institutions to understand and articulate variations in their pedagog-
ical views and ideas (Bach Jensen & Houman Nyrup, 2009). Likewise,
the facilitators should continuously ensure that the participants return to
and reflect on these values when working with the more practical design
tasks and design cards.
From conducting and organising a number of CoED workshops, it
is our experience as a research collective that participants always manage
to devise sensible and interesting preliminary designs for courses. Within
typically a half or full day of work, participants succeed in producing
early design visualisations, prototypes, and ideas about, e.g., posters and
with the use of the design cards. However, we have not yet managed to
follow these design representations over lengthier periods of time in order
to study more intimately the trajectory or distance between the workshop
designs and the final course designs. In other words, in what ways have
the insights and ideas generated in workshops had an impact on the final
course designs? We know that the design workshops generate temporary
design artefacts, but whether people return to these or how they are trans-
lated or changed into other design artefacts, and finally a course, is not
yet fully apparent to us. While we had have experiences in projects where
a relationship between the initial designs and the final product can at
least be inferred or teased out, we remain to collect more rigorous data
and untangle what happens between participants in the stages between
initial design ideas, other design representations and discussions, and the
final product. However, it does not mean that the initial processes have
not been valuable if there is no apparent similarity between initial designs
and the final design. The initial processes could very well have motivated
changes, which over time mutated and transformed slowly into some-
thing that seems far removed from the initial ideas, but still had a strong
influence on the early phases of the work. Likewise, students who work
with problem and project-based learning also work with multiple defini-
tions and changes in what constitutes their problem (or even the theme
of the project). This does not mean that the initial problem formulations
and enquiries have been in vain; instead, it suggests or indicates a learn-
ing and development process. We are, however, yet to study these muta-
tion or transformation processes in more depth in relation to the method.
Furthermore, the innovation potential of the method has been ques-

119
tioned by others. Houmann Nyrup and Bach Jensen (2009) applied the
method as part of an organisational process of redesigning a number of
blended learning courses. Their aim was to facilitate a pedagogical devel-
opment process in which they wanted to stimulate teachers to rise above
their current pedagogical thinking. While they found that the method
was well suited to reaching common ground and creating a pedagogical
model, which was agreed on by a team of teachers, they simultaneously
felt that the designs the teachers finally produced were more conservative
than they expected and for which they had hoped.
This might have something to do with the theoretical inspirations
and historical background of the method. The method specifically aims
at empowering participants and giving them a decisive voice in terms of
creating designs that they view as sustainable within their own context.
The idea is to facilitate participants’ collective inquiry and position them
as knowledgeable practitioners and designers of their own future practic-
es (inspired by the traditional Scandinavian approach to systems design).
In this way, the method does not necessarily aim at creating revolutionary
designs, but rather sustainable evolutionary designs, which do not exceed
the comfort zone of teachers and practitioners. I maintain that this is an
advantage, rather than a shortcoming per se. As I initially argued, there
is a wide(ning) gap between institutional realities of technology adop-
tion and institutional rhetoric or the more advanced ideas pursued by
pioneering educational technologists (such as ourselves). While it might
look easy, straightforward, and promising for a professional education-
al technologist or researcher to include blogs and twitter in a course, it
might look very difficult from the perspective of a newly educated biology
teacher, who may not be using these technologies in his or her everyday
practice. The CoED method aims to empower participants by facilitating
and supporting them in developing sustainable changes to their exist-
ing practices, rather than provoking participants to produce designs that
might be innovative but difficult to implement in practice. This certainly
does not mean that the CoED method is inherently conservative or that
it seeks no innovation. Facilitators are there to support the process, give
an initial inspirational state-of-the-art presentation, promote debate, and
challenge the participants. However, the method aims at letting partici-
pants collectively formulate their own goals and aspirations. In this way,

120
the ownership of the problem, to put it in PBL terminology, rests with
the participant and not the facilitator(s).
This also has some implications in terms of running workshops and
who should be included or chosen as facilitator(s). It might be an advan-
tage that the facilitator is not a stakeholder in the organisational change
processes, but serves as a more ‘neutral’ observer and organiser of activi-
ties. Alternatively, the true aspirations and goals of the workshops should
be very clear and transparent to the participants. The method is designed
to let participants negotiate and align their perspectives and to create de-
signs which resonate with their organisational realities. CoED sits some-
where between a radical change agenda and a more modest, step-wise,
evolutionary model of development.
Some final critical comments on the method are related to questions
of the method’s longer-term impact on design processes. In practice, I
have experienced how people have aborted valuable discussions in order
to rapidly designing something and live up to the facilitator’s demands,
e.g., ‘Oh we have ten minutes left and we need to put something on a
poster’. While it is difficult to avoid some pressure on participants to pro-
duce work in a short period of time, we must note whether the designs
are forced and produced to respond to short-term goals, i.e., completing
the design task as required by the facilitator. Somewhat related to this,
we/I have equally had concerns about whether such collective design pro-
cesses promote a certain level of ‘compromise’ and temporary agreements,
rather than spurring heated, but productive, debates among pedagogical
beliefs. In literature on groups, this is a well-documented problem, which
seems to become stronger the less dependent the participants are on each
other or how well they know each other.
To briefly sum up, I believe that the CoED method has some po-
tential for supporting teachers or other practitioners in negotiating and
creating initial design proposals, for example, in relation to implement-
ing more student-centred learning pedagogies or PBL in online courses.
I believe that it is one potential way of engaging teams of teachers in
productively renegotiating current values and beliefs about learning while
also producing initial design ideas and prototypes. More importantly, I
believe that there are some inherent values in the method that supports
teachers in framing these change processes within their existing organisa-

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tional practices and comfort zones. While the CoED method should not
in and of itself be expected or assumed to produce radically, innovative
course designs, I argue that it can be used to prompt step-wise, evolu-
tionary, sustainable changes, which are rooted in and aligned with the
teachers’ or practitioners’ own goals, aspirations, and realities.
In pursuing more student-centred pedagogies, I believe that such
step-wise, evolutionary models of development can help position teach-
ers and other practitioners as competent designers of their future prac-
tice, i.e., implementing PBL in virtual learning environments.

Concluding remarks
In this chapter I have initially highlighted the pronounced gap between
the ideals of student-centred, collaborative pedagogies and the institu-
tional realities and implementations of VLEs in education. I have argued
that teachers often find it difficult to adopt digital technologies into their
teaching and learning practices. This is potentially further aggravated if
teachers are expected to, or want to, implement more student-centred
pedagogies such as PBL. Therefore, there is a need to support teachers
in working with the design or redesign of courses when relocating these
in virtual learning environments and adopting student-centred learning
principles such as PBL. From my perspective, PBL is not merely a useful
pedagogy or script for how to teach the same effectively. PBL, as practiced
at, e.g., Aalborg University, is a radical redistribution of power among
teacher, student, and curriculum, which challenges traditional notions of
learning and also, potentially, teachers’ identities and more deeply seated
values.
While I have outlined an understanding of PBL as based in the Aal-
borg PBL model, I have also introduced a conceptual model to distin-
guish between and design for different types of PBL practices. For many
teachers, a shift to more student-centred learning principles, as embedded
in many PBL models, can be a difficult and challenging step. In particu-
lar, such shifts also imply changes in power and responsibilities between
teacher and learner, and thus concern teachers’ conception of their own
professional practice and identity. However, I believe that the conceptual
model I have outlined can help teachers to think about such development

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processes in steps and at different levels of scale. A teacher might want
to delegate power and ownership to the students in terms of their work
processes, while being the one to design and formulate the problem.
For teachers to work in practice with reconfiguring and rethinking
their teaching and learning approaches, I have suggested that they may
need mediating design artefacts as a means to rethink, renegotiate, and
reshape these approaches. In this vein I am suggesting that the CoED
method can be a fruitful method to support teachers’ as they create their
own practice. I have equally outlined how central PBL principles or ten-
sions can be embedded into the script of running a CoED workshop
through reconfiguring the design and value cards (and the initial pre-
sentation). I believe that the CoED method can serve as a valuable me-
diating design artefacts to support teachers’ in a step-wise, evolutionary
change of their learning and teaching practices, while remaining atten-
tive to their organisational realities and their own goals and aspirations
rather than those of the facilitator (or institutional rhetoric). In this way
I am suggesting and promoting the viewpoint of positioning teachers as
competent practitioners and designers when designing for PBL in virtual
learning environments.

123
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COMMON CONCEPTIONS OF MOBILE
PHONES IN SCHOOL SETTINGS
Torbjörn Ott

Introduction
The history of learning in projects and the tradition in the spirit of John
Dewey reveal several examples of one question: how do we manage the
learners’ own democratic learning in a way that keeps it free from, but yet
close to, the curriculum? This has resulted in an ongoing discussion be-
tween progressivists and traditionalists (Säljö, Jakobsson, Lilja, Mäkitalo,
& Åberg, 2011). This strife has often been about whether it is the process
or the product of learning that is relevant. Dewey, progressivist and a
proponent of a process orientation, warned about focusing on the prod-
uct of learning. His ideas have become even more relevant over the last
few years in the political debate on school and education, being opposite
to the more instrumental view of knowledge in the debate (Säljö 2010).
Speaking for the progressive side, Shear, Gallagher, and Patel (2011)
warn that there is a gap between what students experience inside and
outside of the classroom and between the skills they learn in school and
what they need in life. ‘It is an increasingly accepted truth that education
systems must evolve to meet the needs of the students and societies they
serve, changing their mission from knowledge transmission to prepara-
tion for future learning’ (Shear et al., 2011). This is an approach favour-
ing the process of learning over results.
Shear et al. (2011) find that innovative teaching supports students
developing the skills they need in life, stating that even though ICT is
common in teaching in the schools’ included in the SRI research, it is still
an exception that students use ICT in their learning. New technologies

129
can be of use for students in the process of learning through projects,
since they open up the classroom. It enables new ways for communica-
tion, cooperation and participation (Chan et al., 2006; Säljö et al., 2011).
Learning in projects and case learning is related to the problem-based
learning (PBL) approach and PBL as a concept has been transferred into
curriculums on several occasions, more or less adequate (Pettersen & To-
rhell, 2008). But learning in projects does not share the open-end em-
phasis with PBL (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1999). Mobile learning is, as
we shall see, another option, which in many of its apparitions shares this
open-end characteristic with PBL. The term PBL has been used with such
various meanings. Barrows (1996) points to six criteria that have to be
met if a learning space (notably education and teaching) is to be defined
as problem based: 1. Learning must be student centred; 2. Learning has
to take place in small groups; 3. The teacher’s role must be as a facilitator
or guide; 4. The learning process must be based on authentic problems;
5. The problem is used as a vehicle to develop skills and knowledge; and
6. Gathering new information to solve the problem is the learner’s task
utilizing resources in the real world. These criteria are in many ways sim-
ilar to the ideas of mobile learning and another approach to learning;
seamless learning. Mobile and seamless learning are relevant to discuss in
relation to PBL since these concepts open up for using mobile phones.
The mobile phone is a technology that is significant in the life of most
people, including children and youth (Bjärvall, 2011).
According to Chan et al. (2006) seamless learning is the use of the
mixture of available technologies for learning. This means learning across
contexts, switching between formal and informal learning, social and
individual learning, using all available technologies including mobile
phones, basically on a one-to-one basis.
Mobile learning shares a lot of its characteristics with seamless learn-
ing, but with the demand on the technologies to be mobile. Which tech-
nologies that can be accounted for as being mobile has been discussed,
but the mobile phone is a given case.
Mobility is not only a spatial phenomenon, but also a temporal and
contextual (Kakihara & Sørensen, 2002). Hence, it not only relates to
the geographic learning space, but also to the schedule and the subjects’
curriculum. Merging mobile learning, using the mobile phone, with the

130
traditional classroom practices is then not done without friction. Mo-
bile phone technology has challenged education as well as the traditional
views of what learning and school is about, the teacher’s agenda and the
curriculum (Campbell, 2006; Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2009; Sharples,
2006; Sharples, Taylor, & Vavoula, 2005; Traxler, 2007).
Mobile activities can be a problem, not easily connected to formal
education. Students bring their own technology into the classroom and
they want to continue to be in control of the technology that they possess
(Norris & Soloway, 2010). To deal with this without loosing the mobile
learning experience is one of the challenges (Kukulska-Hulme, 2006).
This challenges our habituated view of knowledge hierarchies in school.
Is the teacher necessarily the one who is the knowledge authority, Säljö
and Linderoth (2002, p. 21) ask.
Formal and informal learning are often delicately intertwined and
not easy separable. It is of importance to examine the relationships be-
tween formal and informal learning in relation to wider contexts. Partic-
ularly important this is when considering empowerment and oppression
(Malcolm, Hodkinson, & Colley, 2003). This chapter acknowledges that
claim.
The subject is quite delicate since there are a number of aspects to
take into consideration – educational, technological and political. On the
intersection between the educational and the political aspects, this chap-
ter discuss consequences of the political race for votes on implementing
mobile learning and seamless learning in school using mobile phones.
This discussion is grounded in an empirical study of how news articles
highlight the challenges of mobile phones schools and classroom.

Mobile Learning and PBL

In the school law from 2010 the Ministry of Education and Research
states that: “The education shall rely upon scientific principles and prov-
en experience9” (Ubildningsdepartementet, 2010). But what are the sci-
entific principles about innovative teaching and learning using mobile
phones and mobile learning?

9 Utbildningen ska vila på vetenskaplig grund och beprövad erfarenhet. Skollagen §5 (Ubild-
ningsdepartementet, 2010)

131
 The ways of empathizing what distinguish mobile learning differs and
there are numerous of articles published. Evidence from mobile learning
research should be treated with carefulness; it is a rapidly growing field,
the studies have often been small with few participants and running over
a short time. However, there are studies showing that mobile learning
systems within the classroom can be beneficial for example when working
with open questions. When moving from individual responses, to group
collaboration consensus, to classroom discussions (Sharples, 2013).
Treated with caution, some key features of Mobile learning can be
conceptualized in relation to the six criteria of PBL specified by Barrows
(1996) (see above):

1. Student centred; That Mobile learning should be student centred

might be one of the core issues in the conflict with the tradi-
tional formal education institutions. The mobile phone shares
many features with tablets and portable computers. But it also
has some unique characteristics, for example a high degree of
personalization, by the features the user equip it with, the per-
sonal communication it enables and not the least by not easily
being shared. Bjärvall (2011) argues that in a world on the move,
the mobile phone is the users personal key to a virtual society
and new media, tightly connected to the users identity. As a key
to the virtual society the mobile phone in a classroom reach-
es outside its walls, putting the user in multi context environ-
ments not in control by curricular rules and regulations. Mobile
phones are generally not offered by the school but if they are, it
is yet necessary that the learner experience an ownership. “Own-
ership of technology helps to promote ownership over learning”,
Naismith & Corlett (2006, p. 16) says. In fact, Naismith and
Corlett (2006) argues that the experience of personal ownership
is a critical factor for the success of mobile learning.

2. Learning takes place in small groups; The devices facilitating

mobile learning, for example the mobile phone are most often
networked and even though mobile learning does not have to
take place in actual physical groups meetings, the devices enable

132
 communication with other both on the Internet and by call-
ing or sending messages when and where physical meetings are
needed (Quinn, 2011). It is a collaborative learning space that is
highly virtual or online, much like what is described by Thomas
and Brown (2011) The connectivity is yet another of the factors
of success for mobile learning stated by Naismith and Corlett
(2006).

3. Teachers are guides; Norris, Hossain, & Soloway (2012) argues

that mobile technologies will be the primary tools in one-to-one
school settings in the near future, and these settings have been
observed to promote a change in the teachers role from didac-
tic instruction to project/inquiry-based and highly collaborative
teaching and learning.

4. The learning process must be based on authentic problems; Mobile

learning can be a mixture, consisting of a human-technology co-
evolution, although with the learner at the center. As mentioned,
one of the benefits of mobile learning that has been put forth it
that it reaches outside the formal regulated classroom (Cuban,
1986; Liedman, 2011). Mobile learning can also be ubiquitous
and not easily separated from mundane activities such as mak-
ing conversation, watching TV or reading. Learning can take
place whenever a person has to overcome a problem and learning
can generate as well as satisfy goals. Interacting with available
resources – teachers, peers, technologies etc – in environment
the learner is dynamically reconstructing the context (Kukuls-
ka-Hulme et al., 2009; Sharples et al., 2005).

5. The problem is used as a vehicle or tool to develop skills and knowl-

edge; The learners with mobile devices can use e.g. the smart-
phones to carry out learning tasks whenever they have a spare
moment (Wong, 2012). Doing this during a problem solving
assignment would from a socio-constructivist view on learning
put the learner in a position where he or she is developing skills
and knowledge about the world.

133
 6. Gathering new information is the learner’s task using the real
world’s resources; One of the offerings of mobile learning is to
provide means to connect formal and informal learning, to pro-
mote a learning process that continue outside the lab or class-
room, in authentic settings (Sharples, 2013). Mobile learning is
partly driven by mobile information technologies, such as mo-
bile phones, PDAs, media players, video cameras, tablets and
so on. Most of these technologies can be used when the learner
is on the move and are networked (Traxler, 2009). This make
mobile learning dependent of how the technology is recognized.
The mobile phone can be a device for communication but also
for collaboration and the MP3-player enables an individualistic
listening experience but also a social induced activity, listening
in a group (Kukulska-Hulme, 2006). Mobile IT could be only
amusement but also something more, something the learner can
use for organizing his or her learning (Quinn, 2011). This is no
different from most people’s everyday practices outside school.

Given this description, mobile learning can be seen as sharing many char-
acteristics with PBL. Even though PBL is not a controversial learning
method in many formal learning institutions, Sharples (2006) state that
mobile learning is not implied without friction with the same institu-
tions. He is picturing two systems in school; one, the youth culture im-
penetrable to adults; the other is school with its curriculum and teachers,
deciding the acceptable discourse. Mobile technology -- and the possibil-
ities it unleashes with social networking and collaboration -- is part of the
youths’ system. In the classroom there is a clash with the formal system.
However, over time the formal institutions will digest the mobile tech-
nologies and remain stable, in the same manner as earlier technologies
(Sharples, 2006).
To understand this issue as a problem of either/or, that is school
has a structure too fixed for successful coping with new technologies,
or on the other hand school has a structure too weak to harness new
technology and media, is to simplistic. Trying to solve problems on these
premises can be successful in a short perspective. But no paying attention
to the world going on around school, these understandings do not create

134
any possibilities for long-term fruitful development. The challenge must
be to seek to combine structure and freedom in order to create some-
thing new (Thomas & Brown, 2011, pp. 48-49). Traxler (2009) states
that mobile technology changes the nature of knowledge work, and that
mobile learning is not just learning that is mobile. Mobile learning is
mobile learning, something original. That might be, but Sharples (2013)
believe that the formal and informal learning can connect, a view shared
by Kukulska-Hulme (2006), Naismith and Corlett (2006) and Thomas
and Brown (2011) in developing a new culture of learning, a culture
less confrontational. They also argue that the new culture of peer-to-peer
learning can coexist and complement the traditional formal classroom
education. It is not about mobility pushing the learner out of the class-
room, which has often been the explicit or implicit premise in mobile
learning research projects.
Changes brought about by new technologies both motivate and chal-
lenge. According to Thomas and Brown (2011), the twentieth century was
about creating a sense of stability. The twenty-first will be about embrac-
ing change. This means that the future should be looked upon at as a set
of new possibilities rather than adjustments of the present. Traxler (2009)
raised the question that maybe formal education is especially challenged.

Technology and school; a dilemma

ICT in schools is nothing new. Ever since the art of printing books was
invented, new technologies have been meet with both great expectations
and great fear. Mobile IT is no different; what had earlier revolutionized
education, for example, the pencil and the book, can now be fit into var-
ious handheld devices (Soloway et al., 2001).
Karlsohn (2009) analysed the discussion surrounding the introduc-
tion of ICT in schools during mainly the 1990s. In his rhetorical analysis
of, e.g., articles from the Swedish teachers’ union press, he put forth the
fact that during his period of research almost no critical voices opposing
ICT were given any space. This was a consequence of the IT-friendly
climate in society at the time. The IT companies were booming and all
voices heard said that ICT was the future, not the least in education.
When the so-called IT bubble burst in the year 2000, the rhetoric got
more nuanced (Karlsohn, 2009).

135
 The ICT of the 1990s were mainly computers. In this study the aim
was to see how mobile phones in a school context had been described in
the Swedish press. The material used turned out to be mostly from the
time after the IT boom. I had no desire to investigate the actual effects
of the daily press on public opinion, because the material and format
of the survey were too limited. I investigated only the content of the
articles. Which conflicts could be found in the material? How does the
approach to technology in the material meet the scientific approach to
mobile learning?
In his book Hets! En bok om skolan, Liedman (2011) writes about
the contemporary rhetoric surrounding the school in Sweden in general
and he is worried. Liedman describes a situation where the debate regard-
ing the school system is conducted primarily using anecdotal evidence.
As satisfying and comfortable it can be to talk about school this way, it
is worrying when the anecdotal evidence is the foundation of political
debate (Liedman, 2011, pp. 14-15). Liedman does not address mobile
phones in particular, but the material in the study shows that the ap-
proach to mobile phones in school reveals several arguments that could
be related to the use of anecdotal evidence as pointed out by Liedman.
According to Liedman the present Minister of Education Jan
Björklund of the Liberal Party, build his career on the question of school
and during the examined period he raised from local politician in Stock-
holm to Minister of Education of Sweden (Regeringskansliet, 2013).
In articles in Dagens Nyheter, he outlined his policies, Liedman
(2011) states. The other strong Swedish political force, the Social Dem-
ocratic Party, initially opposed Björklund. Over time they joined with
Björklund in criticising contemporary school practices, with some dif-
ferences,. However, the initiative is with Björklund, and every opponent
must motivate his or her divergent opinions (Liedman, 2011, p. 104).
The debate might be characterized by reliance on anecdotal evidence.
A scientific study with 166 participants at a college in USA indicated that
most students were negative about mobile phones in their college class-
rooms. Mobile phones are mainly seen as a device for cheating (Camp-
bell, 2006). The conclusions drawn from this limited study should not
be overestimated, and the result needs to be discussed further.. Campbell
does this by focusing on the special affordances of the classroom. The em-

136
pirical material is however too limited to be able to draw any far-reaching
conclusions.
School, and the classroom in particular, is a place with special con-
ditions. It is an environment with a heightened sense of normative expec-
tations. That makes the mobile phones more problematic there than in
most other contexts (Ling 2004). For example, the typical silence of the
classroom makes disturbances more noticeable (Campbell 2006).
Other factors that might have an effect on the opinions about mo-
bile phones are, for example, rumour or reputation. Based on hearsay,
these factors can cause misunderstandings and inaccuracies when being
regarded as facts. One example of this was when Princeton University’s
law school was ranked among the top ten in the world even though there
is no law school at Princeton (Liedman, 2011). Is there any sign that
technology affected the articles used in this study?
Several questions were raised in the analyses: How has the mobile
phone been portrayed in the daily press? What rhetoric has been revealed
in the debate about mobile phones? Is there any epistemological approach
to be traced in the debate? Which connections are made between mobile
technology and learning?

The study
Ott (2013) investigated the debate on mobile phones and school in two
Swedish newspapers. This chapter present and further discuss how the
public conceptions of mobile phones in school settings can have rele-
vance for understanding the preconditions for PBL approaches like mo-
bile and seamless learning in the Swedish school systems.
Treated as primary historical sources newspaper articles captures and
reflects influential opinions and conceptions of the past, both political
and public (Tosh, 2011). The debate represented in the material tells us
of the politicians’ ambitions and it analysis, reacts to and reflects con-
sequences in the society. Politicians need votes and appearing in news-
papers is one way to gather those votes. “[…] even a short exposure to
a daily newspaper influences voting behaviour as well as some political
opinions” (Gerber, Karlan, & Bergan, 2006, p. 18). They are though not
sure about what is of most importance; the content of the articles or the
political affiliation of the newspaper.

137
 Politics, federal laws and curriculums are powerful factors in gov-
erning school and for setting the framework of the classroom. Kukuls-
ka-Hulme et al. (2009) points to the situation in the U.K. where politi-
cians have acknowledged that mobile learning can be part of the future
school environment, it has however not been transferred to strategy. On
the contrary schools all over Europe prohibit the use of mobile phones,
but the mobile phones are being used for school work anyway (Kukuls-
ka-Hulme et al., 2009). Research utilizing news articles helps us to un-
derstand which conceptions have been prevailing regarding the mobile
phone technology and the governed traditional classroom context. From
those results some conclusions can be drawn on the preconditions for in-
novative teaching and learning through the PBL related seamless learning
and mobile learning in Swedish schools.

Material and method

The study presented in Ott (2013) was based on material collected from
the Internet database Mediearkivet that provides texts from numerous
Swedish newspapers. The newspapers selected for analysis were Dagens
Nyheter and Aftonbladet. They were selected on the basis of being two of
the biggest newspapers in Sweden and that they are both headquartered
in Stockholm but cover the whole country. Using articles as historical
sources, it is important to ask what value they have in describing the past.
First, approaching the material is critical; it could have deficiencies
in that it might not be complete. A search in a database is dependent on
the search terms. The subject of interest was mobile phones and school.
So the material was selected from two searches in the database. The first
one was conducted on the mentioned keywords ‘mobile phones’ and
‘school’; the second was done on the keywords ‘mobiles’10 and ‘school’.
Second, doubts could also be raised regarding whether the articles
are authentic. Is it the texts that were actually published on paper? I judge
the material as being quite good in this aspect; Mediearkivet is being
used by universities and is therefore under constant examination. Fur-
thermore, several of the texts come with a viewable digital copy of the
original.

10 The word in Swedish was ‘mobiler’.

138
 Third, what do the sources tell us? How representative is such lim-
ited material? Being remnants the newspapers are parts of the past in
which they were created, and conclusions could be drawn regarding that
situation (Kjeldstadli, Persson, Åmark, & Torhell, 1998). In the start-
up phase of the study I initially used newspapers derived from another
database, Presstext, with the search terms ‘mobile phones’ and ‘school’.11
The material from that search involved totally 27 different newspapers
or news agencies. However, the different sources in that search were not
comparable due to differences in dates of entry into the database. But
reading through the articles there was no sign of any trend that diverged
from the trends found in the more limited but comparable material from
Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet. It should be noticed that it is important
to be very cautious in drawing conclusions from the material on matters
on the outside of the material.
The newspapers were also chosen with an eye to political affiliation
and preference. Dagens Nyheter is unaffiliated liberal, and Aftonbladet is
unaffiliated Social Democratic. All published material is judged on what
is suitable for the public consumption of media (Tosh, 2000), but the
newspapers’ political views are not a problem in this study. I do not wish
to recreate a course of events, for which the material is not sufficient. It
tells us only what was written, not what actually happened. But it does
tell of the most influential political and social approaches at the time of
publication, and it does so chronologically (Tosh, 2000). In this way, the
political view of the newspapers is significant for the analyses. As a means
of studying the written debate in the newspapers, the material can be
judged as suitable.
Fourth, since the newspapers are a primary source, the criterion of
time is not a problem.
By a normative analysis of the content, I investigated whether the
material could be sketched and précised according to any norms or pat-
terns (Asp, 1986), when analysed according to the questions listed above.
The method is both qualitative and quantitative, examining both pat-
terns in the rhetoric and in the chronology of the debate. In Mediear-
kivet, Dagens Nyheter dating from 1991 is available, and Aftonbladet is

11 The words in Swedish were ‘mobiltelefoner’ and ‘skolan’.

139
available from 1994. The oldest article found on the topic is from 1996.
The search in the database resulted in 174 hits in Dagens Nyheter and
271 in Aftonbladet. Sorting through the articles, 55 articles in Dagens
Nyheter (36 news articles and reports, 10 editorials, 5 polemical articles
and 4 letters to the editor) and 54 from Aftonbladet (36 news articles, 10
editorials, 4 polemical articles and 4 chronicles and comments) were con-
sidered relevant. These were articles that reported directly about school or
learning and mobile phones.
In the study the articles were all read and an analysis made regarding
the rhetorical context surrounding the mobile phone in the texts. Key-
words that often occurred were sought out, a grading of genre of the texts
was made, and finally notes were made on what the author of a particular
article wrote about the mobile phones.
Reading through the newspaper articles, different genres were
found. A classification was done based on the nature of the texts. A news
article is a text that reports news, for example, new legislation. News ar-
ticles could also have some analytic content. Reportage is grouped with
the news articles since they are supposed to be objective reporting, even
though there is always an angle to journalistic material. Categorising an
article as belonging to a specific genre was occasionally rather problem-
atic. Some articles fit more than one genre. In those cases a choice of a
genre was made.
There were also several polemical articles in the material, often post-
ed by politicians or spokesmen and women of the teachers’ trade unions.
Another genre was the political editorial articles relevant to the topic. In
Aftonbladet there were also columns and comments addressing the issue
and in Dagens Nyheter there were letters to the editors from readers speak-
ing out about mobile phones in class.

The published debate

In the analyses of the material (cf. Ott, 2013) some overall trends in the
material are visible. As figure 1 show the mobile phone and school is not
a topic that is written about equally every year in the period.

140
 Fig. 1 Number of articles published per year (from Ott, 2013).

When there are elections coming up in 2002 and 2006 the mobile phone
and school are a more frequent topic in the newspapers. Most in 2002
when Aftonbladet had totally 11 pieces and Dagens Nyheter 13, mainly
from the time before the election. The other height of articles on the
topic is from 2007.

1996-2003
The first article in the material was from the years of the IT-boom. It was
published in Aftonbladet on the 23:e of May. It reported of a school in
Stockholm where pupils from first class use mobile phones as a modem to
connect to the Internet when they are not in the classroom. The schools’
ICT investment is launched as a project between the city of Stockholm
and Apple.
This article is quite unique, because it is both at the start of the
chronology and positive about mobile phones. With Karlsohn’s (2009)
analysis in mind, this can be understood as an expression of the ICT
friendly climate in the society as a whole. Liedman (2011, p. 205) de-
scribes the period as naïve and credulous and that it faded out with the
stagnation of the IT business in the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The material examined here does not contradict that description. But
the problems with classroom disruption could not have been so wide-
spread in 1996. Mobile phones were not that common; only 50 percent
of Swedish households owned one in 1996. In 2007 this number rose to
96 percent (NORDICOM n.d.). It is hard to believe that the children

141
of the families who had one of the still quite rare mobile phone in 1996
were allowed to bring it to school. The problems expressed later in the de-
bate about the disruptions are not yet to be seen and consequently in the
material there are no articles found from 1997. But on January 13, 1998,
Aftonbladet reports from a school. Now the mobile phones are written
about in a negative context. A secondary school is reported having prob-
lems with rude behaviour and bad language in the classrooms. The pupils
do not respect their teachers. The school has decided to ban scruff and
mobile phones. Caps will not be permitted in the classrooms anymore.
The connection between the problems with bad language and the mobile
phones is not described beyond the teachers claim that the phones they
do not belong in the classroom.
The debate reflected in the material was from this article forward,
with a few exceptions, rather similar. Mobile phones were being grouped
with various objects that were disturbing the order in the classrooms. In
the material from the newspapers a pattern emerged. In short, the reports
on mobile phones in school were generally focusing negative effects. The
technology was regarded as a disturbing factor, similar to for example
cheating, fireworks and narcotics. Rather than bridging the gap between
inside and outside of school and the school and the student’s life, mobile
phones are regarded as opening up the classroom to numerous disruptive
and dangerous influences from the outside world.
An editorial Dagens Nyheter on the 17:th of January 1999 is an ex-
ample. The author argued that a peaceful learning environment can not
contain, quarrel over mobile phones, Walkmans and outer garments. Rules
are needed. The same editorial praised Björklund for raising funds for new
schoolbooks in the Stockholm schools. Books, on the contrary, created
structure and must once again be part of learning, explains the author.
In 2000, there are only two articles found, both from Aftonbladet,
and both report on problems with mobile phones. On October 29, 2000,
there is a report from a school in Norway that calls the mobile phone a
nuisance in school; the other article is from November 26 and reports
on the dangers of radiation on children. Even though it does not address
disturbance in the classrooms, the article about radiation focuses on the
downside of the technology. Who wants their child to be exposed to ra-
diation in school?

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 In 2001, 85 percent of Swedish households had a mobile phone
in their possession (NORDICOM, n.d.). As the development of new
models evolved, the old, often still working phones were cast off for new
models and passed on from parents to their children (Bjärvall, 2011).
As mobile phones became more widespread, the number of them in the
classrooms increased, and so did the number of articles on mobile phones
in school. From 2001 forward, six articles are found in the material, three
from Aftonbladet on March 3, April 12, and April 22, 2001. They all re-
ported on cheating by sending sms. The latest of those articles strengthens
the message, explaining how much better things have become since they
banned mobile phones in a school. Cheating with sms might have been
new, but as it is with most things, it had its ancestors (Liedman, 2011), in
this case the passing of notes. What is new is the media, not the manner.
Dagens Nyheter had articles on the topic on the March 31, April 21,
and May 28, 2001. Mobile phones were becoming more and more of a
problem, not only because of the ringing. Mobile phones were also used
for gaming and cheating, the editorial states on March 31. But from one
school, another voice is heard. A headmaster is quoted saying that a ban
is the wrong way to go; the school should instead teach students how to
handle their mobile phones. This might be a similar approach to what
Sharples (2006) suggests: schools might not welcome the technology but
shouldn´t condemn it either. Schools shouldn’t just adopt it into the or-
dinary school context? Such an approach might have been an advance
for mobile learning and seamless learning using mobile phones, but in
the year of 2002 as there was an election for parliament coming up; and
there was no indications of things going that way. In the debate of the
phenomenon of mobile phones in school was used for strengthening po-
litical messages. This is evident from the stakeholders societal positions,
the opinions they express in pringt and from the dates of the published
material.
In 2002, the material provides 13 articles from Dagens Nyheter and
11 from Aftonbladet. Not all of them will be presented here, but I will
point to some pieces that help bring out a pattern. In the debate prior
to the elections for parliament, the subject of school was heavily debat-
ed. The Liberal Party was profiling itself towards questions about school.
Their spokesman in Stockholm, Björklund, together with the leader of

143
the party at the time, Lars Leijonborg, stands out in the material because
of their uncompromising stance on order and discipline in the class-
room. School is described mainly as a place where chaos rules. One of
the chaos-creating objects is the mobile phone. In the two months before
the election, there were six articles in Aftonbladet, and nine in Dagens
Nyheter portraying mobile phones as a technology not belonging in the
classroom. But the Liberal Party’s message is not the only one acknowl-
edged. In Dagens Nyheter on August 24 2002 the journalist in an anal-
ysis calls Björklund’s proposition on the right of teachers to confiscate
mobile phones shameless populism. But Björklund is supported by Bo
Lundgren, leader of the Moderate Party, saying that mobile phones are a
disturbance in the work environment of schools. It is important to make
the students more knowledgeable, he states, but it is not further précised
how to do that, beyond saying that the students must be forced to be
more responsible.
The creed goes on and in Dagens Nyheter on September 1, 2002,
Leijonborg says in an interview that he believes that people appreciate the
Liberal Party for their plain language on self-evident topics such as not us-
ing mobile phones during class. The different pundits in the debate sup-
port Leijonborg’s rhetorical statement that the issue is self-evident. There
are not really any other points of view found in the pre-election debate.
The Social Democratic Minister for Education, Thomas Östros, wrote a
polemic article in Aftonbladet, saying that it is not self-evident issues such
as mobile phones being turned off in class that determine the future of
Sweden.
On the whole both political sides are against mobile phones in class.
And the mobile phone is regarded as an instrument of disturbance. In the
rhetoric it is grouped together with what o often are called ‘other disturb-
ing objects’. Even though these objects vary, the mobile phone stands out
as the principal disturbing object.
There are some keywords that can be noticed occurring over and
over in the debate, for example, ‘atmosphere of work’ (arbetsro). Maybe
the material could have been broadened, searching also for ‘atmosphere
of work’, but the pattern occurring is still evident, and the focus might
have been led from mobile learning as a representation of the progres-
sivists’ approach. The debate is mainly focused on the environment in

144
the classroom and how that environment is ruined by lack of order and
discipline. This endangers the keen students’ performance. Those who do
not want to study constantly disrupt those who wish to study. One of the
obstacles that is causing the disruption is the mobile phone. According
to the articles found, it is used for ringing, gaming, filming, and loud
talking. That the mobile phones are a technology that could be used for
pedagogical purposes such as those suggested in the article from 1996 is
not noticed in Dagens Nyheter at all until April 26, 2011.
The election was won by the Social Democrats, and in Stockholm
Björklund had to resign from the municipal government. However, on
the national level the Liberal Party did well and increased their share of
votes from 4,6% to 13,3% (Valmyndigheten, n.d.). The material does
not tell us what role the self-evident questions actually played in the in-
consistent results of this election, but an analysis of the material from
2002 and 2003 give a suggestion. In this material there are two articles,
both in Aftonbladet published after the election in 2002 that differed
from the general pattern. Published the 14:th of November 2002 and
January 25:th 2003, both reported from the same school in Stockholm.
Published on November 14, 2002, and January 25, 2003, they both re-
port from the same school in Stockholm, where the headmaster claimed
that mobile phones are a essential tool in education. The students use
them for ringing when they do fieldwork. The school is working with
Apple. One thing noticeable in the article is that Björklund is quoted
saying that one may use mobile phones in teaching, but during class they
shall be turned off.
In the material from 2003 there is an article, from the 8:th of No-
vember, which discussed Leijonborg’s successful leadership of the Liberal
party. The strife for a ban of mobile phones was pointed to as an import-
ant part of their package of political topics regarding school, and school
was considered an important concern to many people. But remember,
no politician, found in the debate reflected in the material, was opposing
the Liberal Party’s opinion. Mobile phones were not considered being a
technology that could be of use in a pedagogical context. The voices of
the politicians in the debate were rather competing on how to be most
against mobile phones in school. Even the reporting news articles in the
material displayed a negative view.

145
2004-2007
In the debate on mobile phones in school settings, there is also another
aspect shining through both on a meta- and mesolevel. As the technol-
ogy evolves, there are new problems introduced into the debate. In this
research, on a metalevel, the emerging technology of the hardware of
mobile phones is regarded as causing problems during the whole period.
On the mesolevel it is reported that the functions of the software, as
they evolve, cause disruption. At the start of the period in question, the
problems are not described at all and later it is the ringing and sending
of sms that are disturbing. In 2004, as new functions were developed and
integrated into the mobile phones, problems with pictures taken with the
mobile phones’ cameras are reported in two articles in Aftonbladet and
one in Dagens Nyheter. The other two articles in the material from 2004
are one in Aftonbladet reporting on the dangers of radiation on children,
and one in Dagens Nyheter in which the Minister for Education, Social
Democratic Ibrahim Baylan, is quoted as saying that it is self-evident
that disturbing objects like mobile phones must be confiscated by the
teachers. Sten Tolgfors of the Moderate Party is quoted in the same piece,
saying that it is important to have a school that drives towards knowl-
edge rather than process. Also Björklund is quoted, but not on mobile
phones. The impetus for the article is a report from OECD, showing that
Swedish pupils are falling behind in math, problem solving, and reading
comprehension.
In 2005 new technologies occur again and there were eight articles
from Dagens Nyheter and three from Aftonbladet. Reports of disturbing
MP3 players arise and no matter the genres of the articles published, they
all oppose mobile phones.
In Aftonbladet on February 27, 2005, the chairman of Lärarförbun-
det, Eva-Lis Preisz, is quoted as saying that the mobile phone has become
a symbolic question of importance. In the same article four students are
interviewed; they are against the proposal to ban mobile phones and oth-
er beeping devices. They are afraid that the teachers will not judge what is
disturbing in a fair manner. In an editorial in Aftonbladet on July 5, 2005,
one can read that banning mobile phones is not a dangerous proposal.
What is dangerous is that this question dominates the debate.
In 2006, there are five articles in Dagens Nyheter and seven in Afton-

146
bladet. It was an election year, but the issue of mobile phones in school
is not as frequently debated as in 2002. In Dagens Nyheter three articles
were published in September and October and in Aftonbladet, six articles
were published during the same period. Most of them are critical of mo-
bile phones, but opinions start to shine through that state that mobile
phones are not the big issue in school. Further, they state that teachers
already can handle the problems they cause and that the debate is mis-
leading. In two articles, MP3 players together with mobile phones are
described as a problem.
But mobile phones are still, as Preisz said, a symbolic question. One
article published in Aftonbladet on September 2, 2006 is rather interest-
ing in this regard. The article is about a man who has been severely beaten
up by a group of youngsters out on the town. He has spent a long time in
the hospital and is injured for life. One of his solutions for getting rid of
this kind of violent assaults is more discipline in school. Ban caps, mobile
phones, and MP3 players.
In the beginning of the period covered, the material show that in
the debate the Social Democrats plead for further investigations by the
National Board of Education (Skolverket). Björklund, on the other hand,
said that it was typically for the National Board of Education to carry out
investigations; now it was time to take action. When the right wing coali-
tion, the Alliance, won the election in 2006 and Leijonborg was appoint-
ed Minister of Education and Björklund Minister of School they could in
2007 pass their laws. Thus 2007 was one of the peaking years regarding
the number of articles published. In Aftonbladet there were eleven and
in Dagens Nyheter fourteen, most of them displaying a negative view on
mobile phones in school. On March 9, Aftonbladet reported of pupils in
a primary-middle school in Mölndal who were opposing the Björklund
policy. They wanted the school to allow mobile phones and MP3-players.
One pupil also wanted the school to get a swimming pool, or even better
having the school closed. The pupils were being ridiculed as naïve.
The sweeping phrase mobile phones and other disturbing objects is fur-
ther defined in Dagens Nyheter on March 21, 2007. The objects listed in
the text as disturbing are: videogames, sticks, knives, drugs, fireworks,
narcotics, and mobile phones. This list adds to the earlier-mentioned ob-
jects such as chewing gum, MP3 players, and caps.

147
 In an article in Dagens Nyheter on April 25, 2007 and the day after
in Aftonbladet, the Social Democratic Party leader Mona Sahlin criticises
the Liberal Party and their struggle against mobile phones in school as
being stuck on minor questions. The schools’ problem is greater, she says,
than whether mobile phones should be banned or not.
Aftonbladet reports on the new law on June 2, 2007, stating that
the law gives teachers the right to confiscate disturbing objects in the
classroom, objects such as mobile phones and fireworks. Confiscating
disturbing objects had probably not been impossible before. It is hard to
get the answer from the material, but based on the voices in the articles
from representatives of the teachers’ trade unions the rules had not been
perceived as clear enough. Teachers had not known for sure what they
were allowed to do.
Most articles this year are published before July 1, when the law
went into effect. After that there are fewer articles on the topic. There is
also a small change noticeable in the theme of the articles. With the new
law pending, most articles are about the chaotic schools and disturbance
caused by the mobile phones. After the bill was passed, the focus is in-
stead on successful school environments, where the mobile phones have
already been banned under local regulations for some time. Articles are
also published that further express that mobile phones might not be the
worst problem, that banning them is too simplistic a solution to a bigger
problem.
And after the law was passed, clarifying allowance for teachers to
confiscate mobile phones from students, the subject lost some of its at-
traction for the politicians and pundits opposing the use of the technol-
ogy in school. Towards the end of the examined period the politicization
of the technology in the debate was declining. The number of articles
opposing use of mobile phones in school was decreasing and the debate
was also more nuanced.

2008-2011
During this period from 2007 to the fall of 2011, a small but notice-
able change in the pattern occurs. From 2008 forward, there are only
five articles in the material, one in Aftonbladet on September 24, 2008,
describing a possible disciplinary use of the mobile phones in a school

148
context. Parents could get an sms from the school when their child is
skipping class.
The articles in Dagens Nyheter are mainly similar to those published
earlier, but on February 20, 2008, a report from a school in the Stock-
holm region states that the pupils are allowed to use their mobile phones
for calculating and listening to music if it does not disrupt the order in
the classroom.
In 2009 there are three articles in the material and in 2010, none.
But we shall halt at 2009; in Aftonbladet on December 5, 2009, a seri-
ous change in the debate can be noticed, with a bit of a surprise from a
member of the Alliance. It is reported in a news article that Member of
Parliament for the Moderate Party Oskar Öholm says that mobile phones
are a part of our society and they should be used in school, too. On the
other hand, the other articles from Aftonbladet in 2009 consist of one
on brain tumours caused by radiation and one on the success of the law
-- allowing confiscation of mobile phones -- generating peace and a good
environment for studies in school.
On January 25, 2011, in a polemic article Erik Bengtzboe of the
Moderate Party’s youth argues that the debate should not be about wheth-
er to seize or not seize mobile phones but rather on how to learn from
them and what to learn from them. The school must do better, he states, in
using modern technologies. The debate on mobile phones is not over; the
technology is still used in the argumentation, which is obvious in the last
article in the material. On November 4, 2011, the Minister of Health and
Social Affairs and leader of the right-wing Christian Democrats, Göran
Hägglund, had an article of debate published in Dagens Nyheter, calling for
more authoritarian teachers to seize mobile phones in class. Once again,
politicians use the mobile phone to advance their own agendas.

Discussion and Conclusions

The debate and the different voices reflected in the debate tell us that
mobile phones in school is a controversial issue. Integrating the technol-
ogy into the traditional classroom context is not an easy task. But mobile
phones are no different from other technologies in that they stir up feel-
ings of both hope and fear. As Sharples (2006) predicted, there is a clash
and the analyses presented here support this prediction.

149
 The pattern that is clearly visible from the material is, in brief, that
overall the reports on mobile phones in school have been about the neg-
ative effects. The technology is regarded as a disturbance similar to, for
example, cheating, fireworks, and narcotics. Rather than bridging the
gap between school and the students’ life, it opens up the classroom to
numerous evil things from the outside world. In the debate, technology
has been used for political purposes, indicated both by the dates of the
published material, the stakeholders, and their opinions in print. After
the law was passed that allows teachers to confiscate mobile phones from
students, the subject lost some of its attraction for politicians and pundits
opposing the use of the technology in school. At the end of the period
examined in this study, the politicization of the technology is declining.
The debate is more nuanced and the number of articles opposing the use
of the technology in school is not as overwhelming as earlier.
Dewey´s theories focusing on process rather than results have not
been very current in the debate on mobile phones in the material. Rather,
as mentioned in the beginning, the material has embodied the problems
of keeping the learners free from distraction and close to the curriculum,
one of the recognized problems with learning in projects. As Säljö (2010)
put it, Dewey is present as an opponent to the instrumental view on
knowledge, found in the material, as the participants of the debate argue
for legislation. Even though some authors at the end of the examined pe-
riod argue that since mobile phones are a part of the society they should
be used in school as well, this is a thought acceptable to a proponent of
learning in projects. The material reviews an absence of theories on learn-
ing and grounding of arguments in research. The debate is dominantly
fuelled by anecdotal evidence, as Liedman (2011) describes.
In the Swedish political debate concerning school, the mobile phone
has been well used as an argument. Even though the department of edu-
cation and the Swedish School law passed by Björklund are clear that the
education shall rely on scientific principles, the material and the debate
have been focused on banning mobile phones in school. But the law is
complex and challenging to understand. It also states that education shall
rely on proven experience. How is this to be interpreted?
The Liberal Party made banning the mobile phones one of their
main issues in the election of 2002. The Social Democrats did not oppose

150
it, but attacked Björklund without any ideas of their own policy on the
topic. The technology is, as the journalist in Dagens Nyheter states a bit
bluntly on August 24, 2002, used in a populist way to score votes in the
coming election. Mobile phones not being in the classroom are regarded
as self-evident in most opinions. Björklund is, as Liedman (2011) writes,
the conductor of the debate. In the pre-election eras of 2006 or 2010,
there is not as much focus on mobile phones.
In the articles where the politicians are either writing the text or are
the subject of the texts, they describe a school where one of the main
problems is the mobile phone. The articles that, for example, interview
teachers indicate other problems. The opinions that are being heard there
do not call for a ban of the mobile phones, but they do not call for the use
of it, either. Rather they claim that there are other problems. The mobile
phone is not the issue; the pupils know that they should turn it off. This
is worth noticing since those who have the proven experience expressed
in the school law must be the teachers.
What differs between the pundits in the early stages of the debate is
that the Social Democrats want further investigation done by the Nation-
al Board of Education. Björklund, on the other hand, says that should be
action instead of investigations. After the election of 2006 and the shift
in government, the Liberal Party could pass the laws they wanted to pass.
Teachers were given a clearer mandate to confiscate disturbing objects. In
the newspapers this can be noticed from the increasing number of articles
on the topic during 2007. Confiscating disturbing objects has probably
been allowed all the time; it is hard to get the answer from the material,
but based on the articles and the voices from representatives of the teach-
ers’ trade unions, the rules have not been clear enough. Teachers have not
known for sure what they are allowed to do. In 2011 Minister of Health
and Social Affairs Hägglund exposes unexpected lack of knowledge on
the rules, in a debate article demanding a clearer authority for teachers to
confiscate mobile phones.
Sahlin, the Social Democratic leader in 2007, claimed that mobile
phones were a minor issue in school. Even though they could not see
what affordances the mobile technology would bring, what she and most
of the other spokesmen in the debate miss might be the coming of a
new culture of learning, where students are connected and learn together

151
and from each other in various networks, communities, and collectives
(Thomas & Brown, 2011). Mobile phones are not a question of the little;
they might actually be a part of something huge. They might be the doors
to a virtual room. Neither does Tolgfors of the Moderate Party in 2004
see this coming, but urges less focus on process and more on knowledge.
During 2007 most articles are published before July 1, when the law
took effect. After that there are fewer articles on the topic. There is also
a small change noticeable in the theme of the articles. With the new law
pending, most articles were about the chaotic schools and disturbance of
the mobile phones. After the bill was passed, the focus is instead on suc-
cessful school environments, where the mobile phones have been banned
in local regulations for a long time. The publication dates of the articles,
both at their most frequent in 2002 and in 2006-2007, indicate that the
mobile phone as a technology has been used as a rhetorical instrument for
political purposes. It can be regarded as anecdotal evidence, since many
voices are being heard in material that bears witness to the disturbance
of mobile phones ringing in the classroom, in cinemas, etc. These do not
always have a connection to education. Consequently the message carried
out does not, as the school law of 2010 demands, rely upon scientific
principles or the complex proven experience. This is a paradox, since it is
the Alliance and Björklund who are responsible for the law.
It is not until 2009 that some politicians are heard in the debate,
saying that mobile phones can be of use in school. Even though the poli-
ticians or pundits do not mention it, the debate on mobile phones in the
material has been behaviouristic, one-sided, focused on creating peaceful
environments in which learning is supposed to take place. The goal has
been to get rid of technology that is regarded as creating disturbing be-
haviour in class. By eliminating the technology, the disrupting behaviour
will cease and results will improve. Disciplining the students with rules
restricting them against using new technology is regarded as doing this.
The mobile phones and other mobile technologies are identified as prob-
lems and grouped together with what are often called other disturbing
objects, as often said in the phrase ‘mobile phones and other disturbing
objects’. What these object are can vary; when the mobile phones are
equipped with cameras, the cameras are called a problem. When the MP3

152
players were becoming popular, they generated articles, often together
with mobile phones. So every new function and every new technology
served as a new argument for those who wished to banish the mobile
phone. The material is also illustrative for showing how society reacts to
new technology. It is obvious that the ideas and consequences of mobile
learning and seamless learning, using the mobile phone, are not corre-
sponding to the political and public ideas of what school is about, as
displayed in the material studied.

153
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158
 PART II

CASE STUDIES IN TEACHING

VIRTUAL LABS AS CONTEXT FOR
LEARNING – CONTINUITIES AND
CONTINGENCIES IN STUDENT
ACTIVITIES
Emma Petersson, Annika Lantz-Andersson & Roger Säljö

Introduction
While sceptics have been little convinced about the beneficial conse-
quences that would follow from the introduction of IT in school, tech-
nophiles have continued to make claims about how such resources will
contribute to solving pedagogical problems of various kinds, including
changing the role of the teacher (cf., e, g., Postman, 1979; Selwyn, 1999).
As Cohen (1988, p. 232) puts it: ‘Since the end of World War II, educa-
tors, reformers, and school critics have seized on one technical innova-
tion after another, seeing fabulous opportunities for better education in
each’. One example of this line of argumentation is the repeated claim
that it would be possible to individualize instruction by designing tools
that would be self-instructive for learners with different cognitive abilities
and/or learning styles. In our opinion, any claims about the beneficial
effects of technologies must be substantiated through research and critical
scrutiny of the practices that such resources afford. One persistent prob-
lem is the simplified view of learning adhered to in debates. Learning is
often understood in terms of a straightforward conduit or transfer meta-
phor. ‘Too often, technology is viewed as a way of automating education
and reducing costs, without changing the traditional view of education
as the transfer of facts from an authoritative source to a relatively pas-
sive student’s memory’ (Stahl, 2009, p. 2). However, developing people’s
ability to read, to express themselves in writing, to learn mathematical

161
modelling, or to analyse complex problems is not primarily a matter of
presenting and absorbing information. On the contrary, this is a minor
part of the teaching and learning process.
Even if one does not adhere to the idea of the revolutionary impact
of technologies on learning, it is obvious that students’ constant access
to mobile digital tools such as computers, smartphones, and tablets chal-
lenges both the traditional media used in schools, primarily textbooks,
and the instructional practices designed according to the principles of
print technology. Today, for example, the learning of science in areas such
as astronomy, physics, the life-sciences, and many other fields may be
supported by a range of digital tools and applications, many of which
are free on the Internet (cf. below). Such artefacts open up new ways of
making knowledge accessible if embedded in well-planned institutional
arrangements; they provide new ‘access points’ to human experiences and
knowledge as Giddens (2002; cf. Säljö, 2010) puts it.
One of the areas in which recent digital technologies open up new
avenues of exploration and learning is environmental science (see Fauville
et al., 2013, for a literature review on the use of ICT in environmental
education). This multidisciplinary field poses one of the most important
challenges to the educational system to engage in, given the threats to the
environment posed by human exploitation of resources. Since the 1970s,
environmental education is compulsory in primary and lower secondary
education in Europe (UNESCO, 1975). Questions about environmental
awareness, for example, those that concern the use of resources, the im-
pact of human activities on the climate, or, what we will address in this
study, issues that concern ocean acidification, are not easy to understand
for most citizens. These issues are complex from a knowledge point of
view and require insights into natural science, law, politics, social science,
and many other areas. In the literature, the term socioscientific issues is
often used to refer to this type of problem.
The aim of the present study is to explore virtual labs as a context
for learning about ocean acidification. In particular, we are interested in
the activities that evolve when students engage in virtual lab work. Our
question concerns what the consequences are for interaction and knowl-
edge-sharing between students in such contexts.

162
Learning through virtual experiments
Experimentation serves as a basic mechanism of scientific work applica-
ble to many fields. Learning about experimentation as a mode of inqui-
ry implies understanding how experiments are organized, how they are
carried out, and what characterizes experiments as a mode of generating
knowledge in relation to a particular problem (Laugksch, 2000; Norris
& Philips, 2003). This is the core of an argument made by Dewey (1966)
a hundred years ago: if students learn how scientists formulate questions
and study them, they will develop an understanding of the nature of
scientific knowledge in a more general sense. Dewey’s point is that stu-
dents should not just learn about the products of research, they should
also learn some of the procedures that go into scientific work as a mode
of inquiry. Learning about experimentation implies familiarizing oneself
with specific procedures for organizing knowledge generating practices as
well as a particular language for how to observe and codify the world in
scientifically relevant manners (Wickman, 2004). This includes insights
into procedures such as how to do laboratory work, how to formulate
issues and convert them into hypotheses, how to manipulate variables,
interpret data and communicate findings. An essential part of learning
about experimentation is also to familiarize oneself with the concepts and
categories that are relevant for organizing such activities, such as sample,
control group, observation, variable, etc. (Lemke, 1990, 2004; Welling-
ton & Osborne, 2001; Wickman, 2002).

Virtual labs: affordances and limitations

On the Internet there are, by now, many resources for engaging in vir-
tual science work, including performing virtual experiments. There is an
intense technical development, where major players in science, such as
NASA,12 large science museums and other institutions take active part.
Such tools make it possible to perform activities such as simulating and
modeling earthquakes, dissecting frogs, transplanting hearts, exploring
and manipulating cells, and engaging in a wealth of virtual activities, in-
cluding discovering the details of Nobel Prize- winning breakthroughs.13

12 http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/about/tech_prod_e_edu_overview.html
13 For access to tools, see, e.g., http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/virtual.php

163
 Digital tools offer opportunities for students to engage in inquiry
learning activities that in some ways are reminiscent of those practised by
scientists (for an extended literature review, see Bell et al., 2010; Gordin
& Pea, 1995). Most research on virtual labs within the field of education
has primarily focused on the design of such tools (cf. Furberg, 2010). For
example, Ramasundaram et al. (2005) and Heermann and Fuhrmann
(2000) developed virtual laboratories with the aim of enhancing students’
learning. The authors argue that the virtual tools improve learning as they
offer better instructional opportunities compared to traditional teach-
ing (Ramasundaram et al., 2005), and they may also increase students’
motivation (Heermann & Fuhrmann, 2000). In a study targeting the
implementation of a virtual science laboratory to investigate the effect on
different learning styles, Sun, Lin and Yu (2008) analysed 132 students
from four fifth-grade classes. The participants were divided into an ex-
perimental group using virtual lab teaching, and a control group, where
traditional classroom teaching took place. The results showed that the
students in the experimental group performed better than the students in
the control group. In line with the results of Sun et al. (2008), Gibbons
et al. (2004) tested whether using virtual labs within the area of learning
chromosome analysis and bioinformatics could improve students’ learn-
ing. The students in this study were divided into two groups, where one
of the groups received traditional teaching, while the other group worked
with virtual labs. The results showed that the virtual labs were much less
time consuming than traditional teaching, and that the decrease in time
did not influence students’ performance.
As added advantages of instructional significance, virtual labs offer
possibilities for students to perform experiments that would need to run
over a long time, or that would be dangerous or impossible to perform
in schools for practical reasons (Dalgarno et al., 2009; Zacharia, 2008;
van Joolingen et al., 2007). Virtual labs are also time and cost effective,
and they are relatively easy to integrate into regular teaching activities.
Students can work with them independently and at their own pace. Since
the experiment may be paused, students can continue next week in class.
It is reasonable to assume that such affordances will contribute to making
virtual labs popular in education.
As mentioned above, most research has focused on the design of

164
virtual tools and, to some extent, on the consequences for learning out-
comes. Pedagogical traditions and social practices of schooling, though,
are complex and have to be taken into account; the lesson learned over
time is that technologies per se do not necessarily change instructional
patterns (Cuban 1986). Now there already are many virtual labs available
on the Internet and elsewhere, but very few seem to be integrated into
schooling on a regular basis. Furthermore, studies that analyse students’
reasoning and discussion in such activities point out that virtual labs may
convey a simplified picture of scientific work. Such a simplified picture
will hinder rather than support students’ development of knowledge of
the practices of research and science (cf. Chen, 2010; Karlsson & Ivars-
son, 2008).

Virtual labs as sites of learning in environmental science

The background of this study is an interest in analysing how instructional
work is organized in the context of a virtual lab. Thus, we see this as an
empirical question where the engagement of students and teachers must
be explored in situ. To describe and analyse the instructional practices,
a socio-cultural-historical perspective on learning has been adopted (Vy-
gotsky, 1978; Wells, 1999; Wertsch, 1998). This means that we regard
instruction and learning as embedded in institutional traditions of com-
munication and as mediated through the use of artifacts. This analyt-
ic agenda implies that people, institutional contexts, tools, and cultural
constructions of tools, are constitutive and inseparable elements of an
activity. As has been pointed out above and by Arnseth and Ludvigsen
(2006), it is not enough to study how the tool is designed, since tools do
not, as we have pointed out, determine instructional practices in a linear
fashion. On the other hand, tools are not neutral; they invite and facil-
itate certain activities while making others less likely or even irrelevant.
An interesting element of virtual labs is that they, through their design,
‘blackbox’ (Latour, 1999) many features of how they function. Blackbox-
ing refers to

the way scientific and technical work is made invisible by its

own success. When a machine runs efficiently, when a matter of
fact is settled, one need focus only on its inputs and outputs and

165
 not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more sci-
ence and technology succeed, the more opaque and obscure they
become (p. 304).

The blackboxed nature of digital tools, such as virtual labs, thus will
have consequences for students’ engagement, the obstacles encountered,
and the insights made. The analysis that follows has been guided by the
following question:

What kinds of activities evolve when students engage in

virtual lab work in environmental science?

Empirical study
A case study has been chosen to illustrate features of student engagement
and teacher contributions to learning in the context of the virtual lab.
The empirical material has been analysed using interaction analysis (Jordan
& Henderson, 1995) with a focus on how the students communicate with
each other, and how they interact with the virtual lab. In both cases,
attention is also given to nonverbal elements. With its roots in ethnog-
raphy, sociolinguistics, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and
other traditions, the aim of Interaction Analysis is to identify how the
participants make use of resources in the complex social context in which
they act (cf. e.g., Crook, 1994; Stahl, Koschmann, & Suthers, 2006). By
regarding interaction as activities that participants perform in order to
accomplish something, the focus is on how participants make meaning
and coordinate in practices.

Setting and participants

The study has been carried out as part of a binational collaboration be-
tween schools in the USA and Sweden on issues of climate change in

166
a research project called Inquiry-to-Insight14 (I2I). In this specific case
study, we have only used empirical material from a school in Sweden.
The school was engaged in networking activities using various media, and
students had access to digital tools such as virtual labs and other digital
media (e.g., carbon dioxide footprint calculators). The curricular context
of the use of the virtual lab is marine biology, a subject of choice of the
students included.
The virtual environment used is the Acid Ocean Virtual Lab
(AOVL), which is briefly described below. The teacher in the current
study had been introduced to the AOVL, developed within the project
I2I, through collaboration with marine scientists. However, the teacher
used the virtual lab on his own and as part of the regular teaching.
The empirical material presented in this article is part of a longer
study including approximately 21 hours of video recording following a
class of students in a Swedish upper secondary school. In this study we
have analysed approximately five hours of video documentation, focus-
ing on actions and interactions between students, and between students
and the AOVL. The cameras were positioned on tripods behind the stu-
dents in order to capture nonverbal activities. Additionally, the computer
screens were recorded with the purpose of capturing students’ activities in
the virtual lab (for a screenshot of video data, see figure 1). The teacher’s
introduction of the lesson was also video recorded and analysed.
In the study, a class of 19 students worked with the AOVL during
one period lasting three hours. The pedagogical goal for the activity was
for the students to test the AOVL in order to learn about ocean acidifi-
cation. The teacher started the lesson by giving an introduction to ocean
acidification and its consequences (20 minutes). For example, the teacher
wrote the chemical formula for ocean acidification on the whiteboard,

14 The Inquiry-to-Insight (I2I) project started in November 2008, and is a collaboration between
Stanford University, California, USA, and Gothenburg University, Sweden, and their respective
marine stations; Hopkins Marine Station and Sven Lovén Center for Marine Sciences-Kristine-
berg. I2I offers an educational program combining ICT, social networking, and pedagogy di-
rected at environmental issues. The I2I idea is to pair classes from different countries within a
social network. The students compare views, attitudes, and life styles around three environmental
issues (climate change, environmental pollution, and habitat preservation) and will increase their
understanding of those issues with different educational tools mainly based on ICT. http://i2i.
stanford.edu/

167
described the acidification of the ocean, mentioned research results, and
talked about the effects of ocean acidification on organisms in the oceans.
After this introduction, the students worked with the AOVL during the
next 60 to 80 minutes. The students worked in groups of three to four,
and they used a portable computer. The computer was placed in front of
the student who sat in the middle. In general, the student placed in front
of the computer also navigated the computer mouse. The teacher inter-
acted directly with the students mostly when called upon.

Fig. 1. Screenshot of the video data where the film of the students and the
screen recording of the virtual lab have been synchronized into one film.

Acid Ocean Virtual Lab

In order to understand the logic of the study, a brief presentation of the
AOVL will be given. The AOVL is a digital tool where students get an
opportunity to study acidification of the ocean and its impact on the
growth of sea urchin larvae. It consists of three elements that the students
attend to and use: 1) information regarding basic facts about ocean acid-
ification; 2) lab sessions; and 3) measurement exercises and information
about the consequences of ocean acidification. When entering the virtual
lab, students are provided with some information about acidification of
the ocean. This first part includes discussion questions and exercises. In
the second part, students are given the opportunity to act as scientists
by experimenting in a virtual lab session. The lab session is designed to

168
mimic a ‘real’ lab environment with equipment such as beakers, pipettes,
a microscope, etc. (fig. 2). During the lab session, students get informa-
tion about various scientific principles through ‘pop-up’ boxes, for ex-
ample, regarding the importance of sample size and number of replicates
in empirical studies. While experimenting, students also answer ‘pop-up
questions’, which concern the specific activity in which they are currently
engaged. For example, if a student adds carbon dioxide to the water, the
pop-up question could ask the student about the motive for doing so. In
other words, these questions are designed to make students justify actions
and decisions, and to help them see the consequences of what they do.
In the virtual lab, students perform activities such as setting up rep-
licate cultures and feeding the sea urchin larvae; they make water changes
and observe changes in growth of the larvae over time under different
experimental conditions. Every step (task) in the lab session is clearly
described in two text boxes, and the equipment students are expected to
use is highlighted in yellow. The students set up replicate cultures in wa-
ter with regular pH level (8.1) and in water with a lower pH level (7.7).
In the third part, the students measure samples of sea urchin larvae from
both water types and make comparisons. The outcome is then related to
statistical data from authentic scientific research. This measurement exer-
cise is followed by information about the consequences of a decreased pH
level that will occur through ocean acidification.

Results
The analyses below are based on students’ work in all three parts of the
AOVL: information section, lab session, and measurement exercises. The
excerpts have been chosen so as to illustrate shifting patterns of engage-
ment that evolve when students are working with the different parts of
AOVL. Thus, there are tensions in students’ activities where they contin-
uously shift focus while working.
The excerpts are sorted in the same order as the three parts of the
virtual lab, which means that Excerpt 1 illustrates how the students work
in the introduction part of the lab, Excerpt 2 shows how the students ori-
ent themselves in the lab session, and Excerpt 3 is an example of how the
students work in the final part of the lab, the measuring exercise.

169
 Fig. 2. Screenshot of the lab session in Acid Ocean Virtual Lab.

Student engagement as contingent on scientific content

The teacher organizes his introduction of the class activity in line with the
academic content presented in the first part of the AOVL. To this rather
abstract academic information, the teacher adds concrete examples. For
instance, the teacher talks about consequences on marine larval organ-
isms of acidification using clownfish as an illustration.

[Uhm] recently one has found out that certain fish, for example,
lose their sense of smell, and that certain clownfish, which nor-
mally recognize the smell of predatory fish and go hiding in the
corals, do the opposite. When the ph is seven point six they swim
towards the smell of predatory fish instead (.) That’s not very
good cause then they will be eaten.

170
 Fig. 3. Illustration of students working with the Acid Ocean Virtual Lab.

Following the teacher’s introduction, the groups of students started to

work with the first part of the AOVL with information and basic facts
about ocean acidification. They read pages with a graph showing car-
bon dioxide emissions in the air, with information about pH levels in
the ocean over time, and chemical formulae and concepts. In Excerpt 1,
Amanda, Elsa, and Cecilia are to answer one final question in the first
part of the AOVL before entering the lab session. The question is formu-
lated as follows: Can you think of any other possible acidification impacts
on marine organisms other than calcification (which is a major serious
consequence)? Having read the question on the screen, the students show
some uncertainty about how to interpret it and how to go on.

171
Excerpt 1: Part one of the AOVL - information about ocean acidification

01. Amanda: yeah that it will be warmer (.) or

I don’t get it or aha
(pause)
02. Cecilia: ye:ah yeah
03. Amanda: ohoh David
[the teacher] said that thing
about the predatory animal
04. Cecilia: what animal?
05. Amanda: the predatory animal (.) so when
it was like
a fish that felt
[the smell from a predatory
animal so instead of hiding
[it sort of went towards it
06. Cecilia: [THAT’S RIGHT
07. Cecilia: [yea::h they were like eh (.)
mentally
08. Amanda: the sense of smell and stuff
(pause)
09. Cecilia: yea::h that could also happen

After a few seconds of hesitation, Amanda, in utterance 1, suggests that

it will be warmer. However, almost immediately after her suggestion,
Amanda stresses that she does not really understand what kind of answer
would be relevant, and she indicates that the rise in temperature might
not be what the question is about. After yet another pause, Amanda, in
utterance 3, remembers what the teacher mentioned in his introduction
and relates this to the question asked. In her explanation to the rest of
the group, Amanda provides an answer by reusing the teacher’s example
regarding the effects of ocean acidification on clownfish: the predatory
animal (.) so when it was like a fish that felt [the smell from a predatory an-
imal so instead of hiding] it sort of went towards it (utterance 5). Halfway
into Amanda’s explanation, Cecilia also seems to remember the teacher’s
example about the clownfish as she agrees with what Amanda explains.

172
Cecilia, in utterance 6, adds to Amanda’s explanation: they were like eh
(.) mentally, pointing to that the changed behaviour of the fish has some-
thing to do with their mental state. Amanda concludes this utterance by
summing up that something happens with the fish’s sense of smell. The
results show that the students easily understand the teacher’s explanation
of how the clownfish changes its behaviour as a consequence of ocean
acidification. The point of the example of illustrating that the clownfish
swims towards the predatory fish instead of away from it has made an
impression on the students, and they obviously are able to connect this
to ocean acidification.
In this first part of the AOVL activity, Amanda and Cecilia engage
with the content of ocean acidification and the impact on the marine
organisms. The excerpt above illustrates knowledge-sharing among the
students and the teacher in the sense that students pick up arguments
and insights provided by the teacher as the work proceeds. As mentioned
earlier in this section, the teacher organizes his introduction of the les-
son in line with the first part of the AOVL, which includes information
about ocean acidification. However, in his introduction, the teacher also
adds examples that are not provided by the AOVL, where he uses in-
sights from research, specific examples, and chemical formulae. Several
instances in the empirical material show how these types of substantive
contributions from the teacher are reused by students working in the lab
environment. Through this extended introduction, the teacher provides
some of the premises that enable the students to understand the content
of ocean acidification in a more concrete way.

Student engagement as contingent on features of the tool

The lab session and the measurement exercise are parts of the AOVL
where the students get an opportunity to practice experimentation and
study its outcome. In the lab session the students perform an experiment
with sea urchin larvae and, later in the measurement exercise, they study
the outcome of the experiment by measuring samples of larvae.
In the excerpt below the members of a group of students are in-
volved in an activity of changing the pH value of the water in one of two
flasks on the laboratory bench. The students have measured the pH level
in the flasks containing seawater. The digital tool indicates that the task

173
of measuring the pH level in each flask is completed in a correct manner,
and instructions for a new task are to be found in text box 2 (fig. 2). The
task for the students to solve is to place a stir bar in one of the two flasks
in order to change the pH level from 8.1 to 7.7 (7.7 is what researchers
predict the pH level in the ocean will be in future), and then to place the
flask on a stir plate. In the excerpt we follow Elias’, Philip’s, and Tom’s
attempts to solve the task of finding the stir bar in order to proceed in the
lab session. The students do not recognize the stir bar appearing in yellow
on the top of the shelf in the laboratory environment (fig. 2) but instead
randomly point at and pull the tools available on the lab bench.

Excerpt 2: Part two of the AOVL – lab session

01. Philip: stir bar what’s a stir bar (.) maybe

one should move that one ((places the
mouse pointer on the co2 tank. Clicks
on the empty jars))
02. Elias: that one ((points at the screen))
(pause)
03. Tom: stir bar is the one you just used
04. Philip: ((pulls the electrode to the stir
plate))
that one?
05. Tom: the one that’s in it yeah
06. Philip: but this isn’t working at all
(pause)
07. Philip: ((pulls the electrode to the stir
plate))
what the hell’s a stir bar? ((looks at
Tom))
08. Tom: but it’s the one that’s in the FLASK
09. Philip: no it’s not that one at all ((pulls the
electrode to the stir plate))
10. Tom: sure it is
11. Elias: no that’s a probe

174
The conversation displays an uncertainty about what kind of tool a stir
bar is, and the students test different alternatives. Philip, in utterance 1,
places the mouse pointer on the CO2 tank and suggests that they might
move the tank. Elias continues by pointing at the electrode saying: that
one. Tom, in utterance 3, also takes the electrode as the stir bar saying:
stir bar is the one you just used. However, when Philip tries to move the
electrode from the flask, it does not work. The AOVL gives an indication
when the students’ suggestions are incorrect (the tools move back to their
original position), but there is no explanatory function telling the user
why a certain tool is not relevant. Consequently, the boys try all sorts of
actions over and over again, and this leads to some irritation: what the
hell’s a stir bar? (utterance 7). This sense of irritation appears as a result of
students’ lack of understanding about why their actions fail, and the fact
that they do not have any indication that they are on the way to a correct
solution or not. Thus, the tool is in some sense not sensitive to their at-
tempts to get ahead. In the excerpt above, Philip, Elias, and Tom do not
realize that they need to put the stir bar in the flask before they can place
it on the stir plate.
As the excerpt above shows, the interaction among Elias, Philip, and
Tom is characterized by confusion about how to interpret the equipment
in the virtual lab. There are several deictic expressions such as move that
one (utterance 1) and the one that’s in it (utterance 5), and they are accom-
panied by gestures and pointing as the students try to make sense of the
equipment. This conversation goes on without using the experimentally
or scientifically relevant terms. This manner of engaging with the lab is
frequent in the empirical material. The students move ahead by clicking
on the mouse to see what happens but without coordinating these actions
with any scientific terminology, and there are no indications that they
are involved in doing an experiment. The progress, instead, is guided by
guesses rooted in trying to come to grips with the functionalities of the
software. As mentioned in the previous section, the teacher’s introduc-
tion consisted of information related to the content of ocean acidifica-
tion. The introduction did not include information regarding procedures
about how to carry out experiments by formulating hypotheses, setting
up experiments, and measuring effects of the manipulations introduced.
Thus, in terms of the principles of experimentation, the students are not

175
scaffolded by the teacher’s introduction, and their work with the lab in
instances such as this seems to be more related to the contingencies intro-
duced by the functionalities of the software than by any consideration of
how to do experiments or learn about acidification.
Excerpt 2 thus illustrates an alternative manner in which students
orient themselves when in doubt. The step-by-step instructions offered
in the lab session aim at facilitating the practical elements of the labo-
ratory. What we see here is a momentary shift in how the students ori-
ent themselves while completing the task. The activity of conducting an
experiment and measuring sea urchin larvae is somehow rivalled by the
focus on the lab as a programmed environment to be mastered. Since the
students do not identify the tools through the correct terminology in the
lab session in Swedish but rather use the English terms, with which they
obviously are not familiar, it is not clear whether they actually understand
what tool they are using and what its function is. For example, Philip
and Elias use the English terms stir bar and probe. On quite a number
of occasions, the students do not even use the proper English terms but
convert them into some kind of Swedish (stirring platen). These observa-
tions testify to the fact that the environment is very dense as a mediating
tool, and the students have to grapple with both terminological and con-
ceptual issues as they try to solve the problems assigned. There are many
premises for using the tools that are blackboxed and that may or may not
be understood by the users. These are also instances where they would
need situated support from the teacher in order to maintain a focus on
the substance of their work.
When the students have finished their work in the lab session part
in the AOVL, they enter the third part, the measurement exercise. Here
the students measure a total number of six replicates using a virtual ruler
(three replicates with water with a pH of 8.1 and three with a pH of 7.7).
In the excerpt below, we meet another group of students who has just
measured the length of replicates using the virtual ruler, and the students
are about to type the length of the last replicate into the appropriate box.

176
Excerpt 3: Part three of the AOVL – measurement exercise

01. Peter: ((clicks on the sixth replicate in wa-

ter with pH 8.1. No replicate appears
on the computer screen))
02. Jim: yeah I think the last one is five hun-
dred
03. Peter: ((Problems with the programme. Goes
back to the previous page and then
enters the measurement exercise once
again))
04. Jim: no but (.) no wait what are you doing
what are you doing
05. Peter: ((clicks on the sixth replicate. No
replicate appears on the computer
screen)) hehe
06. Jim: click there click there (.) we gamble a
little
07. Albin: four hundred ninety
08. Jim: ((Without seeing the replicate Jim
types 500.
Wrong answer. Types 505. Incorrect an-
swer. Types 510. Correct answer.))

In the activity of measuring the replicates, Peter navigates the virtual rul-
er using the computer mouse. He places the mouse pointer on the sixth
replicate in order to measure it, but the replicate does not appear on
the screen. Though there is no replicate to measure, Jim, in utterance 2,
suggests: yeah I think the last one is five hundred. After Jim’s suggestion in
utterance 2, Peter returns to the previous page, enters the measurement
exercise, and once again clicks on the sixth replicate. However, the rep-
licate still does not appear on the screen. Jim, in utterance 4, proposes
that they could gamble a little. As a response to Jim’s proposal, Albin
suggests that the length of the replicate could be 490 micrometres. Jim,
who sits in front of the keyboard, does not pick up on Albin’s suggestion.
Instead Jim types the number 500, which he himself suggested in utter-

177
ance 2. The AOVL indicates that 500 is incorrect, and, in response to
this, Jim immediately types a new number (505), which also turns out
to be incorrect. The third suggestion (510) is the correct length, and the
students enter the next page in the AOVL. This measurement exercise
illustrates the students’ engagement as a trial-and-error activity focused
on entering numbers close to the expected correct answer. The students
continue testing numbers until the AOVL finally indicates that their
answer is correct.
The knowledge that Jim uses when suggesting the length of the sixth
replicate, even though it has not appeared on the screen, is grounded in
his insight into how the virtual lab operates as a technology. For example,
when entering the measurement exercise the students used the virtual rul-
er for carefully measuring the replicate. The students’ first answer turned
out to be incorrect and in response to this, they started their guesswork.
There may be different reasons for this. For instance, it might have been
difficult to assess where to place the ruler and to read the result. This
way of engaging with the lab in the context of measuring was apparent
in several instances in the empirical material, i.e., the students typed the
various answers rather than measuring their replicates in a more precise
sense. The excerpt above illustrates how an instructional activity of mea-
suring the outcome of an experiment is transformed into an activity of
typing different values into a given slot. In this example, a shift of focus in
the activity appears between, on the one hand, an activity that is triggered
by an understanding of the content (measuring larvae), and, on the other
hand, an activity that is grounded in understanding the logic of the tech-
nology. It is thus not clear if the students construe the activity of typing
values as an element of the laboratory work of measuring, or if they are
guided by a focus on the functionalities of the technology that tells them
approximately what the value should be.
The excerpt may also be seen as illustrating gaps in the students’ ac-
tivities that open up for teacher guidance in order for them to achieve an
understanding of what experimenting with ocean acidification is about.
For teachers to be able to exploit such instances, it is necessary to un-
derstand what kinds of problems the students are facing. Thus, teachers
could bridge the gaps that occur by ascertaining whether the students’
problems are related to performing laboratory work, to an understanding

178
of issues concerning acidification of the ocean, or to coping with the
functionalities of the software.

Discussion
The analyses show that the design of the tool codetermines student en-
gagement, but perhaps not in the intended manner. In the first part of
the AOVL, which mainly presents information with few interactive el-
ements, the students frequently engage with the content and their dis-
cussion concerns scientific issues. This way of approaching the virtual
lab is supported by the teacher’s introduction. The students are using
the teacher’s introduction as a structuring resource for understanding the
concepts by reusing his formulations in their reasoning. Thus, they ap-
propriate certain elements of his reasoning for their own use. In the lab
session part and the measurement exercise, on the other hand, where the
student-controlled interactive elements play a more prominent role, the
students, when running into problems, orient towards the functionalities
of the design features of the lab, i. e., their actions are contingent on fea-
tures of the tool itself. Thus, when encountering difficulties, the students
seem to let the scientific content move out of focus, and instead they turn
to exploring features of the tool itself.
The analyses illustrate the complexities of meaning making and
learning while interacting with a tool that blackboxes knowledge and
conceptual premises at the same time as it provides ‘access points’ to rath-
er sophisticated analyses of water quality and its impact on living organ-
isms. When using tools in many contexts, we vacillate between attending
to the information mediated and the tool itself; when using a new smart-
phone, for instance, we frequently have to attend to the tool when writ-
ing messages or surfing on the net. Later, the tool itself becomes largely
transparent. From an educational point of view, and with an interest in
microgenesis (Wertsch 1998), it is interesting to explore what such shifts
in attention, provoked when engaging with complex virtual tools, imply
for learning. On the one hand, it is obvious that one has to know some-
thing about the tool and its affordances; otherwise it is not possible to
learn or perform virtual experiments. On the other hand, when the stu-
dents encounter difficulties and resort to clicking on the mouse in order
to get on with their work and without attending to scientific substance,

179
they enter another universe of discourse where their actions are no longer
immediately contingent on scientific substance.
The students seem to need support for their activities along sever-
al, parallel lines. To learn in the context of the virtual lab, the students
have to understand how to navigate in the environment, how to solve
different tasks in order to proceed in the environment and what all this
means in relation to the underlying conception of ocean acidification. In
a nonvirtual laboratory lesson, the teacher’s role traditionally has been to
demonstrate the experiment and then interact with the students during
lab work and with the equipment as a shared focus of attention. In the
virtual setting the situation is different, and students may engage in ac-
tivities that will not be visible to the teacher. It is evident from our study
and others (cf., e.g., Jahreie et. al., 2010; Krange & Ludvigsen, 2008;
Laurillard, 2009; Stahl, 2009) that when engaging in virtual laboratory
work, the students need instructional support in order to understand
what the different tools and procedures correspond to in a nonvirtual
lab world. In a classical school lab, the shortcuts offered by the virtual
environment when testing the functionalities of the tool are not present
to the same extent.
Also, the scaffolds introduced to compensate for the highly black-
boxed nature of the virtual lab create their own problems. The highlight-
ing design becomes a resource for the students’ ways of moving forward in
the virtual lab by clicking on symbols on the screen, and they may do so
without considering the function of the different tools on the lab bench
or their role in knowledge-seeking practices (c.f. Manlove et al., 2006).
The built-in design, thus, may support an approach where the students
do not have to make relevant distinctions in the virtual lab environment;
they only need to react if an object is highlighted or not (c.f. Linderoth,
2012). Such scaffolds will ‘take the focus away from the content of the
knowledge domain that they were meant to make sense of ’ (Krange &
Ludvigsen, 2008, p. 41).
This dilemma of operating in such dense environments, and shifting
between attending to the tool and the contents, has been observed in
studies of gaming as well (Juul, 2005; Linderoth, 2012). Using Goffman’s
(1986) framework theory and the distinction between ‘rule systems’ and
‘theme’, the gamer focuses primarily on the rules that structure the game,

180
while the theme is something beyond the game itself (e.g., Role Playing
Game in fantasy worlds, killing dragons, hunting, etc.) that is mostly sec-
ondary for the player, if attended to at all (Linderoth, 2012). That is, the
users’ attention is on how to go further in the game and reach new levels,
and their focus is generally not on what the game is about: the theme.
This may be seen as an indication of why gaming is not so efficient in
instruction, since in the teacher’s case the theme is normally the most
interesting component.
An important finding is that several instructional opportunities for
the teacher unfold in relation to the students’ work in the action oriented
parts of the AOVL. The virtual lab should not be perceived as a stand-
alone device, and students need support for their activities along several,
parallel lines. To learn in the context of the virtual lab, students have to
understand both how to navigate in the environment, how to solve differ-
ent tasks in order to proceed in the environment, and what that means in
relation to the underlying conception of ocean acidification. For teachers,
to demonstrate an experiment and then interact with the students’ lab
work in relation to a virtual lab is a new educational practice. Returning
to Latour’s concept of ‘blackboxing’, our study illustrates the complexity
in relation to the digital tools that are used in schools. Here the virtual lab
includes complex information and offers the students the possibility of
performing sophisticated experiments way beyond their current scientific
background knowledge. However, there are processes and concepts in the
technique, which the learner needs to unpack in order to understand the
activities they perform, and here a competent partner, a teacher, becomes
central.
However, to unpack all information built into such tools is neither
possible nor necessary. We have to accept that the tools we use are not to-
tally transparent. For example, we do not need to understand how a com-
puter works in all aspects to be able to use it in a productive way. Nev-
ertheless, the results from our study imply that in instructional contexts
certain representations need to be unpacked in order for the students to
be able to reflect upon their performed activities, the concepts they use,
and what these represent in a nonvirtual world. At such points, instruc-
tional opportunities open up for the teacher to support the students to
develop an understanding of experimentation as a process of creating

181
knowledge. The teacher’s role in such instances would be to challenge
the students in their reasoning and give them tools for reflecting on their
activities and what these activities represent, i.e., to guide them through
the academic substance and the concrete virtual activities. Accordingly,
the practical work in the lab session needs to be related to the academic
level so as to link what one does on the screen with what one should learn
something about.

Conclusion
Virtual labs offer promising opportunities for inquiry learning, and for
the learning of scientifically relevant modes of reasoning and working,
for instance, about how to organize and evaluate experiments about so-
phisticated topics. The virtual lab brings students into issues for which
they do not have a sufficient background. This is both its strength and
its weakness from the learning point of view. Virtual labs, thus, have
educationally relevant potentials but as no other technology will they
determine student activities. The virtual lab is in itself not a guarantee
that the students have learned either what it means to do experiments or
about ocean acidification. To learn such skills is to learn highly sophisti-
cated modes of engaging with the world that need to be unpacked and
reassembled. The teacher has an important role in finding windows of
instructional opportunities to support the students’ practical work with
virtual labs. The fact that virtual labs sometimes mediate a simplification
of scientific studies and problem solving is, however, not in itself some-
thing that makes virtual experimentations less promising. A traditional
experiment in school (or in a science lab!) is also a simplification of re-
ality and is likewise based on reductions of complexity and refinements
of investigated factors. It is, thus, important to become familiar with the
meaning of these simplifications when working in virtual labs and realize
that we always have to struggle with questions regarding how our results
relate to the surrounding world, which we are modelling and which we
want to know something about.

182
Acknowledgements
The research has been funded by Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foun-
dation, the University of Gothenburg Learning and Media Technology
Studio (LETStudio) and of the Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learn-
ing, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Soci-
ety (LinCS).

183
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FUTURES FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING
AND TEACHING PRACTICES

Linda Bradley & Sylvi Vigmo

Introduction
Teaching and learning practices have been argued to be in need of trans-
formation for some decades, specifically since moving into the continu-
ally changing landscape caused by the Network Society (Castells, 2000).
The traditional borders between learning sites are becoming blurred due
to the rapid development of technology, creating affordances for multilin-
gual interaction networks and language learning. Polarities often referred
to between learning within the classroom and beyond, informal and for-
mal, or institutional and everyday are being challenged. The recurrent
use of these dichotomies fails to include aspects of learners’ uses of digital
media in virtual learning places, as self-directed practices (Drotner, 2008)
and hybrid digital media places (Buckingham, 2007), in which learn-
ers are increasingly in command. A perspective based on dichotomies
such as formal and informal may even cause a restricted and delimiting
understanding of emergent practices (Sefton-Green, 2008). Given that
agency and authorship in virtual learning places are open to learner ac-
tivities other than those commonly organised from and acknowledged by
an educational perspective indicates that the point of departure for the
learning and teaching practices is not the same.
Pedagogical concerns in education are based on curricula and poli-
cies, and learners are assessed on their individual skills and competences,
according to predefined learning outcomes, while Web 2.0 environments
are characterised by participation in shared places open for collaboration,
changed conditions that require pedagogical design (Lund & Rasmussen,

191
2010). The conditions for using language in these two places are framed
by different genres for participation and contribution, as participants be-
come coproducers (McLoughlin et al., 2008). Cowriting and coediting
in Web 2.0 places invites an extended authorship and changed audience
(Warschauer & Grimes, 2007).
This raises some issues of particular interest from a pedagogical per-
spective. Not only are the conditions for participation and contribution
changed; it also points to some crucial pedagogical dilemmas due to the
shared and distributed authorship. Writing, publishing, and coediting in
collaborative virtual places are activities that are increasingly character-
ised as ongoing, and not necessarily aimed at reaching a final goal. Any-
one can be invited to participate, and texts can be transformed and trans-
ferred to other virtual places and thus serve other purposes and interests.
Who has contributed with what content is of less interest in these virtual
places (Bonderup Dohn, 2009; Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). In other
words, the contexts and condition for acting, interacting and communi-
cating in so-called Web 2.0 environments differ from the more structured
organised learning and teaching practices.
The changed conditions also bring to the fore what is more seldom
addressed, i.e., the critical questions about what is the focus for learning,
and what content become relevant to learn? When the teaching practices
still take as their point of departure the same content, and the same learn-
ing objectives as previously, and thus fail to rethink their own practices,
the use of media resources and their potential affordances in the virtual
learning places does not per se lead to development. The changed direc-
tions, aims, and perspectives on learning activities relevant for learning
indicates rethinking from a pedagogical point of view to address the ped-
agogical dilemmas education is facing.
In the following, we will first discuss the changed virtual places for
language learning and language teaching that the Web 2.0 developments
offer, in particular with relation to language learning and teaching prac-
tices. We will then deal with some conceptions of language learning and
teaching in the light of the current transformations of our everyday life
and the tensions and challenges these may trigger for current practices of
language learning and language teaching. Finally, we discuss some heuris-
tic approaches to bridge the gap between educational practices and other

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virtual learning practices, as well as for strengthening the learners’ agency
in virtual learning places.

Web 2.0 – new arenas

The web is a topical area that is currently explored in learning at large
as well as within a language-learning context. Since social networking
and participating in web-based activities are increasing exponentially
with Web 2.0, this is a virtual place that encourages reflective produc-
tive skills such as writing, speaking, sharing multimedia resources, but
also reading and seeking information. Conditions for learning are being
transformed as activities distinguished by a ‘performative nature’ (Säljö,
2009). The new arenas in virtual learning places such as, e.g., Facebook,
Twitter, and blogs, afford linguistic activities and uses of language other
than those commonly focused on in education. Content can be shared
and distributed in various virtual learning places; digital media texts can
be manipulated, edited, and combined into new texts, and reaching a
final linguistic product may be secondary. What is of importance is that
interaction and participation in these virtual learning places are ground-
ed in a bottom-up perspective, and take the collective contribution as a
quality in itself (Bonderup Dohn, 2009), while educational approaches
are more commonly based on a top-down perspective; teaching prac-
tices design for language learner activities, and have certain objectives
and learning outcomes to reach. To this image can be added notions of
competence and linguistic skills, which are distinguished by having the
individual learner in focus.
That new practises for language learning and teaching practices are
at stake can also be seen in how other notions are applied to form a
broader perspective on the use of languages in virtual learning places. The
concept of ecology has been argued to contribute to teaching practices to
rethink and reconsider notions of what language use, skills, and compe-
tences are in virtual learning places, i.e., in contexts that do not depart
from separating and assessing either linguistics competences or the use of
language as such (Kramsch, 2008).
This does not only have an impact on everyday practices of language
learning and language teaching, but also, on a broader scale, on how lin-
guistic skills and competencies are seen. From a pedagogical perspective

193
it is crucial to consider carefully what these shifts in perspective mean
from the point of view of education, and of specific interest for this paper
is teacher education. Web 2.0 puts people together in new ways. What
seems clear already is the need to explore some daily networked practices
such as collaborative problem solving, the collective creation and sharing
of texts and their potential role in the educational contexts, and reflect on
what this implies for language teaching practices.
New media ecologies exemplified by Web 2.0 enable us to take other
perspectives on the uses of English, in particular, uses that are not com-
monly defined in terms of linguistic skills and competences. An ecolog-
ical perspective on language in a virtual learning environment enhances
rethinking about language education, as it aims to embrace the whole
situation and environment in which English is being used (Kramsch,
2008). Taking an ecological perspective implies acknowledging language
learning as ‘a messy field of study about a complex and messy reality’ (Van
Lier, 2002, p. 144). Language education has a long academic tradition of
breaking language learning ‘down into bits and pieces, and lining these
up in some sort of order’ (2002, p. 159), an assumption Van Lier serious-
ly questions. Canagarajah (2006) argues that we can think of language as
context-transforming, and that a focus on language learning and language
use today would benefit from taking the following notions into account
as parts of the language parcel: language as hybrid, language/discourse as
changing, and language as representational.
By adopting a holistic approach (Conole, 2008), the investigation
of other dimensions of language use and language learning activities can
appear as relevant. Going beyond the common framing of linguistic skills
and competences also raises some concerns of importance for language
learners’ use of English in digital media in their daily practices. To ad-
dress this gap, Conole (2010) points to potential and actual use, and ar-
gues that designing for learning is a necessary step towards understanding
from a pedagogical perspective and, if possible, bridging the gap.
Of particular interest are if and how the language teacher students’
daily practices merge with the educational structures and designs for
learning and using English, and how these activities are interrelated and
linked to each other.
According to Conole (2010), we face educational dilemmas in ed-

194
ucation, which deserve time dedicated to pedagogical design. Results
from previous studies have referred to the lack of teacher training as one
contributing factor to the low rate of acceptance of digital media in ed-
ucation. The image drawn, however, also displays other aspects of con-
cern, e.g., the diversity among the students themselves. In more specific
words, we cannot assume that the language teacher student15 group is
homogenous, which in itself represents an educational and instructional
dilemma.
For language learning this implies an increased focus on language
use and the shift in mindset that participation is part of learning as well
as acquisition, two metaphors both contributing to our understanding
of learning (Sfard, 1998). A simplification of mindsets when being ac-
tive in virtual places can be illustrated by ways of framing epistemology
and learner participation. The first of two mindsets is characterised by
notions of knowledge and knowing present in a hierarchical view of the
world (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). What we think of as expertise, com-
petences, and authority are spread among individuals and institutions.
The second mindset takes place on the web, and is characterised by being
decentralised. What in this virtual place are considered as competence,
expertise, and authority, have become collective and shared. Authority is
distributed among participants and social aspects are given value. What
is communicated and created here is under constant change and devel-
opment (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). While education commonly takes
mindset one as point of departure, virtual places in Web 2.0 invite to
mindset two. Learning implies becoming a participant, belonging in a
context and in a constant flux of doing, rather than acquiring something,
having, and possessing. Learning is conceived as a process of becoming a
member of a certain environment and part of sharing joint activity.

Research questions
That there is a shared concern for education from a governmental per-
spective can be seen in recurrent national and international reports,
which take various approaches to focal points on] dimensions of teaching

15 With language teacher students we mean students participating in language teacher education.

195
and learning, such as innovative implementation of ICT in European
education.16 One critical dimension of addressing what is being argued as
challenges for education points out that teacher education is vital. Today’s
teacher training students will impact several generations to come. To tar-
get what are considered to be teacher digital media competences, UNE-
SCO (2011) describes close to twenty competences – and the interrela-
tions among them -- argued to be necessary. A recurrent theme pointed
out as being critical from an international as well as European perspective
is that language education does not reflect the use of language among
students in schools (Eurydice, 2011; Skolverket, 2011). The conclusion
drawn is that schools, i.e., teachers, have to develop their pedagogical
approach to digital media and use technologies to bridge learner activities
mediated in various virtual spaces and with diverse digital media with
activities at school.
The image outlined above is similar to that of Swedish language
teacher students; there is a great discrepancy between what takes place
in teacher education compared to out-of-school practices. Even though
digital media and technologies are increasingly ubiquitous in almost ev-
ery students’ daily life, digital media is leading an obscure life in language
education. In their examination of controversies over e-learning in the
university, Davidson and Widdowson (2010) discuss the ‘incoherence
between the e-learning technologies currently adopted in the university
and the ways in which our students actually use various technologies’ (p.
2). This discrepancy between students’ everyday online experiences and
participation in various virtual places and what takes place in education is
an area worth investigating further. Thus, the case study presented in this
paper was guided by the following explorative research questions:

What are the language teacher students’ reflections on digi-

tal media and technologies adopted in their daily practices?

How do the language teacher students account for acting,

16 Eurydice, European Commission (2011). Key data on learning and innovation through ICT
at school in Europe 2011.

196
 interacting, and communicating with digital media in ed-
ucational practices in general and, specifically, in virtual
learning places?

Analytical framing
The focus in this study was to examine relations between digital media
and technologies used by English language teacher students in and out-
side the university context. When investigating the students’ participa-
tion in virtual places, the two concepts of bridging activities and shuttling
(Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008; Thorne, 2009) were used as analytic tools
applied in order to frame the possible shifts in interactions between daily
practices as a language teacher student and as language teacher students
in the educational university practice. Drawing on these two concepts,
bridging activities and shuttling, implied finding a way of scrutinizing
the interface between the in- and out-of-university practices.
According to Thorne (2009), bridging activities can be used to inves-
tigate ‘students’ digital vernacular interests’ in collaboration with educa-
tors with the shared aim of exploring ‘living language use’. Furthermore,
this way of exploring communicative practices includes digital media and
print literacies and departs from an ecological perspective on everyday
language use, irrespective of place. In this approach, Thorne also points
to future practices yet unknown.
This conceptual framework is grounded in the notion of multiliter-
acies, New London Group, 1996. It concerns the shifting social practices
and emerging literacies associated with digital media, focusing on teacher
exploration of student-created digital texts originating in digital media.
Regarding the concept of multiliteracies, Thorne (2009) raises some crit-
ical concerns in claiming that:

new media literacies remain largely unacknowledged within in-

structed L2 contexts and curricula, or worse, are treated as stig-
matized varieties that have no place in the classroom (p. 91) .

Furthermore, Thorne points to another problem in education, which is

the lack of explicit and systematic goals to address the ‘mastery of high

197
frequency and high stakes mediated genres of communication’ (p. 91).
What is being argued here in explicit terms is that language use, and
linguistic skills ‘other’ than those education acknowledges, comprise a
serious problem that has to be recognized and addressed.
The other analytical tool, shuttling (Thorne, 2009), is a concept that
illustrates when individuals move between ‘defined social-textual conven-
tions and make strategic use of semiotic and narrative resources, some-
times across and sometimes within specific language genres (p. 87). In
this, Thorne refers to Canagarajah (2006), and elaborates further on his
concept of shuttling to argue that ‘writing is not merely constitutive; it is
also performative, context-transforming, and acts as an affordance for the
ongoing negotiation of voice and presentation of self ’ (p. 87). Thus, com-
municative participation in online virtual places is not a trivial activity.
In the analysis of the language teacher student activities in this pa-
per, the concepts were applied as analytical tools to explore the students’
move between social media practices at university in virtual learning plac-
es, and language use in their everyday use of social media.

Tensions and challenges

Implementing emergent web-based technologies into institutional con-
texts is not unproblematic (cf. Bonderup Dohn, 2009; Lund; 2008),
with examples such as open access and sustainability of content over time
on the one hand, and assessment and assignments on the virtual learning
places on the other hand. In fact, it is the ‘ego-less, time-less and never
finished’ (Lamb, 2004) business of user interaction that is problematic
and that fits existing institutional frames quite poorly. These are chal-
lenges in need of debate and targeting in teaching and learning practices.
Thus collective online ownership causes both possibilities and problems
for learners. As Erstad (2008; 2010) puts it, classroom media production,
for example, may be seen as trajectories of remixing as students may bring
with them their existing experience and abilities and are often motivat-
ed to take the lead on instruction. The affordances of technology may,
in other words, change the power structures of the learning situations.
Thorne (2010) suggests that learners may be immersed in intercultural
communication ‘in the wild’ while teachers are educated to keep track
of what is going on in the classroom. This points to a tension regarding

198
control of linguistic activities, language production and an educational
agenda based on development, assessment, and the grading of results.
Furthermore, this addresses issues regarding who is in control of infor-
mation for learning as reproduction and what content is to be focused.
Being immersed in a noncontrolled linguistic virtual environment, open
for actors and contributors to set the agenda, indicates that agency and
distributed collective authorship are framed by other conditions. The lin-
guistic genres for using English in virtual environments take other on-
tological positions as their point of departure rather than educational
practice.

Empirical data, participants and design of study

The data for this case study were based on the voice of future language
teacher students. The participants were Swedish teacher students of En-
glish. They were in their first year of teacher training, even though some
of them had been working a few years as teachers before they started their
education. The reason for this focus on language teacher students was to
catch the interface between their use of technology and digital media in
their daily lives and the accounts of use given concerning what they had
encountered at university and in schools. In their teacher education there
was limited instruction as far as digital media was concerned. However,
since studies show that students tend to use digital media in their every-
day lives (Conole, 2008), our study set out to investigate the language
teacher students’ view of this discrepancy.
The language teacher students were mailed five questions to which they
would reply with their views about using new digital media, technologies,
and computers in learning situations. There were also two specific ques-
tions about the use of virtual learning places. All in all, there were eleven
responses, five males and six females. Two students answered in Swedish,
the rest in English. The two answers in Swedish have been translated into
English. The data were analysed from the student perspective, investigat-
ing language teacher student activities and their accounts of engagement,
both in private when it comes to digital media, but also in their teacher
education and from what they had experienced in schools.
The analysis of the answers was based on the outcomes of the lan-
guage teacher student accounts. The first area concerns how the students

199
described ways that they use digital media in everyday life, how and if this
was applied in their language teacher education. The second area presents
students’ views about how digital media technologies can be useful for
language learning. The third area concerns what potential the language
teacher students see for the future of language learning in relation to
digital media.

Results
In this section, the results of the case study are based on the language
teacher students’ accounts of their use of digital media. At the outset of
the analysis it was clear that all students were used to digital media in
their everyday life. Some language teacher students have been defined as
advanced students in this study, i.e., students using more than one social
media place as well as being online for several purposes throughout the
day. The analysis of this section draws on the two concepts: bridging ac-
tivities, i.e., the shifting social practices and emerging literacies associated
with digital media, and shuttling, i.e., moving between textual conven-
tions in digital media.

Everyday use of technology and how it can be applied in education

The language teacher students are quite used to technology in their ev-
eryday life. Eight out of the eleven students are advanced users of digital
media. These students stay online most of the day both through their
smartphones and computers for a range of purposes, such as using vari-
ous social media, Internet services and programmes. The eight students
mention a range of programmes and social media that they are using.
The following four quotes from three advanced users display this famil-
iarity in usage:

I use technology for everything I do, Facebook, twitter, blogging,

I think I could sit by the computer a whole day without knowing
the time actually passes. My iphone is full of technology, using
spotify, Facebook, texting, phoning and when I got nothing else
to do I play games on my phone, and also on the computer. I very
seldom turn my computer or my smartphone off.

200
 I’m generally “connected” 24/7. Considering smartphones have
the ability to push messages and notify you through applications,
people have become easily accessible.

I privately own and operate a low-budget server, which I’ve used

to set up a private network amongst friends, with no purpose
other than to allow myself to learn from the experience of creat-
ing websites with various features.

Most frequently used: self-hosted Wordpress for my websites. Fb

and Twitter both for my company and myself, Google documents
for writing, information sharing and storing, perfect for group
work StumbleUpon, We Heart It, Tumblr and Reddit for sharing
links, flickr and Instagram for photo sharing, Skype for talking
when gaming or studying Statcounter and Google Analytics for
statistics. Linked In for showcasing my accomplishments profes-
sionally, Several affiliate and advertising services iPhone apps.17

The common feature of the four quotes is that they display advanced
users of technology. The language teacher students name a number of
virtual places, resources, and activities that they engage in during the
day. Though the teacher students participating in the case study are few,
their accounts can serve to indicate some of the changes deserving fur-
ther in-depth research to make more informed pedagogical designs for
development of language learning and teaching practices. In the accounts
given above, the students refer to social media places in which they par-
ticipate throughout a regular day. Messages are sent, people are easily
connected in networks, private as well as for the marketing of company
sites. A variety of websites, virtual places, are named in concrete terms,
and respondents specify what kind of activities they afford such as, e.g.,
sharing information and documents for writing, collaborating, creating,
and gaming.
The accounts of activities above imply that the language teacher stu-

17 In quoting the students, the students’ spelling of the words has been followed.

201
dents are engaged in activities that bridge aspects of and interest in their
own practices, but that no accounts of activities are given that bridge
their ‘vernacular use’ with educational practice. Similarly, the students’
accounts of how they act, interact, and communicate in the virtual places
referred to exemplify shuttling; activities go back and forth according to
their aims and interests.
Another item that also emphasizes the fact that the language teacher
students are advanced users of digital media is the discourse, i.e., how
they talk about their use. The following quote shows that the students
apply a certain terminology to describe this usage of email, Twitter, Face-
book and Skype:

Computer based programs are generally more flexible than mo-

bile apps. Regardless, the core focus remains communication.

Another example of one of the advanced users is:

I use my smartphone and tablet very, very much for they simplify
things. Everything I need is just a finger touch away.

The three language teacher students who were not classified as advanced
users were still using the Internet and emailing in their daily lives, even
though they were not referring to any use of social media. Concerning
the use of technologies in education, the students claim that teachers gen-
erally do not use it enough. The primary usage area is information passing
and emailing. One of the respondents claims that:

I do not think that most of the teachers are willing to change

their ways of educating the students, and that is a shame!

This quote shows that use of media literacies is unacknowledged with-

in the curriculum for language teacher students, which is also suggested
by Thorne (2009). Another comment that displays this gap is the next
quote, which raises this same argument one level higher, from teachers’
use of computers to computer usage in schools:

202
 Swedish schools have not developed as quickly as the society and
there is a big gap between the two of them.

When the virtual learning place within their education did not offer what
the language teacher students thought to be a suitable work area, they
arranged such an environment themselves, which they claimed boosted
their productivity as a group:

We had a Facebook group in our class, which was greatly bene-

ficial since we would share information to the whole group very
fast.

The language teacher students make use of their everyday use of technol-
ogy for educational purposes, since there is a lack of tools to use, accord-
ing to the students, moving them out of school digital media into their
education. Thus we see that shuttling is part of the student practices but
not referred to at all in their references to the educational practice. The
advanced users in the study presented here seem to live with virtual places
close at hand. Another dimension of the references made by the language
teacher students is the focus on generic educational technology; the use
of language serves the students’ own personal purposes, i.e., their own
practices.

Uses for learning languages

Concerning the matter of how to use digital media for language learning,
the students had a number of ideas of how they could be implemented,
such as setting up social media groups where pupils would be partici-
pating with others online. The fact that digital forms of communication
allow users to be active is stressed:

Never mind if you use a book, audiotape, videotape if the user

is an active participant in the process instead of a passive one.

The students are pointing at suggested ways of implementing technolo-

gies in education. This is related to a bridging activity where the problem
in education is how to address mastery of digital media and technologies

203
for learning purposes and treat this as a shared problem that could be
developed together with teacher educators (Thorne, 2009). Also note-
worthy is that there are few student references made to domain-specific
educational technologies, which again indicates that language is used as a
mediating tool for diverse activities and interests, rather than a language
being learned.

Future uses of technology and digital media for learning languages

The respondents had a number of suggestions for future uses of digital
media and technology. There are already a variety of resources online.
Some of the ideas reflect a new generation of language teachers, as, for
example, the following statement:

I hope textbooks will be something for the past, my students will

have everything on their computer, that way they cannot lose
any paper or book or anything because everything is in their
computer.

The domain-specific educational technology, i.e., the textbook, is here

discussed as an element in language education that is considered outdat-
ed. The language teacher student’s envisages that his/her own students
will not use textbooks since they will be replaced by the computer. The
openness of the Internet is brought up as something that is expressed as
having a potential. As far as virtual learning places are concerned, the
language teacher students claim that they seem to have more potential
than what is actually used. On the other hand, there were some sharp
comments against virtual learning environments regarding the fact that
they are restrictive and lack affordances the students are used to having.
The following is one such comment in relation to the university virtual
learning place, i.e., a virtual platform:

[there are] Numerous examples of expensive sites that are outdat-

ed and hard to use, like for example GUL. Big challenge is to get
tech that is adjusted to the specific needs of learning and not to
some idea of what should be used.

204
When education is organized according to academics for language learn-
ing and teaching practices, the language teacher students make references
to checking, practicing, training and exploring, support, and that they
are encouraged to use the Internet for authentic purposes. However, what
we see from the results in the case presented and discussed here, when the
use of technology is student driven, there is a shift in focus from technol-
ogies characterised more by domain-specific dimensions to educational
technologies characterised by more generic dimensions

Conclusion
It has been argued here that, although the case study presented here is
limited, the language teacher students’ accounts raise issues of major rel-
evance to the futures of language teacher practices. There are students,
future language teachers, who can be argued to be what we here call ad-
vanced users of digital media in various virtual places. They are engaged
in activities throughout a regular day in their own practices, while the
educational practice to which they refer seems characterised by a more
traditional educational practice. The concept of bridging activities and
shuttling were used as analytical tools for an increased understanding
of how the future of language learning and teaching could be under-
stood and addressed. Though the student group of future teachers is
not a homogenous one, this does not make the problem less crucial to
target from a pedagogical perspective. The voice given to the advanced
language teacher students in this study, and the problems they raise in
their accounts, point to shared problems that could be further developed
with educational practitioners engaged in teacher education and in col-
laboration with teacher students. The concepts of bridging activities and
shuttling can serve as mind tools, together with the arguments regarding
changed audience and authorship in collaborative virtual places and the
participatory and performative nature of learning.

205
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SOCIAL BOOKMARKING AND
TAGGING IN A BIOLOGY CLASS
Niklas Karlsson, Petter Karlström, Ola Knutsson & Berner Lindström

Introduction
Social media pose challenges as well as opportunities for networked learn-
ing. In particular, outside information sources may be seamlessly brought
into education, and students may share and discuss those sources in novel
and unfamiliar ways. These changes are not merely technological addi-
tions to traditional ways of learning and teaching, but transform learning
activities, as any technology used for learning will (see, e.g., Säljö, 2010).
There are of course several facets of such transformation. On the one
hand, students are provided with tools for co-construction of knowledge,
coupled with knowledgeable external sources. On the other hand, stu-
dents and teachers must also gain an understanding of how to use the
new tools for educational purposes. Technological tools must not only
support the specific learning goals of a course, but also serve to bridge
educational goals with students’ previous knowledge and experiences. In
other words, the adoption of a tool into an educational context will put
demands on teachers and students to bridge their previous understand-
ings of the tool (or similar tools) with an educational use. The case we
present here concerns social bookmarking and tagging, adapted by an
upper secondary school teacher for use in a biology class.
We will approach social media in education from two related theo-
retical concepts: the sociocultural construct boundary object and digital
literacy. The first will be used in terms of the particular understandings
that students are intended to gain, and the second to describe how stu-
dents move between everyday and scientific understandings of a subject
area as treated within a social media environment.

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 Boundary objects are tools that bridge different social worlds (see
Star, 1989). These are shared entities that serve as means of translation
between intersecting communities. They have different meanings in each
community, but also have a common identity. One example in academia
is scientific publications. These have a common identity in being reposi-
tories of knowledge, but are used in quite different ways by diverse groups
such as scholars, funding agencies, media, and policy makers.

Boundary objects and tagging

Star and Griesemer (1989) defined the term boundary object as ‘objects
which both inhabit several intersecting social worlds ... and satisfy the
informational requirements of each of them’ (p. 393). Boundary objects
have been subject of much discussion and more elaborate definitions.
They are entities that can satisfy the needs of different groups of people si-
multaneously, and thereby aid coordination and alignment of work. Each
different community that uses a boundary object attaches its own mean-
ing to the object because people in the community have a need for the
boundary object to work as an informational entity for that community.
But the meanings of a boundary object also have shared components, so
that they may work as means of translation across intersecting communi-
ties. In other words, they work as a common point of reference between
communities, but have different meanings for each community (Bowker
and Star, 1999; Wenger, 1999). Wenger (1999) lists four characteristics
of boundary objects: 1) They are modular, so that each community may
use specific parts of the artefact. 2) They are abstract so that there are cen-
tral aspects that are common across communities. 3) They are plastic so
that they accommodate themselves to different communities. 4) They are
standardized so that each community has set criteria for what constitutes
the object and how to use it.
Digital artefacts often have attributes that may turn them into
boundary objects. For example, Bowker and Star (1999) discuss how we
categorize our desktops. This is done in an individual and fairly ad hoc
manner, but there are also tools to aid us in arranging them. However,
despite these tools we struggle to make things fit into the structures of
folders, file names, date stamps, task bars, etc. To complicate matters, we
must also pay attention to larger and ever growing standardized systems

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of formal categories in applications and on the Internet. The use of in-
formation systems involves linking experiences gained in different times
and places, mediated through technology. Information systems provide
persistence across communities, require interpretation by each communi-
ty, and permit understanding of others’ positions (Stahl, 2006). These are
all attributes of boundary objects, but the artefacts may in practice work
more or less well as boundary objects. According to Christiansen (2005),
they should emerge from standardization attempts that allow users to
create their own boundary objects.
Standardization is driven by technological development as well as
social agreement. If, for instance, tags or relations between links were
more strictly specified by the web’s programmers, they would probably
be too rigid to be able to work as boundary objects. In Wenger’s (1999)
terms, they would then instead be reifications. On the other hand, if
they were less socially agreed on, they would be too unspecified to be un-
derstandable within and across communities. Christiansen (2005) argues
that environments for computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW)
would ideally be boundary objects because they should serve as common
ground for different communities of users in the workplace. These envi-
ronments should neither be constructed as boundary objects nor be left
entirely open for user interpretation. Rather, they should emerge from
standardization attempts that allow users to create their own boundary
objects.
One type of Web 2.0 tools that could provide opportunities as
boundary objects is the tagging of media such as images, videos, and
web links and bookmarks. Websites for images and video (e.g., Flickr
and YouTube) encourage users to tag their submissions with their own
words in order to aid searching and grouping similar content. There are
also tools where users collect and organize links and bookmarks, share
these with each other, discuss, and tag them. These tools could be used in
line with Christiansen’s (2005) suggestions, because they could be used
for user-driven standardization. Tags and bookmark collections could
be modular because one would use areas and definitions corresponding
to one’s own interests; abstract in terms of referring to concepts, and of
being generic pointers to other information; plastic in terms of being in-
terpreted differently by different communities; and standardized so that

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each community would know how to tag and bookmark within that
community. Ultimately, tags and social bookmarks would form taxono-
mies, which are more traditionally used as boundary objects.
In the educational context we have studied, tags could be conceived
of by the students as they collected popular scientific articles on the Web.
Since tags are collaboratively constructed, the collection of tags would
represent a standardization attempt by the students. Hypothetically, the
tagging activity could then create an intermediate boundary object be-
cause it would connect students to the scientific taxonomy (or scientific
repository, known by their teacher) while also allowing a place for their
everyday understandings. We call it an intermediate boundary object be-
cause it is in development. In particular, standardization, and sharing
with other communities cannot be expected to be fully realized even if
the potential exists. The more traditional boundary object for which one
would strive would be biological taxonomy. Pedagogically, the tagging
activity was motivated by its similarity to the creation of concept maps,
which also would function as an intermediate boundary object.
The question, then, is whether students and teachers who use a social
bookmarking tool in class really do make their collaborative tagging into
an intermediate boundary object, reminiscent of a taxonomy, and if so,
how? In order to gain some insight into that, we conducted a case study
where the social bookmarking site Diigo (http://www.diigo.com) was
used in an upper secondary biology class, and evaluated its use in terms
of how students bookmarked and how they tagged their bookmarks.

Social bookmarking in Diigo

The social bookmarking tool Diigo was chosen as the technical platform
on which to conduct our study. A basic feature of the social bookmark-
ing tool Diigo is the ability to share web bookmarks with one another,
and also to share description, tags, highlighted and annotated text, and
discussion around the bookmarked page. Also, one may create and join
groups that center on a common interest (for instance a subject or a
class), these groups can be private or public.
Participants may also annotate bookmarked items and view discus-
sions in a graphical layer on top of the bookmarked content rather than
only as ordinary discussion threads. Figure 1 below shows a view of Diigo

214
where students are involved in discussion. The view is a layer on top of a
web page about Charles Darwin on the website of The Swedish Museum
of Natural History (2011). Highlights and comments are only visible to
the members in the Diigo group. This view is seen by the members in
the group when they are logged on to Diigo; the ‘Diigo Web Highlight-
er’ shows the possible ways to highlight, bookmark, make sticky notes,
and share the item. Some of the students and/or teachers have book-
marked and highlighted text, and others have commented in sticky notes
on top of the page. In figure 1, nine different items are highlighted. The
first highlighted sentence, ‘Allt levande på jorden...’, has five comments
(shown by the small grey boxes). The fourth highlighted sentence, ‘De
individer...’, is marked and the yellow box shows two of five comments
to these sentences.

Fig. 1. A discussion on the topic of Darwin and evolution.

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 When bookmarking, participants have the option of creating tags
for the bookmarked item. This may be done by the user who provides
the bookmark, or by any other user who participates in the discussion re-
garding that bookmark. Figure 2 below shows discussion in Diigo around
a linked bookmark (‘I skuggan av Darwin’, ‘In Darwin’s Shadow’). Par-
ticipants have labelled the link with four tags: ‘evolution’, ‘naturligt ur-
val’ (‘natural selection’), ‘Darwin’, and ‘Lamarkism’. The group members
have highlighted sentences and also initiated a discussion by posting a
comment on the link. Below that, there are replies and discussion con-
cerning the article, its highlighted parts, etc. In this case, all items that
are linked to the tags ‘naturligt urval’ and ‘evolution’ have been selected
as search criteria (‘selected tags’ at the top). The related tags below have
been dynamically generated because they appear in posts where the two
first ones also appear.

Fig. 2. A discussion and tags in Diigo.

Categorization and concepts in science education

Very few students in upper secondary school will pursue a career in bi-
ological science later in their lives. One may view primary and second-
ary education as being served a smorgasbord of opportunities; only a
few will be taken but all should (ideally) be open for everyone. On the

216
other hand, one stated purpose of primary and secondary education is
to provide general knowledge in specific subject areas including science.
The Periodic Table and biological taxonomy are examples of categorized
scientific knowledge that only a few students will actively use in their
careers, but is important general knowledge for all. The instrumental rea-
son for being important general knowledge is that these concepts may in
some situations appear as boundary objects. That is to say that students
should retain enough knowledge about them to 1) ideally have some
knowledge about the existing universe and life in it, and 2) instrumentally
be able to use this knowledge as a boundary object in order to function in
their future communities, including general communities such as public
opinion and media.
Categorization is of fundamental importance in natural science and
particularly in biology, but not only in science. It is intrinsic human traits
that exist and have existed in all cultures (see e.g., Bowker & Star, 1999, p.
131). To learn how to categorize is an important part of the students’ ed-
ucation. Early teaching involves children in learning activities where they
categorize figures, and later, words and scientific concepts. New technol-
ogy provides more possibilities to work with categorization on all levels.
But at the foundation of information technology for learning categoriza-
tion lies another important technological artefact, namely concept maps,
which are commonly used for categorization of scientific concepts. Of
recent interest is a study by Hay, Kinchin, and Lygo-Baker (2008), where
it is argued that linking new concepts to old ones is central to learning,
and that this linking could occur by constructing concept maps in the
beginning of a course and then modifying them as the course moves on.
Students’ work with the relationship between everyday and scientif-
ic concepts is fundamental in educational activities. This relationship is
central to concept formation. Being able to understand and participate
in specialized language is one of the main goals of school (Ludvigsen,
2011). Scientific concepts are developed through institutional practices
and science, and these differ from everyday concepts that we appropriate
through social interaction in everyday life (Ludvigsen, 2011). Similarly,
Macken-Horarik (1996) makes a strong connection between knowledge
in a subject area and the ability to express oneself in that area. She iden-
tifies three different domain-specific literacies: everyday, specialized, and

217
reflexive. Scientific concepts belong to specialized literacy, which has a
subject specific discourse that has to be learned. The term ‘literacy’ is of
course historically as well as currently problematic because of the strong-
ly negative connotations of being labelled as illiterate. Nevertheless, the
term is useful when discussing strong connections between the ability
to express oneself in a subject area and knowledge in that subject area.
Literacy, in this sense, is the manifestation of knowledge that may be
shared with others. Knowing how to write in, e.g., scientific domains is
an essential part of belonging to that domain.
There are overlaps between scientific and everyday domains, and
students must not only learn how to write in the new domain, but also
how to switch between different ones. Moving between everyday and spe-
cialized domains furthermore has strong connections to the Vygotskyan
concept of the Zone of Proximal Development. It concerns filling the
gap between what the student knows and does not yet know. Moving be-
tween these literacies has bearing on the discussion on boundary objects.
In order to use a concept or category within a boundary object, one must
know at least one use of the term, but preferably two or more. If two
uses are known, one may understand different boundary objects from
different perspectives. For example, if one knows the scientific mean-
ing of the concept ‘experiment’, one is enabled to understand boundary
objects such as data concerning environmental issues from a scientific
perspective, and also boundary objects such as descriptions of systemic
(‘experimental’) changes in schooling from an everyday perspective. The
key lies in knowing when to apply which sense of the word, and one may
only know that if both senses have been incorporated.
Categorization is central to students who learn how to take part in
scientific communities (see, e.g., Ludvigsen, 2011; Novak, 2006; Hay et
al., 2008; Macken-Horarik, 1996). Categories can make students aware
of how a systematic orientation to knowledge can appear. The relation-
ship between a more general concept and simple facts therefore becomes
easier to identify. When this identification is part of institutional practice
in a complex society, students will benefit if they become socialised to
take a critical stand towards any kind of information. The capacity to
both differentiate and integrate information is crucial in specialised dis-
course in both schools and society (Ludvigsen, 2011).

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 Social bookmarking tools provide opportunities for working with
categorization. In line with the above, we focus on the students’ cate-
gorisation of information that is valuable to them in the context of the
course. This reflects students’ and teachers’ own work with making the
scientific practice transparent. The scientific practice will not be transpar-
ent to students if they are only exposed to advanced scientific discourse,
vocabulary, and categories. It is the students’ own work with the catego-
ries that makes the area transparent to them (Ludvigsen 2011).

Context of the study

Our study took place during the first biology course in an upper second-
ary school in Sweden. There were 28 students in class. Of these, 27 used
the tool and 18 agreed to participate in the study, and signed consent
forms. Data were collected from one sequence of the course where Diigo
was used. The sequence took place during one and one-half months in
the middle of a course that had a duration of one year. Students were
already accustomed to using web-based tools such as wikis, collaborative
word processing applications, and blogs. They were also used to being in-
volved in the process of testing and validating web-based tools in learning
activities. Students were under no circumstances obliged to use Diigo.

Setting
The class’s teacher designed the task where students were presented with
opportunities to collaboratively learn the selected parts of a national
course syllabus (see below), which included scientific concepts in biology.
The task had two phases:

Phase 1 - concepts
Before Diigo was introduced, students worked with sorting and finding
patterns in the concepts that were included in the national course sylla-
bus (Skolverket, 2001). Phase 1 started with students in groups of four
answering the question, ‘What is biology for you?’ Then the students
wrote all concepts they could think of concerning that question. Con-
cepts that were related to the course syllabus were collected. By systemiz-
ing and finding patterns among these concepts, the students worked with
generalisation and categorisation of the concepts.

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Phase 2 - Diigo
Marking up data with tags in the tool Diigo was intended as a continua-
tion to ‘sorting concepts’ in the beginning of the course (Phase 1). From
the teacher’s point of view, the idea of using Diigo was that students and
the teacher collaboratively create a content collection with useful sites
for the course and a ’conceptual cloud’ - a folksonomy that contained
and structured the key concepts of the course. The idea was also that the
students should discuss the content in Diigo.
The teacher’s intention was that the students should find informa-
tion about evolutionary theory, question and comment on it. Thereby,
they should reach at least two politically decided goals of Swedish upper
secondary education: 1) ‘have knowledge of the theories of natural sci-
ence concerning the origins and development of life’ (Skolverket, 2001,
p. 16), and 2) to develop ‘their ability to search for biological knowledge
from different sources and critically examine this’ (p. 12).
The task started with an introduction of evolution theory, which in-
cluded a practical exercise, a comprehensive lecture, and jointly listening
to two podcasts from Swedish Radio. Students were introduced to Diigo,
acquired accounts, and tested the tool. When the students had familiar-
ized themselves with Diigo,18 they joined the Diigo group.
The next step was to formulate their own questions about evolution,
search for relevant information, and save that information in the group.
The students were told to write a brief critical evaluation of the source, tag it
with the most important concepts in the text, and highlight and comment
on central parts of the content. They were told to write overall comments
it in a ‘description box’. The students worked with the task during four
lessons and between those lessons. It ended with a lesson where students
discussed a visual representation of the concepts that they had formed (a
tag-cloud), sorted the concepts, and compared them with concept maps
that they had made in the beginning of the course (Phase 1, above).

Method
We analysed the tags used by the students and categorized them accord-
ing to whether they were scientific or everyday concepts or belonged to

18 http://www.diigo.com/tools

220
other categories (table 1, below). The everyday categories were further
split into whether they belonged to the course or not, or the utility cate-
gories ‘classification of source’, ‘synonym’, and ‘misspelling’. All tags were
classified in only one of the categories, but some did not fit and were
marked with ‘No Category’. We also noted tags that were removed or
added to an item when other members reshared items with the group.

Analytic Definition Examples

category
Relevant The concept belongs to the scientif- ekologi (ecology)
scientific ic taxonomy of biology. epigenetik (epigenetik)
concept evolution (evolution)
Broad concepts such as växt fisk (fish)
(plants), fisk (fish), and rovdjur mutation (mutation)
(predator) were also included, al- människa (human)
though the teacher expected that sexuellt urval (sexual selec-
everyone know these concepts. tion)
systematik (systematics)
Scientific concepts that were not
part of the course syllabus or the
task (e.g., gravitation) were not
classified as ‘relevant scientific con-
cept’.

Everyday All concepts that were not classified byggstenar (bricks)

concept as ‘relevant scientific concept’ and den första cellen (the first cell)
within the which concerned the content of livets uppkomst (the origin of
course the task were analysed as ‘everyday life)
concept within the course’. Even variation (variation)
broad concepts with multiple
meanings such as egenskaper (char-
acter), sexuell (sexual) were placed
in this category if the concepts were
related to the subject.

221
 Everyday Concepts such as gud (God), kris- bedrägeri (fraud)
concept tendom (Christianity) that were Gud (God)
outside the discussed but not related to biology historia (history)
course were classified as ‘Everyday concept skapelse (creation)
outside the course’.
Classifi- The category was used whenever a blogg (blog)
cation of source such as blog, film, or Wiki- film (film)
sources pedia was specified. radio (radio)
Wikipedia
YouTube
No category Tags that do not belong to any of -
the four categories above. kring (round)
om (about)
översätt (translate)
skola (school)
Synonym Words with similar meanings in- Människa (human)
cluding linguistic form variants Människan (the human)
Misspelling Spelling errors Lamark instead of Lamarck
naturligturval instead of the
two words naturligt urval
(natural selection)

Table 1. Analytical Definitions of Tags.

These distinctions were highly influenced by Wells’ (1994) elaboration

on scientific and everyday concepts. Scientific concepts are those that
belong to biology as a science, i.e., they are general and systemically or-
ganized within that area. The judgment of which tags belonged to which
area demands expert knowledge, and was therefore conducted by the
teacher (who is also an author of this chapter). In other words, tags that
we deemed as ‘scientific’ were those that the teacher judged as part of the
scientific learning goals of the course.
The analytical definitions with examples are presented in table 1.

222
We kept tallies of straightforward data such as the frequency of tags, how
many bookmarks had tags, and how many times each student used a
tag. We compared all tags in the tag cloud with the tags displayed on
the group page in order to find out which tags were removed, added,
or modified when the members reshared bookmarked objects. This was
done in order to find out how the members tagged same item, and if they
used same or similar tags. When a member tags and reshares an item, the
latest version is displayed on the group page, but removed tags remains in
the tag-cloud and link back to the item. The relations to other tags also
remain and are viewed when a tag is selected in the tag cloud. Here we
only have the ‘negative’ resharing; it is not visible if a student added tags
to previous tags. A similar methodological concern is that when a group
member tags and shares an already shared item, only this last version of
tags are displayed on the group page (see figure 2). Tags that are removed
from the item when it is reshared with other tags will remain in the tag
cloud, but are not displayed in the group pages (figure 2).

Results and analysis

As one would expect when trying novel technology in class, results
were mixed. Students tagged their bookmarked objects in very different
ways and some students did not tag at all. A tally of tagging data revealed
that, in total, there were 107 objects, 75 unique web pages, shared with
the group by 18 students and the teacher. Of the shared items, 23 were
unique web pages shared more than once, and four of these were reshared
with the same tags. Of the remaining 19 items where the tags were re-
placed by other tags, 9 of these were the previous tags replaced with ‘no
tag’ and on 10 items the tags were modified.
Sixty-eight of 75 objects were tagged, with 3.5 tags per item in av-
erage. In total 134 different tags were used 262 times and each tag was
used two times on average. One hundred two tags were used only once
and the most frequently used tags are presented in figure 3, together with
which student used the tag. In this graph, it becomes apparent that some
students tagged more than others, and it shows which tags were reused
more than others. The number of tags per student is available in figure 3.

223
 Fig. 3. The most frequent tags. Each letter corresponds to one student, and
the y-axis represents how many times a tag was used.

The tag cloud that represented the result of all students’ tagging had a flat
structure, i.e., only a handful of items stood out as more significant than
others (figure 4 below).

Fig. 4. The tag cloud based on the students’ tagging in the course.

224
The participants used 14 tags on average, but four members (Students C,
K, R, and the teacher) accounted for almost 65 percent of the tags. These
members stand out in the compilation of the categorized tags (figure 5,
below). Our categorization of the unique tags resulted in the following
tally.

‘Relevant scientific concepts’ 63

‘Everyday concept within the course’ 33
‘Everyday concept outside the course’ 26
‘Classification of source’ 8
No category 5
Duplicates / Synonyms 9
Misspellings 5

Table 2. Categorization of the unique tags

Fig. 5. Teacher and students tagging, categorized.

All students that tagged used tags categorized as ‘relevant scientific con-
cepts’ and ‘everyday concepts within course’, but with a wide number of
tags. Only six students used ‘everyday concepts outside the course’, and

225
those six were also the six most frequent taggers. Three students (C, K,
and R) stand out as much more frequent taggers than the others. It is also
notable that all but one of the students used everyday as well as scientific
concepts.
In general, the students did tag according to course contents, but
also used their own familiar everyday concepts as well as some concepts
outside the course. We will now discuss in more detail what the tagging
activity meant in terms of working towards a boundary object in biology.
There are two issues that will be highlighted: 1) The flat structure of the
tag cloud and the reasons behind that, and 2) the relationship between
the different types of tags.

Changed tags – an intermediate boundary object

Diigo clustered tags were based on the same URLs and this created a web
of related tags, but no concepts were sorted out in the tag-cloud. The data
shows that 102 tags were used only once and that 3.5 tags were used per
bookmarked object; this caused a flat structure of the clustered tags.
The data also show that some concepts were used more frequently;
this indicates that the members started to adopt a similar ‘tagging vo-
cabulary’ and the members thereby started to develop their own sorting.
On the other hand, the same analysis shows that students more often
used different tags. On 10 of the reshared pages, the tags were modified,
i.e., the students tagged the same URL with different tags than previous
members.
Of particular interest are instances when tags were replaced by an-
other member’s tags. This occurred when the pages were reshared. In one
of the reshared bookmarked objects, the tags ‘charles darwin’, ‘evolution
theory’, ‘Lamark’ (charles darwin, evolutionsteorin, Lamark) were replaced
by ‘evolution’, ‘natural selection’, ‘Darwin’, and ‘Lamarckism’ (evolution,
naturligt urval, Darwin, Lamarkism). Concepts with a similar meaning
were changed and replaced, as was the case with ‘Everyday concepts with-
in course’; ‘Lamark’ was replaced with ‘relevant scientific concepts’; ‘La-
markism’, with the ‘relevant scientific concept’. ‘Evolution theory’ was
replaced by another student with the concept ‘evolution’. This shows how
the members used their own vocabulary when they tagged and labelled
things differently.

226
 In summary, the data show that no tags were emphasized and that
the structure of the clustered tags and URLs was flat (as visualized in the
tag-cloud). But the data also show that the students on some occasions
used their own vocabulary and that the members at the same time started
to adopt a similar vocabulary, albeit riddled with synonyms, misspellings,
etc. An intermediary boundary object began to emerge, but did not reach
a common standard for the group.

Spelling and semantics

One reason for the flat structure of the tag cloud was the use of several
synonyms/duplicates such as Charles – Charles Darwin – charles darwin
– Darwin. A few tags were misspelled, such as ‘Lamark’, which should be
‘Lamarck’. Synonyms and misspellings are problematic in folksonomies,
because the software does not recognize these as similar tags.
In tools such as Diigo, tags can be presented according to how they
are related to each other. In figure 2, the two tags ‘naturligt urval’ (natu-
ral selection) and ‘evolution’ (evolution) are related to 18 other tags. The
similar tags ‘darwin’ and ‘charles darwin’ constitute an example of where
students used different tags for similar concepts. This might be of major
importance due to the small amount of tags and shared items in the
group, which have a huge impact on the folksonomy.
The relationship between tags is only an account of with which oth-
er tags occur, with no regard to their semantic content. However, these
tags are semantically related to the two selected tags, and are also scientif-
ic and related to the course.
In order for a tagging activity to work as an intermediary boundary
object that should direct students towards scientific understanding, it is
important that the tags’ semantic relationships are clear to the students.
The kinds of misspellings and mislabelling we saw here counteracted the
making of a boundary object because the participants must be able to
know that they are discussing the same thing. Also, the tag cloud as a
potential visual support for the boundary object will not work if there is
no consensus on how to spell the concepts.

Tags
Almost half of the tags were interpreted as ‘relevant scientific concepts’

227
and these were mixed with everyday concepts, both outside and within
course. The data shows that most students tagged and shared items with
‘relevant scientific concepts’ and ‘everyday concepts within the course’.
The members added different tags to the same bookmarked object. One
example is when the teacher’s tags ‘evolution biology’, ‘climate change’,
‘invertebrates’, and ‘radio’ were replaced with the tags ‘protein’, ‘fish’, ‘sr.
se’, and ‘development’. The teacher had tagged ‘relevant scientific con-
cepts’, which were complemented by other tags that were relevant for the
student. These concepts were linked to the same URL and clustered.

Tagging – student activity

The students used the tagging function in different ways. In summary,
the activity described above tells us that there were some problems with
tagging, namely that there were misspellings and use of synonyms that
counteracted the construction of a common concepts.
In other words, it seems that students did not fully understand how
to tag so that their tags became keywords and concepts that were collab-
oratively accepted in the class. But on the other hand, a coherent picture
of scientifically relevant concepts emerged regardless of that. Students
did seem to notice which scientific concepts were related to the current
one. We argue that this is the case because scientific concepts were tagged
together.

Discussion
The bookmarking tools provides means for tagging texts with concepts,
but not all students tagged the bookmarked texts, and tagging was done
more or less successfully. We contend that tagging is a difficult task, and
when using social media in education more effort has to be spent on skills
such as tagging. These skills are of course developed frequently outside of
particular subject matters, in our case biology.
This raises question about which new media literacies are relevant
in second upper school in order to prepare the students for life in an in-
formation society. We discuss these issues and suggest how to avoid some
pitfalls and how to take opportunities when using social bookmarking in
class. Some issues (e.g., semantic relationships, replacing tags) are tech-
nological design issues. We will demonstrate how features of the tools

228
structure the learning activity, and propose how to design those features.

Tags
Our data were limited to tags, i.e., text in the social bookmarking tool
after the course was finished and the teacher’s design of the learning ac-
tivity. Therefore, we can give an account of how students tagged, but we
make no claims on anything definitive about the students’ appropriation
or understanding of scientific concepts. That kind of result would involve
other types of methods, e.g., classroom studies or experimental tests.
The learning activity that was organized here could be seen as an
attempt to connect students’ everyday information (digital) practices and
culture with learning biological scientific concepts, in other words, an
attempt to achieve ‘bridging practices by means of which the relation-
ship between everyday concepts and cultural resources can be connected
to scientific concepts’ (Ludvigsen, 2011). It is striking that the students
and the teacher tagged most of the bookmarked items with concepts that
were relevant for the course.

Intermediate boundary object

One-third of the members in the group mixed the vocabulary of scien-
tific discourse with everyday concepts in their tagging, and the folkson-
omy that began to emerge is the students’ version of the taxonomy – the
intermediate boundary object. The students used their own vocabulary,
and when they were tagging ‘provide[d] their meaning in their own un-
derstanding’ (Wal, 2005). In other words, they used concepts that suit-
ed their social world. But this intermediate boundary object only partly
bridges different social worlds. The teacher was the only representative
of a scientific community and there was no external participant. The in-
termediate boundary object could serve as a teaching tool for the teacher
to illuminate the students’ social world (in the context of a class), by dis-
cussing the tags that they provided. Further, this could be clustered dif-
ferently by using theoretical foundation and software from the tradition
of working with concept mapping to collaboratively build a taxonomy.
On the other hand, by working more with digital literacies and tag-
ging, the intermediate boundary object could be developed. Concepts are
sorted out and a ‘common vocabulary’ is constructed. Here we have an

229
interesting dilemma: a folksonomy is generated by individuals applying
tags to serve their own needs, while taxonomies are defined by experts.
It would be interesting to see whether a more developed tagging activity
in school, where the students learn to take part in scientific discourses,
would generate a folksonomy closer to a boundary object in biological
taxonomy.
Another way to develop the tagging activity would be to use so-
cial bookmarking tools to connect students to scientists, who are tagging
with scientific vocabulary (taxonomy), while also allowing a place for
their everyday understandings.

Students’ and teacher’s literacies

Subject specific concepts
The students created a resource of multimodal texts and in doing this
also categorized the texts. However, the students did not get explicit in-
structions on how to tag the texts, and there were several problems when
tagging. Nevertheless, the students used scientific concepts, and with the
help of the tool they linked scientific concepts to each other.
They also used everyday concepts. The students were exposed to all
kinds of texts, which they bookmarked and shared with the group. The
students were not experts in the subject matter and did not have scientific
knowledge; they picked texts and other media that they thought were
relevant and tagged with, for them, relevant tags. As in everyday Internet/
media activities, the students are exposed here to a mixture of scientific
concepts and everyday concepts. A further pedagogical step would there-
fore be to aid students to find ways to connect everyday concepts and
other cultural resources to scientific concepts.
It is demanding for the teachers (and the students) to maintain a
balance between teaching subject specific knowledge and introducing
new cognitive artefacts, where the need is, at the same time, to teach dig-
ital literacy. It is still a question whether students and teacher understood
all the possibilities and functionalities of the tool and if the teacher un-
derstood how to use the tagging possibilities in the learning activity. The
study presented here has only analysed textual data saved in Diigo. In this
case the teacher did not teach about digital literacy (how to tag) and it is
also clear that it was challenging for many students to use the tool. Work-

230
ing with social bookmarking tools needs education in digital literacy.
For the students to appropriate scientific knowledge, simply classi-
fying and tagging multimodal text is not enough. One suggestion based
on the case here is to combine the tagging possibilities in a tool such as
Diigo with concept mapping (tools). Students could work with the tags,
for example, to classify everyday and scientific concepts, to find patterns
in the scientific concepts, and from there, reconstruct the tag cloud.

Tagging using Diigo

Social bookmarking provides features for co-constructing knowledge in
class through linking tags and abstract concepts of the shared informa-
tion. But it is a demanding activity for the students and teacher to both
understand/learn the scientific concepts and learn how to tag informa-
tion in a tool that requires specialized kinds of digital literacy.
The way in which a social bookmarking tool mediates between con-
cept and students should also be brought into question. Design changes
to the tool could alter its meditational properties to be more in line with
students’ learning activity. One suggestion would be to visualize co-oc-
currence between tags. This would show where conceptual links exist,
thus making the tags more into concepts. Also, one could use techniques
from computational linguistics to find synonyms and misspellings. These
two features would aid students in creating a collaborative and hierarchi-
cal taxonomy.
Tagging is a difficult task, and when using social media in education
more effort has to be spent on skills such as tagging. Digital literacies
cannot in a learning activity be separated from other literacies such as cat-
egorization, and these skills are not easily separated from subject-specific
knowledge and the social and collaborative functions of tools (Knutsson
et al., 2012). These skills are of course frequently developed outside of
particular subject matter such as, in our case, biology. This raises ques-
tions about which new literacies are relevant in school to prepare students
for reality in the information society and how this is combined within the
subject and organization of collaborative learning activities.
Some of these issues may be resolved in design. But it is important
that design of technological educational environments involve interaction

231
design as well as design for learning. In line with Christiansen (2005),
environments should stay open ended so that students and teachers may
create boundary objects, but also provide tools that assist students’ stan-
dardization attempts when incorporating new contributions or outside
information into the collaborative effort.

232
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234
TEACHING PBL WITH WEB 2.0
– A CASE STUDY OF POSSIBILITIES
AND CONFLICTS
Nina Bonderup Dohn & Lillian Buus

Vignette
Peter, the teacher of the BA-level problem-based learning course,
sighed as he read through the Facebook postings entered by his
students during the last 10 hours. Where were the theoretical
questions and methodological issues he had been expecting? Once
again, the students had posted links to YouTube videos with short
comments along the lines of ‘Check this out – highly relevant
for our course’. But no elaborations were supplied on how the
videos were relevant much less how they could be analysed and
discussed through the theoretical lenses of the course. Obvious re-
joinders from some of the course readings seemed to be completely
overlooked by the students. Even worse, a lot of the postings never
got beyond practicalities such as length requirements or meeting
schedules. Why didn’t the students make use of this opportuni-
ty to build knowledge together, and to reflect and discuss with
each other and with him in this safe and familiar setting? He
had even promised them unlimited supervision as long as they
interacted with each other, too. How come they weren’t all wild
at the keys asking all the questions they had never had answered
before?? Where were their academic ambitions?

235
Introduction
The vignette is an adapted narrative version of the experience of one of
the teachers in the cases to be presented in this article. We shall argue
that the experience is typical for the tensions and frustrations in which
one may become caught up when one introduces Web 2.0 activities into
educational settings. The tensions arise, we argue, because the informal
practices of the former, with internal goals of participation, communica-
tion, and knowledge- sharing for their own sake, are subsumed under the
external goals and expectations of education concerning the acquisition
of knowledge and competence. This assumption leads to a clash in prac-
tice between, on the one side, the norms and logic of Web 2.0 activities,
and on the other hand, the educational logic of the course in which he
is participating (N. Dohn, 2009; N. B. Dohn & Johnsen, 2009). In the
vignette, this clash is actualized as the conflict between knowledge shar-
ing ‘in the way of Facebook’ and knowledge building ‘in the way of the
educational system’. ‘The way of Facebook’ is here characterized by the
sharing of links and information, the making of everyday comments, and
sense making through patchworking of resources. ‘The way of the educa-
tional system’, on the other hand, is characterized by theoretical analysis,
methodological reflections, and critical discussion of cases and perspec-
tives. The vignette thus illustrates that teachers who employ Web 2.0
activities in their teaching may face unexpected challenges due to the in-
herent tensions between the educational and the Web 2.0 practice logics.
The structure of the article is as follows: First, we identify a number of
pedagogical design issues for Web 2.0-mediated PBL activities. Then we
present the method and design of the study and report our findings. In
the final section we discuss to what extent the project was a success as
concerns the development of viable ways of making use of Web 2.0-me-
diated activities in support of a PBL approach and explain the difficulties
experienced by the teachers theoretically.

Pedagogical design issues in Web 2.0-mediated PBL activities

We understand ‘Web 2.0’ from a practice perspective as a set of activities
or practices characterized by

236
 »»a high degree of interactive multiway communication between
users;

»»‘bottom-up’ production and transformation of content;

»»renunciation of copyright and distributive authorship; and

»»continuous use and reuse of material across contexts (Dohn,

2009).

There are obvious learning potentials in activities centred on the users’ gen-
eration and use of content in and across learning contexts. The work of Scar-
damalia and Bereiter on knowledge building communities shows this con-
clusively (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994, 2006). In a broader perspective,
the potentials involved in student-centred context-crossing have also been
documented by other pedagogical approaches, including PBL and POP19
pedagogy based in face-to-face learning settings (Boud & Feletti, 1997;
Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2002; Fogarty, 1998; Gijselaers & Wilkerson,
1996; Illeris, 2004)there are many possible forms that a curriculum and
process for teaching and learning might take and still be compatible with
this definition. This book explores these forms in six parts with 33 chap-
ters, beginning with an introductory chapter, \”Changing Problem-Based
Learning. Introduction to the Second Edition\” (D. Boud and G.I. Felet-
ti and portfolio pedagogy (Dysthe & Engelsen, 2004; Klenowski, 2002).
Context-crossing is not a defining characteristic of these approaches as it
is of Web 2.0 practices. However, POP pedagogy has a central focus on
‘problems’ as opposed to curricula. As students pursue their problems,
they are led across different subject domains and working/learning con-
texts, often traversing borders between school and other life practices on
the way. Thus, context-crossing in practice becomes an important feature
of many of the students’ projects and tasks in POP. Similarly, portfolio
pedagogy focuses on a multitude of diverse tasks and on the development
of corresponding competencies. The range of tasks also often leads stu-
dents to a high degree of context-crossing.

19 Problem-oriented project pedagogy

237
 The significance that context-crossi teaching and learning within
PBL settings. Conversely, the bottom-up, many-to-many communicative
practices of Web 2.0, focused on production and use of content rather
than reproduction and acquisition of it (Dohn 2009), concur with the
defining characteristics of PBL, i.e., that students are active in producing
knowledge through a collaborative engagement with problems (Glud,
Buus, Ryberg, Georgsen, & Davidsen, 2010; Ryberg, Glud, Buus, &
Georgsen, 2010). More specifically, Web 2.0 activities provide potentials
for PBL through making possible

»»the organization of flexible learning across formal and informal

settings;

»»the development of competences necessary for participating in

contemporary society;

»»specific pedagogical advantages connected to learners’ formula-

tion and discussion of content issues; and

»»motivational benefits of learner involvement (Dohn, 2010).

However, though these potentials are clear from a theoretical point of

view, there exists only a limited amount of research into viable ways of re-
alizing them in practice. Such research is necessary, because the concrete
implementation of Web 2.0 activities in PBL settings raises a number
of pedagogical design issues, the investigation of which is paramount to
the question of success versus failure of Web 2.0-mediated PBL activities
in general. These design issues relate to the tension between the student
initiative and control of the bottom-up approach of Web 2.0 and the
teacher initiative and control of educational settings (Ryberg et al., 2010,
cf. below). Among these design issues, the following are central:

»»Which role should Web 2.0 activities have in the overall PBL
framework? Should they, e.g., be used to generate ideas for prob-
lems to work on, for establishing reflective spaces for students,
for dialogue with relevant parties outside the educational setting,

238
 for contact between students and teacher, or something else?

»»How does the teacher act as a facilitator at different stages in the

Web 2.0-mediated PBL activities? How does she balance her au-
thoritative and participative roles, e.g., leading, scaffolding, and
commenting on a par with the students?

»»How are off-task Web 2.0 communications handled in the PBL

setting (e.g., as part of or as interruptive to the problem-centred
learning activities?) and what are adequate teacher roles and re-
sponses in this context?

»»How can teacher competences be developed to support teachers

in designing and initiating adequate Web 2.0-mediated PBL ac-
tivities?

The current article provides a contribution to the discussion of these is-

sues by presenting three concrete examples of dealing with them in prac-
tice.

The methodological approach

In order to investigate these issues, an action research project was initi-
ated with teachers at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Aalborg University
(AAU). The action research project followed the approach of Interactive
Research (Svensson, Brulin, Ellström, & Widegren, 2002; Svensson &
Aagaard Nielsen, 2006), where a researcher and practitioners collaborate
in a joint learning process to initiate interventions in practice with the
double goal of producing new theoretical knowledge and of qualifying
practice.
In this article we report on three interventions, each involving the
researcher (the second author) and a practitioner. The practitioners each
taught a course on their own. Two of the interventions took place in the
same course and thus involved the same practitioner.
The degree to which the researcher and practitioners realized the
Interactive Research approach was very different for the two courses. In
the first one (Case 1), the researcher participated very actively in the ped-

239
agogical and technological facilitation of the Web 2.0-mediated activities.
She also attended all the lectures held by the teacher and had conversa-
tional interviews with her about the progress of the activities. Thus, the
teacher and researcher developed the project by means of co-research and
co-participation to a high degree. In the other course, involving two cases
(Case 2 and 3), the researcher had many discussions with the teacher
prior to the course, but participated only in the first and last lecture. She
did not attend any of the many face-to-face learning activities in between
these lectures. She partook in the initiation of the Web 2.0-mediated ac-
tivities in both cases, but not in the facilitation of them as they unfolded.
The differences were due partly to differences between the teachers as to
the degree of technological and pedagogical facilitation they wanted and
partly to differences in the concrete activities undertaken.
The project was initiated by a kick-off workshop in Spring 2011, fol-
lowed by the development of the three case interventions. The workshop
was held utilizing the Collaborative E-learning Design (CoED) method
(see Ryberg, this volume).
On its own, the CoED method does not test the design and sus-
tainability of the results gained in the workshop, nor does it facilitate the
implementation process. From other projects using the method it has
become increasingly clear that the method needs to be supplemented on
these points in order for it to support the development of viable course/
learning designs. Thus, quite generally, an extension of the CoED meth-
od is called for (Buus, 2012). Therefore, the teachers were scaffolded in
further developing their ideas from the CoED workshop and transform-
ing them to actual learning practice.

The study further comprises data conducted by individual interviews

with the teachers in order to get a more formal documentation of their
perspective on initiating and participating in Web 2.0-mediated educa-
tional activities. Finally, surveys have been administered to students in
the second and third cases. Students in the first case were invited to a
focus group interview, but no one signed up for it.

240
 Fig. 1. The steps in the action research project

Course of events

The setting: PBL at Aalborg University

Educational programmes at Aalborg University all conform to a
general PBL model, where 50 percent of the work students are expect-
ed to perform during a semester (counted in ECTS) is assigned course
work and 50 percent is project work undertaken in groups. In the project
work, students exert a high degree of control: they define the problem
on which they work, explore, negotiate, and draw up a solution to it.
In contrast, the teachers are the prime locus of control in the courses.
The notion of control is understood with reference to Ryberg’s model
that specifies three dimensions regarding PBL, namely the problem, the
work process, and the solution in the continuum between teacher control
and learner/participant control (Ryberg et al., 2010; Ryberg, Koottatep,
Pengchai, & Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2006).
However, many teachers try to engage students and facilitate their
learning through implementing more traditional and restricted (in terms

241
of time and student work) PBL activities (Boud & Feletti, 1997; Gijse-
laers & Wilkerson, 1996)there are many possible forms that a curriculum
and process for teaching and learning might take and still be compati-
ble with this definition. This book explores these forms in six parts with
33 chapters, beginning with an introductory chapter, \”Changing Prob-
lem-Based Learning. Introduction to the Second Edition\” (D. Boud
and G.I. Feletti as well as Active Learning activities (Bonwell & Eison,
1991; Chickering, Gamson, Poulsen, & Johnson Foundation, Racine,
1987) within their course settings. Thus, educational programmes at
Aalborg University may be said to have PBL activities at two different
levels, nested within each other. The top level is the overall structure of
the educational programmes where the courses are intended to supply
thematic overviews, theoretical input, and inspiration for topics for the
group projects. The lower level is then comprised of PBL activities within
the courses.
The primary focus of the study was PBL and Active Learning activ-
ities at the lower level, i.e., in relation to the courses. The aim thus was
to investigate how Web 2.0-mediated activities might be implemented to
enhance such course-related learning activities.

The CoED workshop

In keeping with the primary focus of the project, the overall aim of the
CoED workshop was to further teacher awareness of Web 2.0-mediated
activities and to let the teachers collaboratively develop ideas for how
Web 2.0-mediated learning activities can be integrated into course-re-
lated PBL settings. Approximately all the 160 teachers at the Faculty of
Social Sciences were invited to participate in the workshop and made
aware of the possibility of collaborating with the second author on im-
plementing Web 2.0-mediated learning activities in their courses after
the workshop. It was stressed that participation in the workshop did not
involve a commitment to activities afterward.
Twelve out of the 160 teachers signed up for the workshop, but only
seven actually attended it. Two course designs were developed at the
workshop. The designs concerned an existing course, taught by two of
the participating teachers. However, these two teachers decided not to
proceed with implementing the designs in collaboration with the sec-

242
ond author. Instead, three other teachers volunteered to participate in the
next steps of the project. Together with the second author they developed
(in all) four cases, with inspiration from the workshop. However, only
three of these four cases made use of Web 2.0-mediated activities to sup-
port PBL. In the fourth case Web 2.0 tools were used in a course design,
which integrated Active Learning activities but was not problem based.
Since the focus of this article is on Web 2.0-mediated learning activities
to support PBL, we restrict ourselves to discussing the other three cases.

The three cases

The three cases all took place in a blended learning environment where
web-based tools and e-learning platforms are used to complement lec-
tures. Two of them involve applying PBL in course work by integrating
narrative ‘real-world’ or ‘real-world-like’ problems as vital aspects of the
courses. The students were required to collaborate in groups, discuss, ne-
gotiate, and explore to find solutions to problems.
The first case (Case 1) was implemented in a course involving ap-
proximately 140 students divided into two teams for lectures. The course
ended with a two-day workshop where all the students were present in
a joint session. Here, they worked in groups on the same case to which
they had to apply different theories. The case consisted of integrating a
blog into the lectures to support the students in collaborating and sharing
work connected to the lecture content. Before each lecture, the teacher
inserted into the blog questions concerning theoretical perspectives to
be presented at the lecture. During the lecture, she then presented a case
for the students to discuss. The students discussed in small groups and
posted their comments in the blog. Afterwards, they were supposed to
comment on or question the postings of all the other groups. With this
activity, the teacher intended to help the students in tying the theoretical
perspectives of the course to concrete cases and to promote reflections
and discussions. This was done to practice a collaborative approach and
support the students in developing an understanding of the potentials of
knowledge sharing with an eye to the final two-day workshop. Here, the
students had to contribute their different case analyses to a collaborative
platform. In doing so, the differences between the theoretical approaches
(and their practical implications) become perspicuous. Therefore, the col-

243
laboration in the case was potentially beneficial for all students.
The other two cases were both implemented in the same five-week
long, intensive master class course, finalised with a group report based on
analysis of collected data from a questionnaire. The students came with
many different cultural and educational backgrounds: the group num-
bered 76 students and two-thirds of them were international students
from approximately 20 different countries. Their knowledge of how to
work with PBL at AAU was therefore very limited.
In the first of the cases implemented in this course (Case 2), un-
limited supervision in relation to the group project within the course
was offered to the students, provided that the supervision took place in
the form of writing a blog/forum/group feature. A class vote was held to
decide which tool to use and the outcome was that a Facebook group was
established for supervision. Prerequisites for getting supervision from the
teacher were: 1) the students could only get supervision in the Facebook
group; and 2) at least one fellow student should try to answer or give
good ideas before the supervisor gave his feedback.
The teacher’s intention for the activity was to make students
aware that collaborating allows one to learn more than one can learn
alone and makes one contribute to delivering a better ‘product’.20
Furthermore, the teacher intended the students to experience the pres-
ence of the supervisor to a higher degree than in traditional supervision
settings. In their final project, the students were required to indicate how
many contributions they had made to the Facebook group, specified as
new postings and comments to others. Their degree of participation did
not count toward their final grade, though, since there was no foundation
for this in the study regulations.
Case 3 consisted in introducing the students to two Web 2.0 tools
for sharing and collaboration, which would support their collaborative
work both in relation to the group project within the course and to their
semester project work (cf. the section on PBL at Aalborg University,
above). The second author gave a short presentation on Web 2.0 tools
and illustrated how they could be used by students in educational set-
tings. The tools presented were Diigo (a social bookmarking tool) and

20 Product’ here refers to the group project.

244
Zotero (a social reference tool). By introducing these tools, the teacher’s
intent was to make students aware of their practical potentials, individ-
ually in relation to their project as well as collaboratively in relation to
sharing and networking as a group.

Findings from the study

In all of the three cases, the overall intention was to make students share
knowledge and collaborate more while becoming aware of the benefits
for them in doing so. At the same time, the teachers wanted to support
students in developing the practice of using each other to scaffold learn-
ing.
Concerning the first case, the teacher reports that the blog activities
made the students more willing to present to each other and to share
among each other. This is illustrated by the fact that they, at the end
of the final two-day workshop, suggested that each group should place
its case reflections in the common blog for the teacher to comment on.
The aim was to share their understandings of the case and get comments
with an eye to the exam later on. The teacher agreed, though she had not
initially planned such a follow-up activity, and set a deadline for the end
of the week. In the end, all groups posted their material and the teacher
commented.
Further, the teacher emphasizes that it is generally important for her
during class to strike a balance between lecturing and student activity.
She found that integrating the blog and the activities around the blog
to some extent made teaching ’easier’ because the students became very
engaged and because the blog activities resulted in an appropriate bal-
ance between her lectures and the students’ collaboration and knowledge
sharing. However, she found it difficult to find a good way to evaluate
the students’ work on the blog. Any evaluation had to be done within
the timeframe of the lecture, as there were no course activities planned
between lectures. Given such time restrictions, she was unsure whether
to comment on all of the blog posts in full or to take out essential state-
ments (adequate and inadequate) from some of them and discuss these
statements in greater depth. She does not find that ‘a really good method’
was established, and so considers the evaluation method an issue to be
worked on in the next iteration.

245
 In addition to the time restrictions, the teacher mentions the tech-
nology setup as a barrier for implementing the activity. She was very
pleased to have a more technically competent person (the second author)
to scaffold her in this respect. In the course of the study, she acquired
some skill in setting up the blog for the lectures, but she was for instance
not able to set up the divided access for the two groups of students. In a
reflective talk with the second author, she mentioned the possibility that
the secretary (who is a super user) might in the future set up the divided
access. This suggestion is not unproblematic since it would mean an extra
workload for the given secretary, assigned to her not on the basis of her
formal duties, but solely on the basis of her competences.
As regards the second case, the teacher reports that the students used
the Facebook group in a somewhat more private matter than he had ex-
pected. They made hardly any use of the opportunity to be reflective, crit-
ical, or ask methodological or theoretical questions related to their course
project. They primarily shared links and videos related to course topics,
but without reflections on the significance of the links and videos, i.e., on
why and how they were related to the topics. Students did not themselves
manage to attain the sufficient academic level in their questions and dia-
logue. However, the teacher stresses in the interview that he nonetheless
thinks he succeeded in being closer and more visible to the students in
the Facebook supervision than under normal supervisory circumstances.
Following this, he elaborates on how he thinks Web 2.0-mediated activ-
ities might be developed to support supervision. He reports that in the
next iteration of the case he plans to supplement student input with some
methodological and theoretical questions posted by himself as teacher
in order to kickstart a more appropriate learning dialogue. In a sense,
of course, one should be able to evaluate the value of offering unlimited
supervision through the quality of the students’ project reports. Here, the
teacher did not experience any noticeable difference as compared to re-
ports produced by students in the past, i.e., no conspicuous improvement
or degradation.
As a side effect of the case, the teacher reports having envisaged that
students would become aware of the benefits they might draw from col-
laboration, especially considering their diverse educational and cultural
backgrounds. This side effect seems to have continued for a while, at

246
least to some extent, since the students kept their Facebook group going
after the course ended and used it for sharing for some time afterwards.
One student suggested changing the name of the group from the current
one, which refers to the course, to one that denoted this specific group of
students who could then use the group for the full length of their studies.
No one reacted to this, however, and the activity in the group subsided
after a couple of months. The students never got beyond posting about
practical issues and relevant links; no critical reflections or dialogue de-
veloped.
The teacher mentions that he considers making participation in
knowledge sharing in an activity such as Case 2 a formal requirement
in the study regulation in order to let participation count towards the
students’ grades. This, he points out, would motivate students more to-
wards participating and thus increase their possibilities of experiencing
the benefits of collaboration.
Finally, the teacher reflects on how he thinks Case 2 fits into and
supports PBL at AAU. He says that the course in question is based on
a ‘PBL back to basics’ approach because students deal with a real-world
company case in which real world issues have to be solved. The students
therefore have a chance of actually influencing the company. More spe-
cifically, they may supply the company with a business analysis that may
be integrated in the company. In this context, Facebook’s (social) network
dimension is especially interesting because it enables the students to share
and collaborate not only in small groups of 4-5 people but across the
whole group of students.
As concerns the parallel activity, Case 3, which was kicked off in the
first lecture, the student survey revealed that only one student had adopt-
ed Zotero (the recommended reference tool). He had done so because of
the benefits the tool held for him individually, with regard to time saved
in making reference lists and footnotes and the possibility of avoiding
spelling mistakes. No one adopted Diigo. Among the reasons listed for
not adopting the Web 2.0 tools, the following were the most salient:

»»the need to balance the time involved in adopting new systems

vs. the time required for project and group work;

247
 »»user friendliness; and

»»limited notion of the benefits in using the tool.

Finally, it should be noted that both teachers expressed satisfaction with

having a second person with a technical and pedagogical background to
scaffold, share, explore, and elaborate on their implementation of the
Web 2.0-mediated activities in collaboration with them. They felt that
this gave them the possibility of expressing and discussing their thoughts
and reflections.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this section we discuss the findings in relation to two questions: 1)
Were the cases successful in developing viable ways of making use of Web
2.0-mediated activities in support of a PBL approach? 2) How can we
explain the difficulties which the teachers experienced in establishing an
adequate learning dialogue within the Web 2.0-mediated activities?
Starting with question 1), the study has succeeded in producing vi-
able, though not tension-free, new designs for learning that utilize Web
2.0 as pedagogical tools within the framework of PBL. Both Case 1 and
Case 2 thus are successful with regard to the facilitation of student activ-
ity in and/or between lectures and – as evaluated by the teachers in the
interviews – with regard to the initialization of practices where students
share knowledge and collaborate with each other, at least to some degree.
More specifically, the first case shows that it is possible within a concrete
course setting to strike a balance between the formal requirements of the
educational context and the informal communicative practices of Web
2.0. The teacher reports that she feels she succeeded in delegating much
of the responsibility for learning and communicating about course con-
tent to the students. The blog constituted a space for reflections among
students, supported to some extent by the teacher’s evaluative comments
in the lectures (during the course) and in writing (after the final two-
day workshop). The activity established a space for knowledge sharing
and collaboration, which the students appreciated to the degree that they
took the initiative to continue the knowledge sharing beyond the final
workshop. Likewise, Case 2 was successful in establishing a beginning

248
practice of information sharing between the students, even if it primarily
concerned practical issues and links.
For both cases, however, the interaction was more distributive than
collaborative in character. None of the students collaborated about edu-
cational matters as much as the teachers wanted them to. The role of the
teacher is important here. Within the existing PBL settings, teachers have
a more authoritative and dialogue initiating role than students and this
has implications for student expectations and actions. They expect teach-
ers to supply comments and evaluations rather than their fellow students.
Conversely, they are hesitant about supplying comments themselves. To
change this, the teacher has to be more explicit about what s/he expects
from the students and facilitate their collaboration to a greater degree.
The necessity of teacher facilitation of student activities if participa-
tion is to be ensured is also indicated by the outcome of the third case.
Here, the teacher had decided beforehand that the Web 2.0 tools should
be presented during class, but that he would not facilitate their adoption
by the students. Case 3 was therefore intended as a purely student-based
activity, and the students could choose not to adopt any of the tools.
This was indeed what happened for nearly all students, even though they
report that they could see the advantages of the tools.
A further result concerns the role of the second author in providing
the technical support needed to realize the Web 2.0-mediated learning
activities. On the one hand, the current study clearly indicates that tech-
nical issues may be a significant barrier to the development of teacher
competences within the design of Web 2.0-mediated learning activities.
As discussed above, the teacher in Case 1 was dependent on the technical
support of the second author for carrying out the blog activity and it
would most probably have been aborted had it not been for this support.
On the other hand, the study also shows by example that it is possible to
go quite a long way towards empowering teachers within the technologi-
cal-pedagogical realm if this is done through close collaboration between
the teacher and a technical-pedagogical facilitator. If institutions wish to
upgrade teacher competences within Web 2.0-mediated learning (and in
general, by analogy, within ICT-mediated learning), indications are that
such collaboration projects might be a worthwhile way to go, even if they
are somewhat demanding in terms of resources. If anything, the study

249
shows that teachers need even more scaffolding than was supplied here.
Moving on to question 2), the data from the study reveal several
instances of tensions in relation to the facilitation of what the teachers
deem an adequate learning dialogue within the Web 2.0-mediated activ-
ities. One such instance (Case 2), instance A, is the teacher’s frustration
over the lack of academic level of the posts and over the fact that students
communicated in a more informal and private manner than he found ap-
propriate in a course context. A second instance, instance B, is displayed
in the difficulties (Case 1) which the teacher experienced in finding an
evaluation format for the blog postings. A third instance (Case 2), in-
stance C, also concerned with evaluation, shows up in relation to the
teacher’s considerations of changing the study regulations so that student
participation in Web 2.0-mediated learning activities would count to-
wards the students’ grades. These instances can be explained theoretically
by drawing on earlier work by the first author (Dohn 2009; Dohn &
Johnsen, 2009). Here, the general claim is made that utilizing Web 2.0
activities for educational purposes leads to a) inherent theoretical ten-
sions in implicit views of knowledge and learning, and b) practical chal-
lenges regarding a number of pedagogical issues, including collaboration,
evaluation, and the general aim and status of the material produced by
students.
Briefly, the argument is that inherent in Web 2.0 activities there is a
view of learning as participation and of knowledge as situated doing and/
or as a distributed trait of a system (dependent on whether one takes a
process or product perspective on Web 2.0). On the other hand, educa-
tional practices implicitly build on a view of knowledge as a ‘something’
(an entity, state, disposition, ability, or the like) and of learning as the
acquisition by the individual of this ‘something’. In practice Web 2.0 and
education, respectively, incorporate the competing metaphors of learn-
ing and knowledge, which has been identified previously as at play in
divergent theoretical views on learning (Sfard, 1998). The point is here
basically the Bourdieuan one: the practice logic of the practices in which
we participate is incorporated into our habitus (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990,
2000). As Bourdieu has shown, incorporation into the habitus involves
developing a sense of what are right and wrong ways of behaving – a sense
which is very often not explicitly articulated, but which shows up as a

250
bodily ‘gut feel’ of how to proceed and as an emotional response when
implicit expectations are violated.
In the narrative of the vignette, which elaborates on instance A, this
point is illustrated by the teacher reacting to the violation of educational
norms almost as if it were an offence. The teacher’s attempt to design
an innovative learning activity centred on student contributions in a fa-
miliar environment is made on the basis of the expectations of the edu-
cational system concerning which types and modes of communications
are deemed appropriate. However, he has not fully acknowledged this
foundation for his attempt and therefore he is not aware of the con-
straints and interpretation frames these expectations entail. He implicitly
expects the students to take the educational norms for granted, too, and
therefore interprets their Facebook postings as a lack of academic focus
and ambition within the self-evident norms of educational practice. For
this reason, his feelings are also somewhat hurt. In our experience, this is
a very common response.
Actually, however, when one considers the informal nature of com-
munication on Facebook in general, it is not surprising that students tend
to carry over this tone of voice to a course group established within this
overall setting. A similar tendency is reported in Odell, Nevin, Roberts,
Willimas, and Remenyi (2008)”page”:”231-239”,”abstract”:”This paper
describes the initial stage of a one-year research project on the potential
value of Facebook as a social networking tool within Higher Education.
The project is being run within the School of Architecture and the Visual
Arts (AVA. Here, the collision between the informal, equality-based tone
of friendship common on Facebook and the asymmetrical relationship
between instructor and students resulted in student behaviour that, from
the perspective of the instructor (incorporating the educational norms),
was highly inappropriate in terms of its degree of intimacy.
It is interesting to note that the teacher decided to remedy the al-
leged lack of academic decorum level in future iterations by introducing
more formal teacher-led discussions into the informal settings. This rem-
edy, as argued by Hemmi, Bayne, and Land (2009), amounts to a schol-
arly ‘reining in’ and ‘taming’ of ‘risky’ practices in contradiction to the
inherent values of the Web 2.0 practices. Hemmi et al. report analogue
ways of ‘reigning in’ ‘risky’ blog practices. Their studies showed a strong

251
inclination on the part of both teachers and students to utilize blogs as
a relatively conventional learning tool to engage in critical and reflective
dialogue. At the same time, they provide illustrative interview comments
which indicate that both parties found that this was not really a ‘Web 2.0
type of use of blogs’ (teacher comment, p. 24). Some students quite ex-
plicitly reported being conscious that their blog posts had to conform to
what the teachers would expect of a ‘learner’ in the given context (p. 25),
thus articulating the inherent tensions between the Web 2.0 ‘bottom-up’
production of meaning and the formal educational requirements.
Further tensions are exhibited in instance B where the teacher finds
it difficult to establish an adequate evaluation format for the blog post-
ings. We interpret her worry here as a result of the practice logic of the
educational system which posits 1) student inputs as documentation of
the degree to which they have acquired an understanding, viewed as an
object, and 2) her as the authority who has to endorse or reject student
inputs. In contrast, within the practice logic of Web 2.0, student input
is posited, not as documentation, but as participation in the ongoing
process of knowledge creation. Endorsement consists of the use of blog
postings by the involved participants (not just the teacher). It should be
pointed out that if she in future iterations succeeds in finding an evalua-
tion format that fits the Web 2.0 ideals (e.g., by involving fellow students
more in the endorsement/rejection of input), she has to carefully think
through the alignment between this evaluation format and the learning
objectives and learning activities of the course. Otherwise the risk is great
that she – and the students – will feel that her teaching is out of balance
and the evaluation format of the blog activity misaligned with the learn-
ing objectives of the course and with the final course exam.
Instance B has complements in several examples in the literature.
Thus, Lund and Smørdal (2006) discuss the role of the teacher in a wiki
and more specifically show how difficult it is for the teacher to find her
place as provider of feedback and evaluation in the bottom-up environ-
ment of a wiki. Somewhat inadvertently, as analysed in Dohn (2009),
the articles by Farmer, Yue, and Brooks (2008) and Ducate and Lomicka
(2008) make conflicts apparent between evaluations of blog posts made
from a Web 2.0 participative position and from a course-content focused
one. In a similar vein, Bruns and Humphreys (2005) point to tensions

252
concerning quality criteria by noting that student entries in a course wiki,
accepted within the course, were in need of instructor correction before
being made publicly available. Conversely, Hemmi et al. document a
common concern among students about how to attribute authorship to
wiki contributions in order to be ‘visible’ as participants for assessment
purposes (Hemmi et al., 2009). Naismith et al. correspondingly point
out that true collaboration in the spirit of Web 2.0 is at cross-purposes
with educational practices that require individual assessment and that,
therefore, one as teacher and as institution sends ‘mixed messages about
what is valued’ (Naismith, Lee, & Pilkington, 2011, p. 241).
Instance C involves a clear risk of sending precisely such a ‘mixed
message’ about the value of student postings if the study regulations are
changed in accordance with the teacher’s suggestion so that student par-
ticipation would count towards the students’ grades. From a Web 2.0
point of view, participation should be bottom-up, motivated by the ex-
perienced value of the contributions and the process of producing them,
and evaluated from within the activity itself in accordance with this ex-
perienced value. The teacher’s wish to use the force of the educational
system to ‘instantiate’ a Web 2.0 activity is therefore at cross-purposes
with the activity itself. The risk is great that students in consequence will
contribute with postings, not because they see the value of them, but be-
cause they have to, and that their experience of compulsion will actually
diminish the likelihood for them of having positive experiences of collab-
oration and knowledge sharing (Ryan & Deci, 2000).
Summing up, the answer to question 2 is that the difficulties experi-
enced by the teachers may be explained as examples of the concrete prac-
tical challenges, which may result when one introduces Web 2.0 activities
into educational settings and thus implements the practice logic of the
former within the incompatible practice logic of the latter. It is, however,
very clear from the data that the teachers do not themselves think of these
issues as practical realizations of theoretical tensions inherent in Web
2.0-mediated educational activities. Instead, they see them as the result of
failures on the part of the agents involved in the activities, either failures
on their part as teachers to find ‘a really good method’ for the activities,
or failures on the part of the students to take up the activities in adequate
ways. This is an indication that an important focus area of future research

253
into educational development with Web 2.0 should be the empowerment
of teachers to deal with the inherent tensions and challenges, not least by
raising teacher awareness of their existence. The current study points out
the following key questions for such research:

»»Develop teacher awareness of the theoretical tensions involved in

Web 2.0-mediated educational activities and their implications
in practice;

»»Develop learning objectives that accommodate both educational

requirements and the view of knowledge and learning inherent
in Web 2.0 activities;

»»Create alignment among learning objectives, learning activities,

and evaluation formats;

»»Develop teacher roles and participation forms adequate for these

learning objectives and activities; and

»»Develop teacher competences so that teachers can themselves

design pedagogical Web 2.0-mediated activities and can handle
them technologically, pedagogically, and communicatively.

In conclusion, the current study has documented the development of

viable ways of making use of Web 2.0-mediated activities in support of a
PBL approach (question 1). Thus, the two cases provide existence proof
that Web 2.0 activities may contribute constructively and productive-
ly to learning within a PBL perspective. More specifically, they provide
examples of how to deal with the abovementioned pedagogical design
issues facing Web 2.0-mediated PBL activities. However, the study also
documented several difficulties that arose in the process, not least for the
teachers whose expectations concerning the Web 2.0-mediated learning
activities were disappointed on certain points. These disappointments
have been analysed as the result of the inherent theoretical tensions that
are implemented when Web 2.0 activities are utilized within educational
settings (question 2).

254
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258
GUIDING TOWARDS GENUINE
PARTICIPATION – LANGUAGE
LEARNING AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Leena Kuure, Tiina Keisanen & Maritta Riekki

Introduction
In August 2010, a multifunction centre was opened in a residential area
of a city in Northern Finland joining under the same roof a school, a
kindergarten, youth services and a library. The opening had been pre-
ceded by a lengthy planning and construction process, accompanied by
decision making and discussions on various forums. As the major user
group of the building had been envisioned to be school children, an im-
portant theme in the discussion concerned pedagogic innovations, es-
pecially in relation to new technologies. The design of the building, the
facilities, and the technological solutions were supposed to contribute
to the users’ active citizenship, community participation, and collabo-
rative learning. The centre, thus, constituted a fruitful case environment
for a multidisciplinary research group, which examined ‘everyday life in
technology-rich neo-communities’ in a longitudinal research project21
focusing on the topic from children’s and young people’s perspective.
Previous research and results from the first stages of the project had
suggested that ‘genuine participation’ was still a far distant goal (see Hart,
1992, 1997; Chawla, 2002; Chawla & Heft, 2002). Genuine participa-
tion is here understood as opportunities or means that children have for
active agency in daily decision making concerning the activities that their

21 CHILDeLINE - The potential of a technology-rich environment in enabling children's

genuine participation

259
lives involve. Such participation may be used in assisting and advancing
positive change in the current state of affairs (Hart, 1997; Middleton,
1998). Even if children have been treated as participants in research and
design projects for some time, according to the recommendations of vari-
ous strategies and guidelines, research has shown that the criteria for gen-
uine participation have seldom been met (Halkola et al., 2012). Likewise,
in the tradition of language teaching, even in the modern one, children
are typically positioned as ‘learners’, and not as people who, actually, may
already have strong linguistic and communicative resources due to their
free-time interests and contacts with foreign languages (see Benson &
Reinders, 2011). Thus, our aim here is to give value to children’s own
agency and to promote a view where school-driven learning is but one
way in which learning may take place.
This chapter presents the first intervention by the research group in
the spring of 2011, focusing on children’s genuine participation at the
multifunction centre. The participants were Finnish school children (11–
13 years of age), and the organizing team including researchers, teachers,
and language students. The study examines how the students were guided
in planning and implementing a problem-based, participatory process
and what the outcome of the process was. The special challenges in the
intervention were instigating genuine participation and supporting the
language students, i.e., prospective teachers, in acquiring new practices as
guides in such projects.

Research Context, Methodological Choices and Data

The intervention that took place in the spring of 2011 was tied to a uni-
versity course called Language Learning and New Technologies (LLNT).
The course is organized every year with different foci and themes. As such,
the course functions as a boundary object (Star & Griesemer, 1989) in a
multilayered process, joining together the worlds of school children, their
teachers, language students at the university (some of whom are prospec-
tive language teachers), as well as university teachers and researchers.22
This time the approach was problem based in creating a language learn-

22 The multilayered pedagogic model for the course has been discussed in more detail in Koivis-
toinen & Kuure (2010).

260
ing project during which the students were engaged in designing and
carrying out different types of participatory workshops for children.
According to Crabtree (2003, p. 132), participatory design can be
seen as an approach to systems design that emerged from Scandinavia
from the early 1970s. Its primary strategy consists of a commitment to
workplace democracy, which translates into the direct and active partic-
ipation of workers in the design process in the effort to enhance rather
than destroy their skills and quality of life. Schuler and Namioka (1993,
p. 73) suggest that participatory design is a learning process in which
designers and users learn from each other. We are drawing upon a broad
notion of problem-based learning as an evolving, collaborative process
among participants with varying amounts of expertise in a variety of
fields, in relation to technology, languages, literacy practices, and a range
of interest fields among others (e.g., Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989;
Brown & Duguid, 2002; Engeström, 1987, 1999, 2001; Engeström &
Middleton, 1998; Hakkarainen, Lipponen, & Järvelä, 2001; Lave &
Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998).
Language and literacy learning are here seen as a social-interactive
process (e.g., Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004), taking place in a nex-
us of practice of a variety of situated actions (e.g., play, reading, writing,
and design as in Wohlwend, 2008). Technologies are an integral part of
our everyday life and increasingly utilized in education (e.g., Luukka
et al., 2008; Blin, 2004; Dooly, 2009; Kukulska-Hulme, 2009). Video
and Internet games, for example, may provide authentic learning envi-
ronments for learning efficient team work, language, interactional prac-
tices, and even routines that require persistent and tedious repetition
(see, e.g., Arnseth, 2006; Gee, 2003, 2008; Kuure & McCambridge,
2007; Piirainen-Marsh & Tainio, 2009). Multimodal media bring their
own challenges for developing literacies. They offer a channel for partic-
ipating in multilingual and multicultural communities, and negotiating
different identities, roles and relationships with the cultures involved
(Lankshear & Knobel, 2006). These are issues of central concern in the
LLNT course: Potential language teachers of tomorrow are encouraged
to challenge their concepts of language learning and envision possible
directions for language teaching in a technology-rich world (see Schön,
1987).

261
 On the organising team, there were a total of 19 members: 13 stu-
dents (advanced level, English Philology, 6 male and 7 female), the teach-
er of the LLNT course, and five other members of the multidisciplinary
research group (two from languages and three from information pro-
cessing science). Additionally, there were two researchers participating
certain phases of the work related to the use of near-field communication
(NFC) technology in mobile devices. Before the course started, issues of
research ethics had been clarified (see, e.g., Ackerman et al., 2003; Thom-
as & O’Kane, 1998) and contacts with the school established.
At the beginning of the course, the students were first introduced to
the principles of participatory design and the project goals. After a period
of preparation and project planning, the students started the activities
with children during a ‘theme week’ at the school with four participatory
workshops with children (Photoscreen, Translate a Song, Write a Story, and
Touch and Learn). After the theme week, the students used some time
creating concepts for the future, arising from the work done (their own
brainstorming on future technologies of language learning and the expe-
riences at the school with children). They also prepared toolkits for future
use (guidance materials for reuse of the workshop activities) and wrote
their final reports, including an evaluation of the results.
In its long-term project, the multidisciplinary research group fol-
lows the strategic phases of nexus analysis, i.e., engaging, navigating, and
changing the nexus of practice, a network of linked practices (Scollon,
2001, p. 147). This involves advancing from one project to another as
a participatory venture, interacting with various participants, collecting
multiple types of data, and conducting analyses through different ap-
proaches (Scollon, 2001; Scollon & Scollon, 2004; see also Hine, 2000).
In doing nexus analysis, the researcher’s first task after identifying the
social issue and the relevant community for study is to enter into a zone
of identification with its members, i.e., to become acknowledged as a
legitimate member in the community as a researcher. After this engaging
phase, the researcher may then proceed to navigating for answers through
different kinds of methods and data (e.g., discourse and interaction anal-
ysis). Although triggering change is a conscious step in nexus analysis, the
researcher contributes to change in the community being studied when
entering it and participating in its practices. The current study is located

262
in the navigation phase, at the point when the researchers have already
stepped into the community being researched.
In this approach, social action is viewed as mediated (Scollon, 2001;
Wertsch, 1991, 1998; Vygotsky, 1978), as an intersection of historical
body (Nishida, 1958), interaction order (Goffman, 1963, 1971), and dis-
courses in place. Historical body refers to personal experience and culture.
Interaction order refers to the possible arrangements by which we form
relationships in social interactions. All social action is situated in real time
(Scollon & Scollon, 2003), and language is thus interpretable in its actual
context of use (discourses in place). This perspective on social action al-
lows an analysis of complex phenomena both on micro and macro levels.
The focus of the study is on the efforts by the teacher and the re-
searchers to contribute to the university students’ thinking and practices
in relation to the project goals. The study aims to answer the following
question: How did the teachers and the research group guide the univer-
sity students in the participatory design process, the aim of which was to
design language learning workshops for the future, instigating genuine
participation? Data were gathered throughout the preliminary phases,
the school project, and the student project (course) in various ways: vid-
eo recordings of in situ action, pictures, observation notes, interviews,
various digital information, and artefacts. Informed consent was asked
from every participant for the use of data.
The research process advanced through different stages. In the anal-
ysis, the notions of interaction order, historical body, and discourses
in place (Scollon, 2001; Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Scollon & Scollon,
2003) were used as heuristic tools to examine the nature of social action
at focus, here, the guidance of the university students. After identifying
the scope of the study, we arranged workshops delving into the data.
We made notes and discussed our initial observations, bearing in mind
the three intersecting aspects of social action. Mediated discourse anal-
ysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), combined with the multimodal analy-
sis of social interaction (Streeck, Goodwin, & LeBaron, 2011), forms
the methodological foundation for the study. In the following, the main
methods for facilitation during the LLNT course will be presented in
more detail and discussed in terms of their relationship with the trajecto-
ry of the project process.

263
Guiding towards Genuine Participation
The LLNT course drew upon the idea of problem-based learning, where
the course participants engage in complex project work in times with-
in the whole course community and in times in small groups or teams.
During the project the participants were exposed to real-life experiences
in authentic settings, in this case in designing and carrying out differ-
ent types of participatory workshops for school children. Collaborative
learning and learning by doing, also mediated by the use of educational
technology, were central pedagogical principles in the course. An import-
ant agenda to advance on the course has been to give the students an
opportunity to consider current technological change and its impact on
education in general, and on language teaching in particular in the com-
ing years. Such perspectivetaking is usually quite difficult for the student
teachers, for example, while coping with their ongoing pedagogic studies
and teaching practice in the classroom. Figure 1 below provides a rough
illustration of the phases of the LLNT course and the built in affordances
for guidance.

COURSE DESIGN

Choices concerning Students

pedagogic approach THEME WEEK
and technologies
applied PREPARATORY CONCEPTS,
WORK Students in charge EVALUATION
at the school
Contacts with school

Teacher
Overall course design, Instructions, guidance, participation in team work

Multidisciplinary research group

Participation in course design
A & B (languages): Presence in the face-to-face sessions, online and at the school
C, D & E (information processing science, participatory design): Online participation in brainstorming; presence in the
final wrap up, evaluation of concepts

Fig. 4. The LLNT course – the main phases and affordances for guidance

264
 As for the historical body of the teacher and the course, the multilay-
ered approach joining student teachers and schools (pupils and teachers)
had been developed and applied for several years already. The main objec-
tive of the course had been designed to provide the students an opportu-
nity to meet real-life challenges in language teaching and use technology
in its service, especially through learning projects that took into account
the children’s perspectives and interests and enhanced active language use
in collaborative interaction. The learning projects always involved work
at the participating schools and in the shared VLE. The courses always
started with a preparatory phase (orientation to what is coming and de-
signing the overall approach of the school project as well as preparing the
VLE for the purpose), proceeded to the implementation phase with the
schools (theme week in this case), and ended in a reflective course wrap-
up with project reports and evaluation (lessons learned).
During the course examined in this chapter, a further step was made
to enhance children’s genuine participation in the practices and decision
making in their daily lives, especially in relation to language learning.
In developing the course further with respect to this particular aim, the
teacher was able to draw upon the expertise of the multidisciplinary re-
search group. In the following, we will discuss various affordances in fa-
cilitating the developing understanding concerning the objectives of the
course, and how this understanding is observable in the way in which the
workshops are ultimately carried out.

Guidance through Course Design

Different types of support were given to the students in different stages
of the planning and implementation of the theme week workshops. An
essential method provided by the teacher to facilitate the problem-based
process among the students was course design with its technological and
pedagogical choices. The learning platform (Discendum Optima), on
which the virtual learning environment (VLE) was built, allowed the
teacher to assign to the participants user profiles that involved extensive
access rights and a wide range of tools for participant-driven collabora-
tion. Such technical choices aimed at breaking the traditional IRF pattern
(teacher-initiation, student response, teacher follow-up or feedback) for
the benefit of more varied collaborative interaction in co-construction of

265
knowledge, which has been shown to have an effect on the actual learn-
ing of students (e.g., Van Lier, 1996). In Scollonian (2001) terms, these
choices would potentially broaden the interaction among the participants.
In the beginning, the course workspace consisted of the basic struc-
tures and guideline documents only and the contents developed in the
course of the working process as a joint effort of the participants. The
pedagogic approach was based on the following phases during the course.

Preparatory phase
»»ORIENTATION (week 11) Introduction, Future workshop,
Case examples, Brainstorming, Basic research in the field

»»DEVELOPING IDEAS (week 12) Presentations on project

fields, Brainstorming activities for the workshops, Deciding on
the theme week process and responsibilities for teams

»»GETTING PREPARED (week 13) Finalizing the process,

Agreeing upon responsibilities

Theme week
»»WORKSHOPS AT THE SCHOOL (week 14) Languages and
language learning tomorrow

Concepts, evaluation
»»WRAP-UP (week 15) Lessons learned, Concepts, Toolkit

The phases above were launched in the face-to-face meetings during the
course, then continued as a collaborative process in the course VLE and
elaborated further within topic- or task-specific teams, which worked to
combine working modes according to their needs and possibilities (e.g.,
face-to-face meetings and/or work in the VLE, and distribution of labour
within the team). As was mentioned above, the course solution had been
developed for several years already, but this time the multidisciplinary
research group was there to give its support in trying to fine-tune the
course in a direction that would enhance genuine participation involving
all the participants more systematically than before. Prior to the begin-

266
ning of the course, contacts had also been made with the teachers in the
school. Furthermore, one of the researchers had visited the school and
interviewed the children about their opinions on language learning, tech-
nology, and what is fun at school. These ideas were introduced to the uni-
versity students in the initial phases of the project, in order to facilitate
the design process. This also provided one, though rather indirect, means
for the pupils to participate in the design of their own language learning
(see Druin & Solomon, 1996).

Guidance through Interaction

During the actual course, when the students entered the process, the sem-
inar meetings and the VLE provided the important sites for support in
reaching the project goals. The preparatory phase involved various activ-
ities that aimed at facilitating the students’ thinking regarding teaching
and learning in technology-rich everyday life. For example, they were
invited to envision (ubiquitous) technologies for interaction and com-
munication that might be there in the next few years’ time, providing op-
portunities for teaching and learning languages. This brainstorming was
initiated in a face-to-face seminar and continued online. The students
also collected resources and gave presentations on some thematic areas
relevant to the course.
In the VLE, the discussion lists and the teacher’s Process Log were
channels for mediating course aims as well as, for example, the principles
and practices of team work. The extract below illustrates how the teacher
communicates to the group her encouragement with regard the chosen
pedagogic approach.

Example 1. Process Log in the course VLE 15.3.2011 (Teacher)

I also said that people shouldn’t worry even if things sound vague
– everything will become clearer little by little. I’ve had projects
like this within the LLNT course many years and the students
are usually quite happy after the course – they say it was a bit
confusing to start with but in the course of the work they saw
that it was interesting and there was no trouble.

267
The teacher used the log for making the nature of the evolving project
clearer to the students. She wrote entries after each meeting summarizing
the issues raised, what had been agreed upon, and what kind of informa-
tion had been gained from different participants, e.g., from the school.
If we check the VLE statistics for the document, it appears, nevertheless,
that some of the students had only read the first entries in the log. Still,
there were various routes via which information flowed from participant
to participant, such as small group meetings among students. The knowl-
edge that the teacher conveyed about the history of the course included
the issue of so called `vague instructions´. This topic had been raised for
discussion repeatedly in the years of LLNT and a lot of negotiation and
explanation had been necessary to explain the philosophy of the course:
to give the students an opportunity to study topics of technology-medi-
ated language learning and teaching through real-life problems as well as
practical experience in solving them in the context of learning projects
with school children. It seems that over the years the atmosphere for
problem-based approaches has become more open, however. It is also
likely that students who have taken the course earlier have shared their
experiences, encouraging the new participants to trust that the course will
not be too demanding. It seems that the historical body of the students
was in the process of change in this respect: Deviance from teacher-led
task-definition toward team-based, self-directed co-construction of the
task did not cause confusion and resistance any more.
From the point of view of planning and implementing the work-
shops as participatory projects, it seemed to be very difficult to trigger
great changes in the prevalent traditional practices of teaching. The his-
torical body of the students as of the teacher guides the pedagogic design
to the direction where pupils are pupils and it is the teachers who bring
the activities into the classroom. In the following example, a student
teacher (Robert) gives the pupils instructions on an activity in the Photo-
screen workshop.

268
Example 2. Photoscreen <T:00:00:02–00:00:34>

The example is from the beginning of the workshop for this group of pu-
pils. As the data show, Robert straightforwardly proceeds to give instruc-
tions on a task where the pupils will draw on a piece of paper a picture of
something that they like. The task description is detailed and progresses
through the task step by step, for example, You take one piece of paper (line
8), and You write your name in the middle (line 12). The spoken descrip-
tion of the task is accompanied by a visual demonstration (lines 6, 9, 13,
17) on where to place the required items on the paper. The pupils are
expected to follow the instructions without much chance to influence the
design or the progress of the task. This initial task description is also par-
tial in that it does not describe what the group will do with the drawings
once the pupils have produced them. This description will follow later on
during the workshop. Similar task descriptions are prevalent in the other
workshops as well.
The situation illustrated in the example above, however, also shows
the complex nature of guidance from the point of view of social action in
peer groups. It seems that the participants still engage in multimodal and
collaborative negotiation of the task throughout. A great deal of the guid-
ance in the Photoscreen workshop and in the other workshops took place

269
silently, as children glanced at others working (e.g., looking at the work
of the person who was instructed by the student teacher). The Photoscreen
workshop took place in a small recreational area of the school, where pu-
pils sat close to each other on bean bag chairs or on the floor. The physical
distance between the children was thus very small, which made it easier
to construct one’s understanding of the task at hand by quickly glancing
at one’s peers working. This special spatial seating arrangement seemed to
destabilise the traditional pedagogic practice and enhance pupils’ partici-
pation in the workshop activities.

Guidance in Retrospect
At first glance, it seemed that during the course, the teacher’s goal for
students to generate a school project of genuinely participatory nature
was not accomplished. However, in the final evaluation session where
the other participants of the research team were also present, it became
evident how the design process had actually made progress, even if in a
different form than anticipated by the teacher. The students had been
asked to create concepts as described by the teacher in the process log
below.

Example 3. Process Log in the course VLE 11.4.2011 (Teacher)

For the Monday session, < the multidisciplinary research group>

comes to see when the different groups present their ‘Concepts’,
i.e., suggestions for an application/solution that involves future
technology (and, hence, new affordances for interaction, literacy
practices and learning). The concepts should be presented as short
videos done with Windows Moviemaker or similar (i.e., picture,
video, audio, text combined).

If we consider the activities that the students designed for the school
project, there were several aspects that contributed to the success of the
project as such, even if the goal of genuine participation was not achieved
in the expected form. These contributing factors create the basis for con-
sidering what kind of guidance is necessary. It seems that when the stu-
dents instructed the children to get started in their workshops, the pupils

270
were flexible, ready to do anything, and took on the tasks smoothly. This
might be due to their historical role of following the socio-culturally in-
formed practice prevailing in the modern schools, emphasizing interac-
tion, the learners’ active role in the classroom, and the teacher’s role as a
facilitator in knowledge-building rather than a distributor of knowledge.
The teachers at the school were also ready to provide their pupils to the
workshops, and they presented no requirements for their participation
(e.g., requests to follow the ‘curriculum’ as sometimes is the case with
more traditionally oriented project participants). The language students
were also open to whatever they were going to face in the LLNT course.
Their historical body did not necessarily have much experience from
previous problem-based courses: in student reflections after the course,
the participants usually state that despite their experience from small
group teaching they do not have experience of actual teamwork. As for
teaching, some of the language students had previous experience in the
classroom and from working with children while others had none. The
idea of genuine participation was certainly new to them and they were
also ready to take part in envisioning the future in the orientation phase
of the course. However, when starting planning, the students seemed
to return back to basics, i.e., what so-called `normal´ language teaching
would encompass.
In the wrap-up session, the multidisciplinary research group fol-
lowed the students presenting their concepts and the results of the school
project were discussed. While the teacher felt that not much had hap-
pened that could be considered genuine participation or a participatory
approach, the members of the group who had their background in infor-
mation processing science and acquaintance with participatory research
interpreted the results differently. They explained how the original ideas
presented in the workshops actually did take on new forms throughout
the working process.

Conclusion
The aim of this chapter was to offer theoretical and practical insights into
the study of participatory projects from the point of view of children,
language students, and researchers. Special attention was paid to the chal-
lenges faced in promoting genuine participation and supporting the lan-

271
guage students, i.e., prospective teachers, in acquiring new practices as
guides in such projects.
The study promotes a nexus-analytic (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) re-
search approach that combines both the analysis of in-situ (inter)action
and the analysis of long-term developments. This entails emphasizing
the complex and multifaceted nature of learning, which encompasses
not only school-learning but also a multitude of activities which chil-
dren participate during off-school time. Such a perspective portrays a
special challenge to student teachers who in their teacher education pro-
grammes gain most of their teaching experience in the classroom envi-
ronment where the work largely follows the structure of the textbook se-
ries, with new technologies an additional resource rather than an integral
part of the everyday language learning environment. Such a historical
body (Scollon & Scollon, 2004), i.e., accumulated long-term experience
and internalized practices connected to the traditional classroom envi-
ronment, even if socioculturally based (e.g., teacher as a facilitator), does
not necessarily provide a sufficient basis for students or even teachers in
the field to step away from the textbook-led curriculum towards prob-
lem-based approaches, for example, which would give room for stronger
agency among the pupils in relation to their own learning. Such a step
would require rethinking the nature of language learning more broadly
than as an accomplishment in the classroom and, hence, the construction
and flow of language lessons as part of our language learning environ-
ment as a whole.
Despite the challenge, many of the workshops designed and im-
plemented by the students during the LLNT course attempted to open
up and break away from the textbook learning of foreign languages in
order to promote an approach where language is essentially viewed as a
tool for communication and as something whose home is in its use for
social action. Music, storytelling, and using video cameras for recording
plays that were produced during the workshops were examples of such
means. Obviously, thinking about modern language in teaching these
would, indeed, belong to the historical body of the language classroom
already, but not necessarily as integrated into a problem-based peda-
gogic design. What was challenging was to consider how to provide the
language students guidance in creating for the children a learning envi-

272
ronment allowing their genuine participation during the theme week.
If we consider the guidance that the university students were provid-
ed with in their work towards the course objectives in the participatory
design process, the analysis of our multiple data suggest that the support
drew upon much more than the teacher’s verbally or textually expressed
interactional contributions. The organization of the virtual learning en-
vironment, for example, offered many indications of the nature of par-
ticipation encouraged. It was possible to adjust the user profile for the
students in the course VLE in a way that allowed them to operate with
the objects quite freely (e.g., creating, naming, and assigning access rights
for folders, documents, and discussion lists). This afforded widening the
possible interaction order (e.g., people involved and their roles) in the
course environment (Scollon & Scollon, 2004). The problem-based ped-
agogic approach of the course was identifiable in the VLE as well in the
progressive course design. In other words, the course environment only
consisted of the basic elements (e.g., some guidelines, a discussion list for
the orientation phase, and folders for the main phases of the project) to
start with. While the project made progress, more contents were added
by the students and some changes made in the structure and elements as
also the project itself evolved phase by phase.
The course teacher’s actions online, providing support for the par-
ticipants towards the shared goal of designing and implementing the
theme week at school, included log entries, discussion entries, and dif-
ferent actions that reflected the evolving project trajectory in the course
VLE (e.g., creating discussion lists when they were needed, checking log
statistics, updating the schedule, and informing the students about the
contacts with school teachers among others). Class meetings were also
central sites for checking the situation, making sure that teams worked
well and that the commitment to implement the theme week workshops
at the school was going to be fulfilled. The working methods for broad-
ening the students’ understanding of language learning, the rapid devel-
opment of technologies and consequent pedagogic change were future
workshops, presentations of the students’ mini projects on orientation
topics. On these occasions, some members of the research group were
also present. The teacher also gave consultation to individual students
and teams.

273
 The students also drew upon their mutual expertise as many had al-
ready taken units of pedagogic studies, including practice at the training
school, or were otherwise familiar with language teaching (e.g., having
been substitute teachers).
The school children and their teachers were very pleased with the
theme week and thought that the workshops had presented them with
language learning opportunities that were different from the everyday
school practice. The children had been able to use English as a medium
for communication and not as a target of learning only, for example.
Dealing with situations where the instructors (the students and the teach-
er) had only used English (some students were not Finnish speakers at all)
had also provided experiences of success in the use of foreign language
interaction and learning. In the workshops, the leaders and supporters of
the activities had been able to adapt according to the needs arising from
the interaction and work with the children.
Despite the abundant affordances for guidance on the course, the
research group and the course teacher felt, however, that the ultimate
goal of supporting genuine participation had not been fully achieved.
The ethnographic observations and video recordings of the execution
of the workshops suggest that the guidance was not strong enough to
trigger great changes in the students’ historical body concerning the
way they view future language teaching and the role of new technolo-
gies in it. The final project reports and the reflection papers show that
the students felt they had been able to successfully cope with the chal-
lenging situations throughout the problem-based and, hence, evolving
theme week, when only the overall picture of the project is known in
advance. In some final reflections, views were expressed on the positive
aspects encouraging the students to apply new technologies in their fu-
ture work, but the examples of possible use indicated that no particular
move from the traditional textbook-led approach had taken place in
student thinking.
In conclusion, it seems that there are numerous challenges in try-
ing to contribute to change in terms of pedagogic thinking and practice
among the students even during a problem-based university course such
as LLNT. Even if an abundance of guidance were offered in the form
of course design, guidelines, descriptions of objectives, and interaction

274
among the participants through classroom sessions, collaborative work
online, and teamwork, the participants come to the course with vary-
ing backgrounds, life situations, and motivations. There may be various
‘powers’ affecting their views on learning, language teaching, related tech-
nology-use, and on the teacher’s professional profile, too. For example,
even if teacher education as such promotes modern views of learning, if
the practice period at the teacher training school is primarily based on
the textbook-led approach, it may provide the students a strong model of
language teaching in their future careers as well. This growing historical
body is, obviously, strengthened by the students’ experiences from their
own language learning histories. It is also of interest that social (inter)
action is situated and tied closely to place (Scollon & Scollon, 2004).
In the workshops it was seen how an exceptional place such as an open,
still confined resting space in the main corridor area as a site for learning
put certain aspects of interaction order into foreground. In other words,
it was possible to see through video data how guidance took place multi-
modally, without much verbal contribution, the teacher offering help to
one pupil, and the others then observing through delicate gazing what
this pupil was doing.
As for the opportunities to contribute to change during the LLNT
course, it must be observed that LLNT still is ‘only’ a course for stu-
dents. They have to cope with all their other commitments simulta-
neously. Therefore, even if they wish to participate actively and fulfil
the course requirements, the schedule should be flexible enough to al-
low the organisatory work demanded by problem-based study involv-
ing team work, for example (e.g., agreeing on responsibilities, meet-
ing with technical challenges, making decisions, etc.). In the case of
LLNT, the timeframe for the whole course seemed to be too tight for
building bridges between theory and practice, for example. Actually,
a major challenge in conducting the LLNT course and project is its
multilayered structure. We are, therefore, dealing with guidance aiming
at change in the understanding and practice of language learning for
many participants, e.g., the children, the students (some of whom are
future teachers and others not), the teacher, and the multidisciplinary
research group. There are also teachers at the school with their own ex-
pectations and other actors indirectly affecting the molding of the proj-

275
ect (e.g., authors of curricula and strategy papers). These issues could be
taken into account in the future implementations of the course.

276
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 PART III

EXTENDING THE
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
BRIDGING MODES OF LEARNING IN
A VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
– PROBLEM MEDIATION AND USER-
DRIVEN INNOVATION IN THE DANISH
VOCATIONAL TRAINING SYSTEM

Kevin Mogensen, Janne Gleerup, Simon B. Heilesen,

and Anders Siig Andersen

Introduction
The catchphrase ‘From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side’ (King,
1993), originally a plea for a constructivist approach to teaching and
learning, is often used when discussing how new technologies may sup-
port the transformation of education. Although it proposes a new role
for the teacher, the relocation from centre stage to the wings does not
fundamentally challenge the notion that the knowledge institution runs
the theatre and that the teacher creates the set. In the information soci-
ety, however, the brick-and-mortar ‘theatre’ is being augmented or re-
placed by formal and informal virtual learning spaces, and actors from
the outside are making inroads into the once-autonomous knowledge in-
stitutions. As to the ‘set’, new technologies are challenging conventional
teaching formats; being digital immigrants (Prensky, 2001), teachers are
not necessarily well qualified to head off innovation by themselves.
This chapter discusses methods for bringing the teacher back on-
stage as one of several (inter)actors collaborating in designing new teach-
ing formats that exploit the potentials of digital media. The term ‘design’
will be understood both as the process of planning, constructing, and
testing an artefact, and as the actual artefact (a didactic design combined
with an IT prototype) that is the outcome of the process. As we shall see,

285
 Fig. 1. The Quadrant Model.

the evolving artefact is an indispensable boundary object between the

knowledge systems of the various groups of actors participating in a pro-
cess of user-driven innovation. At the end of the process, adoption in the
learning environment of the artefact as a suitable solution is facilitated
by the fact that the process has proven the product to be functional and
usable as well as being compatible with the users and providing a relative
advantage (Rogers, 2003).
The case to be discussed in this chapter involves the training of elec-
trician apprentices at a Danish vocational school. As is common in voca-
tional training, the curriculum consists of alternating periods of attending
school and working as an apprentice in a company. As has been estab-
lished in earlier research (Jørgensen, 2004), a major challenge consists
of helping the apprentices realize how the two modes of learning, taking
place in different contexts (formal instruction at school, and informal
learning at the workplace), add up to a meaningful whole. The design
arrived at attempts to bridge the contexts by means of a virtual learning
environment, extending the reach of the teacher beyond the school and
encouraging the apprentices to engage in learning on the basis of prob-
lems encountered in their work.

286
 The research has been carried out as a contribution to the Danish
ELYK project (2009-2012; http://www.elyk.dk) which has been funded
by the European Regional Development Fund and the Danish Enterprise
and Construction Authority. Overall, the ELYK project has addressed the
problem of developing and retaining competencies in outlying areas – on
the premise that net-based learning may help provide the competences
needed for the development and growth of small- and medium-sized en-
terprises (SME).

Designing for user-driven innovation

Exploring new ways of introducing user-driven innovation into educa-
tional design has been the methodological pivotal point of the ELYK proj-
ect, of which the case discussed in this chapter forms a part (Mogensen,
Gleerup, & Heilesen, 2012). Our particular approach to user-driven inno-
vation has been inspired partly by participatory design, particularly as it has
been practiced within the so-called Scandinavian School of Design (Ehn
& Kyng, 1987) according to which the creation of software artifacts in-
volves integrating them into a context of changing practice. This is done
partly in the tradition of user innovation represented by Eric von Hippel
(2005), combining ‘voice of the consumer’ soliciting of end-user needs
with coinvention by ‘lead users’, and partly by the experimental approach
characteristic of design-based research in education, involving users as code-
signers (Barab & Squire, 2004; Amiel & Reeves, 2008).
In the ELYK project perspective, the term ‘user’ is understood nei-
ther as consumer nor as an individual or group of individuals with partic-
ular professional functions. Rather, the user is a construction defined by
situation, aims, and relations to other actors (Helms & Heilesen, 2011).
Consider the case of the electrician apprentices to be discussed below.
When at school, the apprentice is a student; when in practice, he or she
is an employee. As a student, the apprentice is a client of the official au-
thorities (e.g., local government); as an employee he is a net contributor
to society. In the company, the master electrician is an employer, but he
and his journeymen are also teachers. The teachers at school may also be
professional electricians, and official authorities both enable and control
their work. No role is absolute.

287
 Designing for and with users requires all actors to become involved
in the process – apprentices, teachers, masters and journeymen, govern-
ment (at least in terms of legal framework), and, as we shall see, also the
researchers themselves. Effectively, the design process thus also becomes a
collaborative learning process to which all participants, acting as equals,
contribute in an effort to understand a practice (or a problem) and to
devise ways for improving upon it or changing it.
Combining elements from the theoretical approaches mentioned
above, and taking into account our understanding of ‘user as construc-
tion’, the ELYK project has developed a four- stage model (the Quad-
rant Model, fig. 1) that provides a framework for managing processes of
user-driven innovation (Helms & Heilesen, 2011). Each quadrant, or
‘stage’, represents a work phase, and from one stage to the next there is
a progression in time and substance. But the model is not entirely linear
– as suggested by the term ‘quadrant’ -- and iterations may occur both
within and across stages.
The first quadrant (upper left) deals with observation of existing
practices (context, actual setting, objectives, and regulations relevant to
the learning situation, the tools currently in use, and the goals, attitudes,
and general work situation of the users). Users include students, teachers,
representatives from business and official authorities, all of them acting
in a particular role in a particular situation. Observation is performed
by the researchers, and it may involve ethnographical observation, inter-
views, questionnaires, and analyses of documents. Initial observation is
necessary for the researchers to gain domain knowledge, and for the users
to focus on their practices and needs. It is also essential for developing
some initial ideas of how existing practices can be augmented, modified,
supplemented, or replaced. The roles of the participants in the process are
evolving from one quadrant to the next. At this stage, users act as infor-
mants, and researchers act as managers and facilitators.
The second quadrant (upper right) deals with the construction of
new ideas and artefacts. At this stage, the researchers’ observations and
assumptions, developed in the first stage, are used to initiate discussions
and processes of reflection on practices, drawing the users into actively
participating in the design processes. The quadrant provides a framework
for iterative processes of creating, evaluating, and modifying drafts, spec-

288
ifying needs and functionalities, and rethinking practices. Workshops are
the preferred mode of interaction. At this stage, products are ideas, out-
lines and drafts that later, and perhaps after additional observation, will
be turned into working prototypes. Interaction is the keyword in the
second quadrant, as researchers shift from the role of observer to that of
developer, and users assume an active role as equals in the development
process. The composite nature of the user group helps provide a faceted
understanding of the subject on all levels, ranging from simple technical
ones of functionality, and to general matters of workplace and relevance
of competences.
The third quadrant (lower right) involves co-constructing prototypes
(based on ideas and drafts developed at the second stage) in a commu-
nity of interest (Fischer, 2001). Like a community of practice (Wenger,
1998), a community of interest is an environment facilitating collabora-
tive learning, but it differs from the community of practice in being tem-
poral and heterogeneous. (It is a community of communities). In a com-
munity of interest, boundary objects provide shared references between
the knowledge systems of the various communities. In the current case,
the boundary objects are the prototypes, to which all participants – ap-
prentices, teachers, masters, journeymen, administrators, and researchers
– contribute their competencies and rationalities in processes of develop-
ing, testing, and modifying. The participants act as equal partners, con-
structing and mutually learning in a community where roles are defined
by competences and individual contributions, rather than by social and
professional status. Again, the preferred work form is the workshop, but
testing and evaluating may take place in breakout sessions, small local
groups, or in a virtual workspace.
Finally, the fourth quadrant is one of reconstructing, as artefacts and
new practices are implemented on the basis of the prototypes created in
the third quadrant, and are integrated in the organization, eventually to
become routine. As the project terminates, and the community breaks
up, original roles are reestablished, and a new iteration of the innovation
process may begin.
In the next section, we will discuss a design project trying out the
Quadrant Model in practice.

289
Designing the ‘learning bridge’
The aim of the ELYK project has been to develop innovative designs for
IT-supported learning. The designs have been developed in collaboration
with companies and learning institutions, but the project has not been
involved in developing curricula and actually implementing the designs
in professional programs. This task has been left to the learning institu-
tion partners, in the current case, the Center for Vocational Education in
Lolland and Falster (CELF). The case involves the training of electricians.
Lolland and Falster, neighbouring islands in southern Denmark,
geographically and social-economically are located at the periphery of the
country. Managers and faculty at CELF have been motivated to take part
in the project because they see it as an important mission to attract more
young people to a vocational training that is oriented both toward the
local and the national labour market. Located in an area with a fairly low
level of education, motivation presents challenges in terms of recruitment
of apprentices, and thus also challenges the fulfilment of the national
objective for getting more young people to complete vocational training.
Managers and faculty at CELF believe that increased use of Information
and Communication Technology- (ICT) based teaching methods may
contribute to the recruitment of more apprentices from the peripheral
area. The teachers at CELF have been enthusiastic about taking part in
the project, probably because electrician apprentices tend to be particu-
larly qualified in the area of ICT.
Some background on Vocational Education in Denmark
Our design process has been inspired by studies of the legal frame-
work of the vocational educational system in Denmark, and by research
into this system (see also Juul & Jørgensen, 2001).
The main principle of the Danish vocational educational system is
that the apprentices alternate between being pupils at school and ap-
prentices in the workplace. In practice, the coupling between practical
education and teaching at school is supported by educational contracts,
guiding rules of practice, and ‘practice forms’. The practice forms specify
what skills must be acquired during periods of practice, and they docu-
ment that the requirements have been met.
The vocational programs in Denmark have goals for qualifications
within specific work areas as well as goals for more general qualifications.

290
It is an official requirement that the vocational educational system ensures
that a large proportion of a youth generation completes vocational train-
ing. This has generated some uncertainty as to the fundamental function
of the vocational education system: Is the primary function the social
integration of diffident youth, or the training of competent craftsmen
for the contemporary and future labour market? (Larsen, 2012) Another
serious challenge is that there have been great problems in providing the
necessary number of training places (Andersen, 2001). The lack of train-
ing places means that many young people entering vocational training
never get an opportunity to complete it.
Increasingly, these problems have overshadowed questions of how
to plan the best possible vocational education. Research indicates that
the major pedagogical challenge to vocational training is findings ways
of creating the best possible interplay between practical education at the
workplace and teaching at school (Jørgensen, 2010; Wahlgren, 2002; An-
dersen & Iversen, 1995). The reasons are twofold: 1) there has been too
little interest and too few experiments in systematically using and devel-
oping the apprentices’ school learning outcomes in the context of the
workplace; and 2) only a few sustainable practices have been developed
for supporting learning at school with the learning experiences and learn-
ing outcomes accumulated through practice at the workplace.
The prototype developed in the project addresses this key problem
of coupling contexts.

Observing practice
On the basis of the problems and challenges outlined above, the first
stage in the design process consisted in carrying out a pilot study to elicit
how the interplay between school and practice at CELF is conceived by
apprentices and teachers engaged in the vocational training of electri-
cians. Also, we wanted to establish empirically the qualifications of the
teachers and the apprentices with respect to the use of ICT in supporting
teaching and learning. The study has been based on three, two-day ob-
servations of classes, a questionnaire distributed to a class of apprentices,
individual interviews with three teachers and the head of studies, and a
group interview with six apprentices.
The pilot study indicates that the apprentices take a highly positive

291
view of the interplay between theory learned at school and the assign-
ments that they are meant to carry out at the workplace. This is somewhat
in contradiction to what is normally concluded in the research literature
within the area. A likely explanation is that it is essential for an electrician
to gain a fundamental understanding of theory in order to carry out his or
her work in a safe and technically efficient way. The apprentices, however,
do not experience that their work situation and their work tasks at the
companies are reflected in the teaching at school. At school, all that teach-
ers do is try to simulate reality, and they do so only to a limited degree.
Furthermore, the apprentices indicate that some teachers have a primary
interest in theory and only a secondary interest in practice. In part this is
due to a lack of experience in the field of practice.
Some apprentices say that they do not have a proper knowledge of
the learning objectives for the practice periods, and many apprentices
state that practice does not offer the necessary variations with respect to
assignments because the companies they work at are small and/or spe-
cialized. Teachers emphasize that practice at the workplace is the most
important locus of learning, and also that the apprentices are confronted
with theoretical requirements at school that are much more advanced
than the theory needed to carry out their work tasks. The teachers agree
with the apprentices that too few connections are drawn between the
curriculum and the practical experiences of the apprentices. The teachers
also agree on the fact that the learning objectives of the practice periods
are not always met. As one teacher states:

Many of the apprentices just draw cables. It varies at different

firms. It has always been like that (…) the journeymen that
they drive around with – it is they who decide.

Furthermore, the teachers recognize that many of the masters at the com-
panies never complete and return the practice forms, and that this is
contrary to the formal requirements.
By eliciting the experiences of managers, teachers, and apprentices
with respect to the use of ICT, the pilot investigation shows that digital
media are mostly used at school, and less frequently at the small compa-
nies. The manager of the program is quite aware that in many respects

292
the apprentices are masters of digital media. He sees potential in strength-
ening the digital profile of the school, and he emphasizes that stepping
up digital competences may support the supplementary training that the
school offers. This often is structured as ‘blended learning’. The appren-
tices experience that the teachers use digital media when teaching, but to
varying degrees. The study suggests that the apprentices value teachers
who use digital teaching materials and technologies, e.g., by mastering a
great repertoire of smartboard features. Logically, they do not appreciate
teachers who are not able to demonstrate the same IT pedagogical com-
petences. However, technology is not all that matters. High value is also
assigned to other competences and not least to the personal qualities of
the teacher, such as attentiveness and engagement.
The apprentices use digital media only to a very limited degree in
their mutual communication. They explain that the group of apprentices
is very heterogeneous and that the alternation between school and prac-
tice imply that the enrolment in any particular class will have changed
each time the apprentices return to school. Still, a few examples are of-
fered on the use of e-mail in connection with apprentices working collab-
oratively on assignments.
The school runs an intranet using Sharepoint 2007™. Mostly, the
intranet is used for broadcasting information from the school to the ap-
prentices. Even for faculty, dialogical features are virtually nonexistent.
The attitude of the apprentices towards the system is generally negative.
One apprentice puts it like this:

It has been changed every time you are down here (…) Then
you have a new password because you have not been here for
three months (…) Then, when you get back home, it is not pos-
sible to login and you have to ask IT support – maybe because
they have introduced a new system. And it is not possible, when
you sit at home, and then you drop it. So I have used my own
e-mail address.

Many apprentices use a smartphone when at work. Sometimes they take

pictures because they want to document having done the work properly
or because they are going to order new parts for electrical installations

293
and want the agent to supply the right parts. The apprentices also use
pictures if they are not sure how to carry out a specific task:

I do it if I am in doubt. Then you take a picture and send it

to the master or journeyman and ask him – what should I do?
Then half an hour passes by, and then he calls me and provides
the answer.

Among the teachers, opinions vary with respect to the question of

what advantages might be associated with an increased application of
digital media. Some engage actively in experiments with extended use of
the media. Others are more hesitant.

Constructing concepts
Moving on to the second stage of the design process, the group of re-
searchers started generating new ideas and concepts on the basis of the
observation and analysis of existing practice. First, a number of assump-
tions with regard to challenges and potentials in the existing educational
practice were discussed within the group of researchers. Next, a workshop
was arranged. The participants in the workshop were masters and jour-
neymen from local companies and teachers and apprentices from a class
at CELF, some twenty participants in all. In the course of the workshop,
in discussions and exercises within and across socially defined roles, a
variety of problems, needs and wishes were voiced and qualified as new
ideas. Many of them pointed towards creating a digital learning platform
that should be able to facilitate the interplay between practice and school.
The outcomes may be summarized as follows:

»»School management and teachers generally experience a need to

strengthen the communication between companies, school, and
apprentices. An answer to this need might be a digital version of
the practice form, acting as a mediating artifact. A supplementa-
ry solution might consist in a digital platform for sharing knowl-
edge about what is happening during the educational trajectory
of the individual apprentice, and about the content and learning
objectives for the practice periods and the education at school.

294
 »»The apprentices argue that the teaching at school to a greater
extent ought to involve situations and experiences from practice.
An answer to this might consist in starting to draw on images
and video documentation of situations belonging to the prac-
tice. This simple adjustment of teaching practice could exploit
the fact that most apprentices are experienced in using smart-
phones as a tool supporting their learning and work processes
in practice.

»»The apprentices are apprehensive of the challenges at the work-

place with respect to occupational health and safety. It appears
that a contradiction exists between practice at the workplace and
the formal regulations. The apprentices do not feel that they
have the necessary strength in the face of their employers to im-
prove conditions. At the same time, the apprentices want to be
able to express themselves more freely regarding technical as well
as social problems at work, without the risk of being monitored
by employers or school. An answer to this challenge might be
to create an option for the apprentices to exchange experiences
and opinions in a virtual space excluding all representatives from
school and the companies.

»»The teachers want better opportunities for maintaining the ap-

prentices’ interest in theoretical subjects during their practice at
the companies, i.e., by giving assignments. This may also be fa-
cilitated by the means of a digital platform.

After the workshop, the group of researchers undertook an analysis of

how the many needs and wishes voiced in the discussions might be trans-
lated into features in a prototype system. Both practical acceptability and
social acceptability in terms of variables facilitating adoption, notably rel-
ative advantage and compatibility (Rogers, 2003), were considered.
Apart from the fact that the project would never be allowed to make
experimental adjustments to a working production system, the existing
school intranet was found to be inadequate for project needs. Nor was it
considered essential to develop a system that would fully integrate with

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Sharepoint 2007™. But it was deemed important that it should be possi-
ble to access the ELYK prototypes from within the school intranet. The
new system should be easy to learn, easy to use, the interface should be
appealing, and the software system should be cheap to purchase and easy
to maintain. Choosing software that is hosted in the cloud and that may
be accessed through a web browser will meet some of these requirements.
Care has also been taken to find an up-to-date system with the promise
of being viable in the foreseeable future. Although guarantees can never
be made, choosing a product that has been around for a while that has
attracted interest and is marketed by a company that can easily be con-
tacted, makes a system more attractive in this latter respect. Finally, con-
siderations have been made regarding speed, stability and, importantly,
security.
Among several net-based collaborative and social software tools
available, the project team settled on Podio (https://podio.com/) as a ver-
satile, extremely flexible, and inexpensive tool. Within Podio, organiza-
tions (virtual spaces framing all activities within a company or a project)
were set up both for CELF – eventually to become the prototype – and
for the research group to carry out various experiments and prototyping.
Thus, one installation served all needs. Within an organization, spaces
define tasks, and apps are created within a space for performing the tasks.
A space has an activity stream logging all activities and creating awareness
of other users; access to each space can be regulated. A large number of
standard apps are available, and they can be modified, and new ones can
be created by using an app-builder feature that offers an extremely easy
drag-and-drop functionality for compiling a complex app from basic el-
ements.

Co-constructing the product

This third stage of the design process has had three phases. An initial one
for testing the first version of the prototype; a second one for running a
large-scale test of the prototype, and a final stage for evaluating the pro-
totype and the impact it has had on teaching practices.
The early prototype consisted of three different spaces. In later ver-
sions, several adjustments were made and some terminology was changed,
but the basic structure was retained:

296
Learning Objectives in Practice is a space accessible for all registered users
where apprentices using text, images, audio, and video may add descrip-
tions of tasks performed at the workplace and relate them to the learning
objectives of the practice period. In short, it is a very simple kind of port-
folio that may be used to document the skills enumerated in the practice
form, and also to provide examples of products and processes that can be
drawn upon in the teaching when the apprentices return to school.

Weekly Assignment is a space where teachers can post assignments for the
apprentices, and where the teachers and apprentices may communicate
on various issues. This is the ‘school at the workplace’ setting.

Discussion is space for apprentices only, providing facilities for commu-

nicating on matters of mutual interest.

The early prototype was discussed at a small workshop involving the de-
velopers and two electricians who had recently finished their education.
Features as well as usability were reviewed and reflected critically. This
process contributed experiences and ideas that were productively brought
into play in the construction of the second prototype.
The second prototype, named ‘The Digital Learning Bridge’, was
tested in a class of first- year apprentices and their teachers at CELF (18
participants in all were active in the Podio 9workspace). Testing took
place during the first five weeks of practice at the companies. The proto-
type was introduced in class at CELF to the apprentices and the teachers.
They were all trained to use it, and they were provided with three, one-
page ‘manuals’, explaining how to use each of the three spaces.
The teachers were assigned responsibility for testing the Weekly As-
signment space meant for communication between school and apprentice
by means of assignments. Each week, the researchers prompted activity by
asking the participants questions in the two other spaces. The researchers
also monitored the test through status updates and activity overviews. At
one point during the test, the researches contacted the apprentices direct-
ly by SMS and telephone in order to motivate them to use the prototype.
All users provided very positive feedback to the testing, but the ac-
tivity in the different spaces of the Podio application remained rather

297
low. At the end of the period of testing, all apprentices and teachers par-
ticipating in co-constructing the product were invited to a meeting for
collaborative reflection and evaluation of the test. Valuable material for
the overall evaluation of the test was gathered through interviews with
the teachers and a group discussion with six apprentices.
At the time of writing, the final stage of the design process, that of
integrating new practices in the school environment, has not been com-
pleted. But feedback suggests that the ELYK design experiment is likely
to have some lasting impact.

Evaluating the Learning Bridge

Our point of departure in evaluating the prototype has been the appren-
tices, since they are the primary user group. They tested the prototype for
a five-week period, and their reflections feed this analysis. The experienc-
es of the apprentices are supplemented with and qualified by interpreta-
tions from the teacher perspective. The aim of the evaluation has been
to solicit shortcomings as well as potentials of the prototype as they have
been identified from a user perspective.

Student interpretation of the two learning contexts

In the eyes of the apprentices, the two learning contexts differ substan-
tially. The ‘real world’ of the workplace is characterized as being more
challenging than periods at school. When comparing the two, the ap-
prentices emphasize the ‘unpredictable conditions’ at the workplace as
something exciting, whereas the school environment is described as some
kind of ‘protected area’. School assignments are safely framed by indis-
putable theories, far removed from the muddy complexity of the kind of
real-world problems that electricians experience in their work life. As one
of apprentice explains:

At school, you can always solve the problems; the wall [that you
work on] is made of cardboard, and you can always get help.
Out in the real world: sometimes neither master nor journeymen
know what to do. At school, we are simply told. Everything is
planned, and we all do what is expected from us.

298
Thus, as a learning environment, school may be perceived as being some-
what boring. However, this does not mean that the apprentices regard the
theoretical dimensions of their education as being unimportant. Several
times the apprentices emphasize that understanding the theoretical back-
ground helps to develop their professional identity and self-confidence.
But even if they acknowledge the relevance and value of the theoretical
elements for their professional work, they still relate theory closely to the
school context. In other words, they see the connection but they do not ex-
perience that theory and practice are interwoven in the educational design.
It is the interplay between the two learning environments that the
Weekly Assignment space is meant to support by helping the teachers reach
out to the apprentices during periods of practice. This idea may be devel-
oped further by also exploiting the opportunities for bringing examples
from the unpredictable and exciting ‘real world’ workplace back into the
school context.

The weekly assignment

During the test period, the teachers uploaded assignments on a weekly
basis. According to them, this was an easy and practical way of keeping
the apprentices in a flow of continuity, supporting them in processes of
reflecting practical work in a theoretical perspective. Even if rather few
apprentices actually did this new kind of ‘homework’, many of them reg-
ularly visited the digital platform, checking out what kind of assignments
the teachers had posted. The teachers regard this as a fine initial result,
pointing out that the experiment as such has increased student awareness
of the interplay between theory and practice. However, the teachers also
conclude that full implementation of this kind of bridging tool requires
more comprehensive pedagogical and didactic reflections.
From a student point of view, the assignment space and its apps are
seen as a great tool, provided that the level of difficulty in assignments is
kept at a reasonable level. In other words, they prefer that assignments
repeat theoretical subjects rather than introduce new ones. As a barrier
to adoption they note that doing schoolwork after a long day’s work in
practice is often too hard. They return home filled with new impressions,
and having worked long hours they are physically tired. However, the
apprentices propose ways to overcome this barrier.

299
Doing assignments during breaks and in time slots reserved for
theoretical reflection at the workplace
One way of overcoming the challenges in finding time for homework, the
apprentices suggest, would be to introduce a model integrating the week-
ly assignments into the work hours at the workplace. This would allow
the apprentices to draw upon theoretical dimensions in their daily work.
They explain how the assignments could be discussed with the journey-
men responsible for their training. In a legitimate and inspiring way, such
discussions could provide the beginnings of a new workplace-based learn-
ing environment. A condition, however, is that the masters agree that
there are significant learning potentials in allowing time for doing school
assignments.
From a teacher’s point of view, this broader engagement is consid-
ered to be a major improvement to the utility of the prototype. Not only
would it strengthen ties between the school context and the companies.
Potentially, it would also boost processes of collaborative learning within
the workplace communities in innovative ways. Below, this idea is ex-
tended also to ways of using the portfolio space.

The discussion space

The apprentices assess the discussion space critically. They see no real
need for a student-to-student space, explaining that by and large the need
for social contact is met at the workplace or by friendships established be-
fore or outside the school environment. The apprentices consider them-
selves to be a rather heterogeneous group with few shared interests. The
fact that they are not in sustainable classes also weakens the motivation
for maintaining social contact during practice periods. The apprentices
turn to the workplace for social and professional dialogue, and they turn
to the journeymen when the have concrete questions of a professional
nature. If the apprentices did point out discussion space potentials, they
suggest that it should be made chat-based with facilities for near real-time
interaction. However, this feature is already available on, e.g., Facebook,
which most of the apprentices use in their spare time.

The portfolio space

The Learning Objectives in Practice space is meant to bridge learning ac-

300
tivities taking place in the workplace context and in the school context.
The main app in the Podio space enumerates the training objectives spec-
ified by the practice form for the various practice periods. The list helps
the apprentices keep track of the training activities that they are supposed
to undergo. It also provides them with a tool for documenting and re-
flecting on their work, and it helps visualize the progression in their indi-
vidual learning processes.

Documenting the progress of learning

Although the apprentices generally like the idea of a portfolio summariz-
ing the training objectives, they find the app difficult to use. The problem
is not of a technical nature; rather it originates in requirements being dif-
fuse and general. How is one to document the learning process in terms
of concrete examples? However, the apprentices find that the portfolio
could frame a kind of professional diary during the practice periods. They
propose considering an opening up of the digital infrastructure so that
family and friends may access postings on products and illustrations of
best practice.
From a teacher perspective, the portfolio space is considered an in-
teresting innovation, potentially helpful as a pedagogical bridging tool.
Often, the teachers experience that the long periods of practice training
tend to segregate them from the learning process of the apprentices. They
know little about what goes on in the field of practice. Therefore, they
have only limited opportunity to grasp and make use of the practical
experience accumulated by the apprentices. The portfolio may help over-
come the segregation, providing a better flow in the education of new
electricians. The potentials in this innovative interplay of contexts are
expanded upon by the apprentices, proposing a much more ambitious
engagement of the masters and the journeymen in use of the portfolio.

Integrating the workplace into the learning sphere of the prototype

The apprentices suggest that the Learning Objectives in Practice space may
be a tool for more collaborative and more theoretically reflected, work-
place-based processes of learning, and for qualified professional discus-
sions. Furthermore, they point out a potential for increased cooperation
among masters of the companies accepting the apprentices. By agreeing

301
to short-term exchanges of apprentices, the masters could help one an-
other ensure that all required training objectives are reached in the peri-
ods of practice.
From a teacher’s point of view, ICT-mediated improvement to coop-
eration among masters is considered a smart way to increase the quality of
apprentice workplace learning. Moreover, better collaborative workplace
learning could support not only apprentice learning, but also coopera-
tion between school and companies. It could lead to stronger focus on
how the educational system may inspire and support strategies of work-
place-based competence development. As one teacher puts it:

If this means that we can get the companies to discuss these issues
and create a new understanding that knowledge has to enter the
field of practice, then we have achieved a great deal.

Thus, in many ways apprentices and teachers have shared interests.

Bringing their experiences and ideas together may help to improve the
quality and utility of the prototype.

Defining responsibilities
The apprentices point out an important and unintended potential con-
sequence of the changes to which a full implementation of the prototype
may lead. There is a risk of shifting the responsibility for learning de-
mands in the field of practice. The formal responsibility for facilitating
broad and adequate processes of competence development rests with the
workplace master. However, when the prototype is adopted, focus slow-
ly shifts to the role of the apprentices, and they do not want to shoul-
der this responsibility alone. Hence, in an eventual process of universal
implementation and integration of the software solution at CELF, it is
important that questions of responsibility be negotiated and clearly de-
fined in the institutional contexts framing cooperation between school
and companies.

Conclusion
Building the ‘Learning Bridge’ has provided an illustration of how us-
er-driven innovation may be introduced into educational design. The

302
project has made successful use of the Quadrant Model, proving that in
developing new didactic designs there are clear advantages to introduc-
ing a participation orientation and to taking a problem-based approach.
It has facilitated addressing several important issues concerning learning
processes, teaching, and education. Our general conclusions may be sum-
marized in three points.
Firstly, user-driven educational design offers an environment with
opportunities for articulating many different perspectives and positions
in the course of the design process. Thus, important and critical needs,
issues and challenges within the context of learning and practice are
brought out.
Consequently, the motivation of the participants for engaging in the
process has increased. Not only does the design environment facilitate the
development of a common language, it also mediates the interest in and
recognition of matters important to the design context.
Specifically, the method provides a distinct framework for the learn-
ing process, which reflects the shared and the divergent experiences in the
context. The method has the potential to stimulate new and transcend
current exchanges of experiences. But it is likely sometimes to clash with
ingrained notions of what is ‘correct’ in terms of educational and institu-
tional practices. As the teachers themselves point out in interviews, suc-
cessful implementation of the innovations require broad faculty support,
and this can be reached only by in-depth discussions on pedagogy and
how new digital infrastructures may improve the quality of teaching. Also
one has to know how to strike a balance between immediate concerns
and long-term objectives and policies. Innovation left solely in the hands
of fiery souls has a history of being largely ineffectual.
Secondly, the user-driven innovation approach has the potential
to strengthen both the internal and the external communication of the
institution. Through the inclusion and informal training of all actors,
they are likely to develop a nuanced understanding of how each module,
course, and lesson is linked to the organizational and pedagogical ideas
and objectives of the program.
Using the design method also is likely to make all actors (appren-
tices, faculty, and administrators) more visible to one another. This may
result in their becoming more attentive to mutual relations and better in-

303
formed as to when to evaluate and develop professional and educational
practices. Providing more individual responsibility leads to an increased
sense of ownership and to actual empowerment.
Thirdly, the approach to user-driven innovation outlined in this
chapter amounts to a challenge to education as an institution and to
the conventional roles associated with it. The ‘theatre’ no longer is the
sole domain of educators. All stakeholders should get involved, and put-
ting them all on an equal footing in processes of educational innovation
presents a major challenge to their self-perception, and perhaps also to
their competences. Still, the benefits for teachers and ‘customers’ (wheth-
er companies or society in general) should be obvious. By opening up
in this way, the educational institution will be better equipped to meet
the ever more rapidly changing demands for graduates with up-to-date
qualifications. When not left alone on stage or in the wings, but drawn
instead into collaborative exercises of exploring the best ways of designing
education, the teachers develop new skills and a new understanding not
only of the use of technology, but also of their professional field.
To sum it all up, what we have learned is how the use of ‘real-world
problems’ can guide the learning processes in vocational training. The
Problem-Based Learning strategy offers a new set of languages rooted
in different personal and professional experiences in different commu-
nities of practice. The problem at hand can be understood as a ‘trigger’
that conveys new meanings to the participants, thereby enabling the cre-
ation of new reflective personal and professional practices. The problem
‘trigger’ provides for mediation of both the experience at hand and the
theoretical and practical knowledge that is necessary to solve the prob-
lem. That is reason we have been using the bridge as a metaphor for the
dynamic conjunction of theory and practice, school and workplace, in
a technology-mediated and problem-oriented VLE. The bridging – or
mediation – of experienced practice affords letting the ‘problem’ become
the pivot for concrete processes of learning, that activate and draw upon
the experiences and motivation of the participants for collaborating in
developing learning, teaching, and working life. It is a new direction that
we would like to suggest may have impact on the future of learning.

304
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PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING AND
MUTUAL DEVELOPMENT IN
SOFTWARE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Renate Andersen, Anders I. Mørch

Introduction
Engaging customers in organizational learning, innovation, and knowl-
edge processes heralds the dawn of a new paradigm for product develop-
ment, where user data and information are not just gathered in databases,
but are embedded in dynamic co-creation processes that involve custom-
ers as partners with product developers rather than subjects (Rowley et
al., 2007). Several authors have written and stated the need for research-
ing how customers are co-creators in product development processes
(von Hippel, 2005). A focus on users is one of the most topical issues in
the new product development and innovation management literatures
(Repo et al., 2007), and users have a greater say than before in how inno-
vations are adopted; it is an unexpected type of user empowerment in the
digital age (Repo et al., 2007). This is also supported by Engeström when
he underscores the partnership activity between customers and develop-
ers in product development processes, which may lead to new forms of
learning, referred to as co-configuration work, in an expansive learning
framework (Engeström, 2004). In modern product development, the in-
put of the users and their acceptance are of major importance to market
success (Maalej and Rashid, 2009). The objective of this study is to look
more closely at the interaction and relationship between professional de-
velopers and customers in mutual product development and investigate
what issues of problem-based learning may derive from this.
Mutual development, first proposed as a process model of custom-
er-developer relations, describes how professional developers and users

307
interact in customer-initiated product development processes (Andersen,
2008; Andersen & Mørch, 2009; Mørch & Andersen, 2010). The model
defines different constellations of actors ranging from professional de-
velopers to customers and multiple stages of development between use
and development. The authors identified five different subprocesses of
mutual development, which is initiated and driven forward by problems
that customers encounter in their everyday work (in alphabetical order):
adaptation, generalization, improvement request, specialization, and tai-
loring (Andersen, 2008; Andersen and Mørch, 2009).
During the processes of mutual development, opportunities for
learning and innovation, such as Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and in-
terorganisational learning, emerge. The aim of this paper is to contribute
to the conceptual framework of mutual development by comparing it
with PBL in order to shed light on the early stages of the software product
development.
It can be fruitful to look at mutual development from a PBL per-
spective since it can provide a context for the integration of work and
learning. PBL is not very often referred to in the work context, e.g., re-
ported in business management journals. Surveying past work, Coombs
and Elden found only 39 citations to papers having problem-based learn-
ing or PBL in the title. However, there are many occurrences of PBL
titles in educational journals (958) and even more in medical journals
(1,671) (Coombs and Elden, 2004). Glud and colleagues underline that
there is a need for doing research on the use and experience with web-
based learning tools (Glud et al., 2010; Conole et al., 2008). This chapter
will go more deeply into some aspects of PBL in work-oriented and de-
velopmental contexts. We start by surveying the related work according
to theoretical perspectives. Then the context of our study is presented,
followed by the research questions and methodological considerations.
Next, the empirical data are described, followed by a general discussion.
Finally some conclusions and directions for further work are presented.

Related work
In mutual development, problems are the starting point for a cooperative
problem-solving process between customers and professional developers.
It is the problems the customers encounter in their working life when

308
using existing software products, a project-planning tool in our case,
that we wish to investigate further. In this context, problem-based learn-
ing becomes a natural byproduct of the software development process.
Therefore, aspects of PBL are used as a sensitizing concept in our empir-
ical analysis of the early phases of the mutual development of software
products. Theoretical perspectives that shed light on different aspects of
processes of mutual development will be reviewed in this section, which
is organized by first presenting Problem-Based Learning, then users as
innovators, followed by a description of users as active contributors, and
finally co-configuration.

Problem-based learning (PBL)

There is a large body of literature about problem-based learning,
describing it from different perspectives and as part of various process-
es. We cannot cover all of it here, but focus on the most relevant from
our perspective. PBL is well suited to helping students to become active
learners because it situates learning in real-world problems and makes
students responsible for their own learning (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). There
are different perspectives advocated by problem-based learning research-
ers, which highlight the various aspects of PBL differently. In Europe and
Scandinavia in particular, three influential perspectives are the Aalborg
model, Linkoping model, and Maastricht model. At the University of
Aalborg the students work closely together for an extensive period of
time in which they have to formulate and identify the problem and write
a project report (Ryberg et al., 2010). The Linköping model was initiat-
ed in 1986 at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Linköping University in
Sweden and was a groundbreaking effort to organize interprofessional
education. The basic idea is that it is favorable for the development of the
students’ own professional identity to meet other undergraduate students
(Wilhelmsson et al., 2009). The Linköping model combines the model
of PBL with interprofessional learning, emphasizing PBL in small groups
and student-centred learning (Wilhelmsson et al., 2009). At the Univer-
sity of Maastricht students follow a model where they are less dependent
on each other as they work individually on cases they have chosen them-
selves, which are open ended but formulated and suggested by the teach-
ers. The students meet in larger study groups (8-12 persons), which they

309
can use as an inspiration and as a backdrop for their own work (Ryberg et
al., 2010). The Maastricht and the Aalborg models of project work share
some characteristics, even though they were developed independently as
two different educational models, such as the pedagogical idea of prob-
lem analysis serving as the basis for the learning process, interdisciplinary
features, participation direction, and group work (de Graaf and Kolmos,
2003).
Common to all models of PBL is that problems are the starting point
for the learning process. Furthermore, the problems with which students
work should as much as possible be real life problems. It is crucial that
the problem serves as the basis for the learning process because this de-
termines the direction of the learning process and places emphasis on
students as problem owners (rather than teachers) (Fischer, 1994), and
on the formulation of a question rather than an answer (de Graaf and
Kolmos, 2003). A problem in PBL is defined as an incentive for stu-
dents, a challenge to start them off on their own learning process (Graff
and Kolmos, 2007). In mutual product development processes it is the
problems the customers encounter that serve as the starting point for a
learning process, which is a side-effect of using advanced software prod-
ucts such as project-planning tools. Students are attracted to different
types of problems on the basis of their own experiences and interests. A
problem can be any type of problem, for instance a concrete and realistic
problem (my car has a flat battery, the printer stopped working) or a
theoretical and abstract problem (e.g., formatting a database table) (de
Graaf and Kolmos, 2007). In processes of mutual development the focus
is on realistic problems. The most characteristic feature of PBL is that it is
based on authentic and complex problems (Lehtinen, 2002). In software
development this could mean a software product that is difficult to use
for supporting work in a user organization (e.g., project planning).
Characteristic for PBL is that students are asked to put their knowl-
edge to use and to be reflective and self-directed learners (Hmelo-Sil-
ver, 2004). Hmelo-Silver underlines that the principle of self-directed
learning emphasizes a distinguishing feature of PBL. In PBL students
become responsible for their own learning, which has the potential to
make them become more reflective and thinking critically about what is
being learned (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989; Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Be-

310
ing a self-directed learner involves several subskills. Firstly, learners must
have a metacognitive awareness of what they do and do not understand.
Secondly, they must be able to set learning goals and identify what they
need to learn more about for the task in which they are engaged. Thirdly,
they must be able to plan their learning and select appropriate learning
strategies, which means they must select an appropriate course of action
to reach these goals. Finally, as they implement their plan, learners must
be able to monitor and evaluate whether or not their goals have been
attained (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Blumberg further states that students par-
ticipating in PBL curricula demonstrate self-directed learning skills, such
as having the ability to define what is to be learned, to access material,
and to actively study the material (Blumberg, 2004).

Users as active contributors and innovators

Researchers in participatory design, human-computer interaction (HCI),
and computer- supported cooperative work (CSCW) have studied active
user involvement in ICT development (Bjerknes, Bratteteig & Espeseth,
1991; Gantt & Nardi, 1992) and developed design environments (Fisch-
er, 2004) and end-user tailoring toolkits (Mørch, 1998) for user partici-
pation. Researchers in management have studied innovation in manufac-
turing process, in particular a turn from manufacturer-centric innovation
to user-centric innovation (Von Hippel, 2005). Lundvall pointed to the
usefulness of applying a user-producer perspective to innovation (Lund-
vall, 1985). He found that user-producer interaction works in different
ways in different parts of the economy. Jeppesen and Molin (2003) sug-
gest providing customers with user toolkits for design to foster user-driven
innovation (Von Hippel, 2005). With the notion of toolkits for design,
the HCI & CSCW tradition of user-tailorable systems may one day con-
verge with the management tradition of user-driven innovation.
Nardi and Miller identified a continuum of three kinds of users:
end users, local developers, and professional programmers, where local
developers where defined as domain experts who have acquired more
advanced knowledge of computing (Gantt and Nardi, 1991). Howev-
er, Nardi and Gantt developed the notion of local developers further and
point to how the role of the local developer has evolved into the more for-
mal or semiformal role of ‘gardener’, obviating the need for professional

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programmers. Local developers supporting mechanical engineers in do-
main-specific programming tasks are referred to as gardeners, and those
in electrical engineering are gurus (Gantt and Nardi, 1992). Gardeners
and gurus are distinct from other local developers in that they are given
recognition, time, and resources for pursuing local developer activities
(Gantt and Nardi, 1992). Åsand and Mørch define superusers as regular
employees with in-depth knowledge of one or more of the organization’s
computer applications without being programmers. Superusers have
both domain expertise and computer know-how, and they are trained
to teach other users. They are not trained as programmers; instead they
interact with regular users and with local developers in their daily work
(Åsand and Mørch, 2006). Fischer uses the term power users when de-
scribing users or domain experts that are able to make modifications and
customizations on a system, and making needed changes to a system on
behalf of the community, or by teaching others to do so (Fischer, 2004).
Power users help others to transcend the boundary that exists between
using a system as it is and modifying it for new purposes (Fischer, 2004).
Users that innovate are often referred to as ‘lead users’ (von Hippel,
2005). Von Hippel defines the term lead user as a member of a user pop-
ulation having two characteristics. First, lead users anticipate relatively
high benefits from obtaining a solution to local problems and so, may
innovate. Second, they are at the leading edge of important trends in a
marketplace under study, and so are currently experiencing needs that
will later be experienced by many other users in that marketplace (von
Hippel, 2005). It has also been shown that innovations developed by
lead users to solve problems they encounter are at the leading edge of
the market, and will later also be wanted by others, and therefore will be
potentially profitable products for manufacturers (von Hippel, 2005).
The innovative ideas the customers submit to the company often are new
ideas that the professional developers have not yet thought of developing.
Local developers, gardeners, gurus, superusers, power users and lead
users are all different terms for describing active users who take initiative
by proposing solutions or idea proposals to improve existing products or
services, or otherwise contributing to the community with site-specific
knowledge and use experience.

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Co-configuration
Co-configuration provides an example of how the work of domain-ex-
pert users can be organized in cooperation with professional developers
during various stages of product development processes. Co-configura-
tion is defined as an emerging, historically new type of work, which gen-
erates new forms for learning (Victor & Boynton, 1998). Characteristic
for co-configuration is that it consists of flexible and adaptive products,
service combinations, continuous mutual exchange between customers
and developers, ongoing customization of product-service relationships
over time, multiple collaborating producers, and mutual learning from
interactions between the parties involved (Engeström, 2004). Co-con-
figuration originally derives from a model of development of work de-
veloped by Victor and Boynton (1998). Whereas Victor and Boynton
define co-configuration as a new form of work, Engeström places co-con-
figuration within an organizational learning context. According to Enge-
ström, co-configuration is an approach to product development where
the dialectic relationship between the customers and developers is of the
utmost importance. There are two clear advantages of co-configuration:
the adaptation of products to customers’ individual needs and an ongo-
ing value creation for the company, for example, organizational learning
(Andersen, 2008). Co-configuration thus can enlighten the collaborative
aspect between customers and professional developers in product devel-
opment processes. During co-configuration work, the customer becomes
in a sense a ‘partner with the producer’ (Engeström 2004; Victor &
Boynton, 1998). In spite of this, it is not a simultaneous process of equal
participation, but a rather complex process involving several subprocesses
and asymmetrical relationships among participants, some of which are
closely tied to software professionals’ work and others that are tied to
organization of local developers (Åsand & Mørch, 2006).

The context of study

Learning, in this chapter, is viewed from a sociocultural perspective, un-
derlining that what people learn in specific settings is dependent on how
activities are socially organized and how they have emerged as institutional
practices (Ludvigsen et al., 2011). Within the sociocultural perspective it
is taken for granted that the context and the world we live in are mediated

313
through different artifacts. We are always situated in a context that has to
be taken into consideration. This also applies for product development
processes when seen in light of PBL. The problems end users encounter
when using software products are often connected to users working life
context, meaning that this context needs to be taken into consideration.
This opens up for a connection between PBL and mutual product de-
velopment. From a sociocultural perspective, this means we need to pay
attention to how the students’ problem- solving activities are situated in
their social, cultural, historical, and institutional settings and a main issue
is to identify how these differing settings provide contexts and tools for
interaction (Krange and Ludvigsen, 2008). ICT as infrastructure, tool,
and artifact play a central role in the mediation of communication, col-
laboration, and learning according to Dirckinck-Holmfeld (2009). She
further states that ICT as a tool and as a way of organizing information
is one of the most important societal tools of today and PBL approaches
should therefore exploit its advantages (Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2009).
The Company is a software house that develops and sells project
management tools to the oil, gas, and building industry in Norway. The
Company has a total of 30-35 employees geographically distributed in
different offices. The main office is located in Stavanger, one office is in
Oslo, and one in the United States. The professional developers told us,
‘Our project management tool is being used in nearly 90 percent of all
Norwegian oil and gas projects’ (informant 1), indicating that this is a
tool that is widely used for planning complex projects. In order to handle
the rapid growth of customers who forward improvement requests and
provide feedback concerning the Company‘s product planning tools, the
Company uses a technological support tool for handling these issues,
HelpDesk. HelpDesk is an information repository and distribution sys-
tem place where customers can issue requests for improvement, such as a
wish for new functionality, error messages, usability problems, upgrades,
and new versions of the different products, etc.
The customers have a login account and password for HelpDesk and
are encouraged to use the HelpDesk for submitting issues towards further
development of the products. A screen image of HelpDesk is shown in
figure 1.

314
 Fig. 1. HelpDesk:
Issuing an improvement requests to the company and viewing old requests

On the basis of the context description above, we have formulated the

following research question:

1. To what extent can PBL be used to characterize aspects of mutu-

al development, in particular:

a) The role of problems as starting points of development;

b) Identifying opportunities for learning in conjunction with de-
velopment; and
c) Organization of customer-developer relationships over time.

Methods and data collection

The objective of the study is to investigate what forms of PBL may oc-
cur in processes of mutual development mediated by technological tools,
including a project-planning tool and HelpDesk. Data were collected as
part of a research project, KIKK (Kunnskapsforvaltning for Intern Kom-
munikasjon og Kundebetjening), which was a case in a large EU project,

315
Knowledge Practices (KP) Lab (Moen, Mørch, & Paavola, 2012). We
used a qualitative approach as part of a case study, where the primary goal
was to clarify the character or attributes of a phenomenon (Widerberg,
2001). A case study is useful since it allows the researcher to study the
phenomenon in detail and to develop as full an understanding as possible
(Silverman, 2005). The case study is designed to extend our previous
efforts (as described above) by focusing on the mutual development and
potential learning situations.
Ethnography was employed as a method in line with the sociocultur-
al perspective adopted in the project. Ethnography is a method that ‘seeks
to present a portrait of life as seen and understood by those who live and
work within the domain concerned’ (Hughes et. al., 1994). Techniques
used in the data gathering were open-ended interviews, participating ob-
servation, and observation. We interviewed both professional developers
at the Company and customers in both the oil and building industries.
An interview guide was created in advance with some preset topics and
used as a guideline during the open-ended interviews. ‘An open-ended
interview is usually thematised in advance, meaning there exists a set of
topics or areas of interest which the researchers want to investigate fur-
ther’ (Fog, 2004, p. 18, my translation). During the interviews, the em-
phasis was on starting a conversation and then letting the informant lead
the interview. What characterizes a qualitative interview, which is not a
structured interview, is how it pursues what the informants start to talk
about, and which may shed light on the informants’ understanding of the
actual theme (Widerberg, 2004). In the KIKK project, we collected 22
hours of video and audio recordings.
During analysis of the empirical data, template analysis was used for
defining the intermediate terms that emerged (analytic categories). Tem-
plate analysis is a process where the researcher produces a list of codes (a
template) representing themes identified in the textual data (King, 1994).
The codes that emerged from the empirical data during the analysis
serve as analytic categories to organize the presentation of findings. The
top-level categories are: adaptation, generalization, improvement request,
and scaffolding. The process of coding means to label a section of text
with a code in order to index it as relating to a theme or issue in the data
that the researcher has identified as important to his or her interpretation

316
(King, 1994). In a previous round of analysis, the authors identified im-
provement request, adaptation, and generalization. They are reused here
because the data we report overlap with the previously reported findings
pertaining to subprocesses of mutual development (Andersen & Mørch,
2009; Mørch & Andersen, 2010). Our focus in this chapter has been on
identifying aspects of PBL and processes of cooperation and collabora-
tion. The term scaffolding refers to the phenomena of guiding novices
in unfamiliar settings, helping them to become independent problem
solvers; it was first reported in studies of adult-child cooperative problem
solving (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976).

Data and analysis

Data were selected on the basis of being representative of the empirical
categories in our data set. The selection of excerpts for each category had
not been used earlier. The aim of the presentation is to highlight the
problem-based learning aspects of mutual development, which served as
a sensitizing concept to foreground aspects of learning and (personal)
development, as users interact with professional developers in processes
of mutual development. The product referred to in the excerpts is a proj-
ect-planning tool used in the oil, gas, and building industries for manag-
ing complex projects. Figure 2 shows a screen image of The Company’s
Planner tool.
The organization of data analysis is as follows: first, we name the
empirical category, give a brief context description of the data extract,
then present a sequence of interview data, followed by a brief explanation
in ‘common sense’ terminology before we discuss it with the theoretical
perspectives we presented in the Related Work section.

Improvement request
Excerpts 1 and 2 highlight the identification of real-world problems. The
excerpts are examples of how a customer has encountered a problem in
his daily work when using the project-planning tool and therefore has
sent an improvement request to the company.

317
 Fig. 2. A screen of the Planner tool: Overall Total Progress
of project planning activity

Excerpt 1

Question: Have you suggested any improvements on the product

to the Company?

Answer: Yes, there is one thing that annoys me a little bit. But
it might be that I am using version 2000 of the product, but I
think it is corrected in the newer version [of the product]. But
the problem is that when I add hours worked [into the project
plan] I add them to task level, however when running the anal-
ysis it needs to have the hours worked on resource levels. This
means that I have to put it in two times – and on 4,000 activi-
ties this is a quite lot of work.

318
In this excerpt the customer answers that he has suggested some improve-
ment of the project-planning tool to the Company because he experi-
enced problems with the tool, which he thought was troublesome. The
customer points to a problem with the project-planning tool when edit-
ing the project plan and adding hours worked. He does this on a level of
editing named task level; however, this is not the same level as the one on
which the analysis is run. Running an analysis of the project is being done
on the resource level, meaning that he has to put in hours worked twice.

Excerpt 2

In this excerpt, which follows from excerpt 1, the customer tells

the interviewer that he has sent an improvement request to the
company about the problem reported with the project-planning
tool.

Question: Concerning the issue that you have to put in worked

hours in the project-planning tool twice in order to run the anal-
ysis, have this been fixed for you? Have you provided feedback to
the Company about this?

Answer: No, they have not yet found a solution to this problem.
I have given my input and sent them an improvement request,
but it works in… However, in a couple of years this is a forgotten
problem. It is only in Planning Tool 2000 that this is a problem,
so I am looking forward to the new version [of the product].

The customer says that he has given the Company input about a prob-
lem with the project-planning tool, but it is not fixed yet. The excerpt
shows that it is actual problems the customers encounter that can trigger
further development of the product. It is clear from this excerpt that the
customer has sent a suggestion to the Company about improving the
problem. Excerpts 1 and 2 illustrate how problems serve as the starting
point for providing the company feedback about further development of
the products.

319
Scaffolding
In Excerpt 3 below, one of the professional developers in the Company
explains how knowledgeable their customers are. He says they often an-
swer their own questions due to their domain-expert knowledge in the
use of the project-planning tools.

Excerpt 3

Professional developer: The customers call directly to the devel-

opers [when they want to forward improvement requests, ideas,
bug fixes etc.]. Very often the case is actual that, many of our
customers are really competent and skilled – they even have a
lot of [expert] knowledge of the project-planning tools they, [if I
tell them to] just repeat their question to me enough times –they
very often find an answer to the question themselves. It happens
frequently. Often it is like they ask – how was this being done or
what did you suggest now – and do this a couple of times and
then they have found their solution.

This excerpt shows how competent and skilled some of the Company’s
customers are. In this case the professional developer purposively (and it
seems this is something he usually does with his customers) encourages
the customers to answer their own questions by guiding them in the
right direction. This becomes evident when the developer says that he
tries to help them to use and develop their own knowledge by asking
them leading questions and to repeat the questions. It seems as though
it is an underlying goal for the developer to help the customers to help
themselves, by directing them to answer their own questions and using
the knowledge they already possess.

Adaptation
The excerpt below is from an interview with one of the professional de-
velopers at the Company, describing how the customers contact them
when they want to develop the product further in order to fit it to their
needs. Nils, another professional developer in the Company, is also in-
volved in customer support.

320
 Excerpt 4

Question: If the customers want extra functionality added to

their products, do they contact you?

Answer: No, they do not. [The developer works more with the
technical part of the products, configurations, installations, etc.].
It is typical that they have talked with Nils for a long time [in-
dicating several communication points over time]. They have
explained why things [functions in the project-planning tool]
work in certain ways and how they want them to work differ-
ently, what does not work and how they want it. They want us to
develop the product further, more specifically for them.

The developer states that the typical product development process is

characterized by a relationship between customers and some developers
assigned the role of customer consultant over time, since several contact
points concerning further development of the product is implied. This
indicates that there is long-term interaction between some customers and
developers that include collaboration (with, e.g., Nils) and cooperation
(indirectly with the other developer). This excerpt also shows that some
customers are clear about how they want the products to behave, and
consequently adapted, according to their needs.

Generalization
Excerpt 5 is from an interview with one of the professional developers in
the Company, in which he describes how their customers contact them
regarding further development of their products.

Excerpt 5

Question: Does this [the process of handling improvement re-

quest or local adaptation of the product] apply to all of your
products?

Answer: No, in practice it does not. It is meant to be just for

321
 Planning Tool. But if a customer states that he wants to have a
product that does this and that [work in a specific way] and if
the customer pays for it, then it is okay [to develop the product
further in accordance to the customers’ request].

Question: Is this because Planner [Planning tool and Company’s

main product] is the tool that is the most adaptable product you
have?

Answer: Yes, that is what I am telling you. If we see that this is a

feature we should have created/thought of a long time ago, like,
why did we not make it like that [the product], it may be the
case that it will be part of the next main release of the product. If
not, the customer has to pay for it. It can be a feature that we see
is really useful and think that we absolutely should have it, but
it is way too expensive to develop – it can be – that the customer
will have to pay for it.

In this excerpt it is being questioned whether the customers ask for im-
provement requests on all of their products, implying that the Company
produces several types of project-planning tools. The Company provides
four different types of project-planning tools (Andersen, 2008). Ac-
cording to the professional developer, the project-planning tool named
Planner is the product about which most customers send improvement
requests regarding adaptation and further development. This excerpt re-
veals an underlying philosophy heralded by the Company, being open to
ideas to improve its product further and appreciating suggestions from
valued customers. Furthermore, the developer says that if one of the cus-
tomers suggests an innovative feature for one of their products, which is
the type of idea the Company would have liked to discover for itself, the
Company can choose to integrate the suggested feature in the next release
of the product. This means that a single customer’s idea for improvement
may be ‘generalized’ and made available to all customers, that is, if it is
a good idea. However, if the idea is not so good, the Company can still
fulfill the request, but the customer will then have to pay for the cost of
the adaptation.

322
General discussion
In this section the empirical data will be interpreted and discussed at a
more general level of discourse. The purpose of this section is to answer
the research questions: a) the role of problem as primer; b) opportunities
for learning in conjunction with development; and c) organization of
customer-developer relationships over time, which are reflected in the
organization of this section. We seek to make use of the theoretical per-
spectives surveyed in the beginning of this chapter in order to compare
and contrast our results with the results reported in the literature (PBL;
self-directed learning; active users; co-configuration).

Authentic problem as primer

In problem-based learning, as the name implies, the problem serves as the
basis for the learning process by giving a direction to the learning process.
PBL emphasizes the equal importance of formulating a question and find-
ing the answer (de Graff and Kolmos, 2003). Excerpts 1 and 2 can be seen
as an example of how the customers act as problem identifiers, suggesting
problems that can serve as the starting point for a product development
and learning process. Graaf and Kolmos claim that it is important that
problems serve as a starting point in order to give the process direction
and meaning (Graaf and Kolmos, 2007). Excerpts 1 and 2 emphasize how
the suggestions for product development derive from problems and issues
the customers encounter when using the project-planning tool in their
everyday work. Additionally, it is clear from the excerpts that it is the
customers who experience problems with the products and take initiative
on their own and contact the company regarding further development.
This is in line with Lehtinen, who says that the most characteristic feature
of PBL is that it is based on authentic and complex problems (Lehtinen,
2002). Excerpts 1 and 2 also show how the customers act as problem iden-
tifiers. When the customer calls the professional developer and explains
why their project-planning tool does not operate the way they want in
order to perform in their daily work tasks, they act as problem identi-
fiers. Coombs and Elden (2004) emphasize PBL’s focus on real-world
or authentic problems that capture the complexity and ambiguity that
learners will face in their careers rather than being structured around
separate academic disciplines. When the customer in Excerpt 4 proposes

323
improvement requests to the Company, it is almost a demand to be part
of a collaborative product development process. When the customers in
Excerpts 1, 2, and 4 suggest ideas for further change to the products, it
provides a context for the development and learning process, as well as
what is to be further developed on the project-planning tool. This is in
line with Coombs and Elden saying that in PBL the problems form the
context for learning within which both content knowledge and skills or
competencies are developed (Coombs & Elden, 2004).

Opportunities for learning: Self-directed learning

Self-directed learning refers to a situation where students are made re-
sponsible for their own learning and involves subskills, such as having a
perspective on what the students do and do not understand, identifying
learning goals, and planning appropriate learning strategies (Hmelo-Sil-
ver, 2004). Excerpt 3 points to how the customers act as self-directed
learners due to the emphasis on customers answering their own ques-
tions. It is evident in this excerpt that the customers, through some guid-
ance from the professional developers, are creating solutions and answers
to their own problems with their project-planning tools. In self-directed
learning, students apply their new knowledge (as the customer uses the
new version of the project-planning tool) and evaluate their hypotheses
in light of what they have learned (as the customer uses the planning tool
to plan a project and reflects upon it). According to Hmelo-Silver (2004),
self-directed learning involves several subskills, where one of them is
metacognitive awareness, i.e., learners’ awareness of what they do and do
not understand. When the customers ask questions, reformulate them,
and reflect upon what they do and do not understand, and finally find a
solution to their problems themselves, this is an example of self-directed
learning. In PBL, students become reflective and critically think about
what is being learned (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). It seems like this is the case
here, when the professional developer in the excerpt says that he repeats
the customers’ questions several times and thereby guides them towards
creating their own solutions. As stated in Excerpt 3, the customer calls the
developer directly because he has a problem with a current product and
wants to have it further developed according to his needs. Doing this is in
keeping with self-directed learning according to Blumberg (2004): users

324
have the ability to define what is to be learned, to access material, and to
actively study the material. Contacting the developer and explaining in
what ways he wants to change the product points at the fact that the cus-
tomer has an overview of what he wants to be learned and changed. The
customer uses the tool in his daily work and thereby has the opportunity
to access the product and study what changes are needed.

Opportunities for learning: Active users

All of the excerpts above point at how the users are active contributors in
mutual software product development. The users propose improvement
requests as in Excerpt 1 and 2, in Excerpt 3 the customer contacts directly
the developers with questions and ideas, and in Excerpt 4 the customers
asks for adaptations of the product so that it fit just their needs. Further
on, in Excerpt 5, the customers are actually active to such great extent that
their suggestions for further development actually become part of the
general product. This indicates a wide range of different ways the users
are active contributors in the mutual development.
The adaptation of products as pointed at in Excerpt 4 demonstrates
to what great extent the customers are active and engaged in the prod-
uct development processes, due to the fact that they are the ones asking
for and suggesting further development of the products. Superusers are
regular employees with in depth knowledge of one or more of the or-
ganization’s computer applications without being programmers (Åsand
and Mørch, 2006). In Excerpt 4 regular employees acting as users of the
products have such in depth knowledge about the project-planning tool
that they are able to propose software changes to the product. In this
manner, in the light of a super user, the customer can be seen as an active
user. Further on, in Excerpt 4, it is evident that the customers through
explaining how the products work and does not work show that they
have domain expertise and computer know how, which is in line with
the notion of superusers by Åsand and Mørch (Åsand and Mørch 2006).
The concept of active users is further supported in Excerpt 5. In Excerpt
5 the developer states how the customers call directly to the professional
developers and say in what ways the product should be changed to work
in order to fit their needs. As a prolonging of this it is being said that cus-
tomers sometimes proposes such good ideas that it becomes part of the

325
general product, which indicates great domain expertise and know-how
about the project-planning tool. When a customer proposes an improve-
ment request, which is of such good quality that it becomes integrated
in the general product, it is an underlying assumption that the customer
has to be knowledgeable in order to propose such changes. These types of
superusers can be classified as local developers (Gantt and Miller, 1992)
or power users (Fischer, 2004). Excerpt 1 and 2 are examples of how the
customers are the driving forces behind the development process, point-
ing at how the customers are the ones contacting the company and in this
manner being active. In lead user innovation (von Hippel, 2005), users
are considered as important parts of the product development process,
as they bring innovative ideas from outside. However, user participation
is not without its problems. Developer issues such as security, ownership
rights to ideas and products, can easily lead to big problems for the com-
pany. These issues are considered outside the scope of this paper due to
space requirements and lack of data. In spite of this, Excerpt 5 gives a fla-
vour of a complex problem in how the company encourages customers to
propose improvements to the products and accepts those that are of good
quality. This is in line with lead user innovation, which refers to users
who are ahead of the companies’ products (von Hippel, 2005). Excerpt
5 illustrates how a single improvement request from a customer can lead
to a generalization that is implemented in the next release of the software
and made available to all customers.

Organization of customer-developer relationships

In Excerpt 3 it is indicated that there exists collaboration between de-
velopers and customers in the product development processes, since the
customers propose ideas and the developers develop respond to them
and sometimes implement them as the data indicates. This is a form of
co-configuration. A central aspect in co-configuration work is the close
collaboration between developers and customers (Engeström, 2004).
Another indication is that a mutual exchange between customers and
developers can be seen, meaning that the customers sometimes get their
development for free and the company gets good and innovative ideas
integrated in the general product. Engeström says that a characteristic
of co-configuration is the continuous mutual exchange between custom-

326
ers and developers (Engeström, 2004). Excerpt 1 and 2 shows how the
customer has given the company feedback of how to improve the prod-
uct even further. These excerpts point to how the customer through his
request of modification of the product asks the company for a sort of
collaboration in the product development process, which is in keeping
with co-configuration processes, where the emphasize is on close col-
laboration between developers and customers in product development
(Engeström, 2004). In our previous work (Andersen, 2008; Andersen &
Mørch, 2009; Mørch & Andersen 2010), we have referred to this as out-
er-loop development; in contrast, the technically driven work organized
by the company internally we call inner-loop development. Furthermore,
one of the characteristics of co-configuration is that there is an ongoing
customization of product-service relationships over time (Engeström,
2004). We can distinguish product-service relationships as a two-stage
process: 1) interaction between customers and a developer with the role
of customer support to bridge between the product and Helpdesk and 2)
interaction between the customer support and the full-time developers,
mediated by the product. Moreover, we can distinguish the process in
terms of ‘collaboration’ and ‘cooperation:’ collaboration between custom-
ers and customer support (intensive short-term activity) and cooperation
between end-user developers and professional developers as an activity
spread over time (i.e., as stated in the beginning of Excerpt 4). When the
customers contact the company with questions on how to develop the
product further or how to adapt it to their specific needs, this is an exam-
ple of how the customers initiate and invite the company into a special
type of collaboration (which can take several months); this may end with
a long-term process of cooperation (taking up to several years). In Excerpt
3, the professional developer points out that the customers contact Nils
(another professional developer in the Company who acts as customer
support). He plays a critical role in integrating collaboration (short term,
intense) and cooperation (long term, interspersed) activities, which we
see as key components of co-configuration work.

Directions for further work

The main findings derived from the empirical data are that the customers
act as problem identifiers and problem owners when they co-create a

327
new artifact with the company’s developers. An interesting question to be
explored is to what extent these findings could apply in educational con-
texts as well, i.e., to what degree the students identify their own problems
and how they are connected to issues of development they experience
in their daily lives. Furthermore, a PBL scenario at a school that draws
on the concept of mutual development and the students’ expertise from
outside school settings could be envisioned. One example to illustrate
this point is giving a group of students an assignment to initiate or join
a campaign for the improvement of some well-known product or service
in the community; to achieve success, this may require skills of multi-
ple kinds: research, interest, communication, and persuasion. There have
been attempts at this in the public sphere in Norway, in the domains of
unhealthy foods and sugary beverages, sports goods, and public services.
Often initiated in the popular press or on Internet sites with broad in-
terest (e.g., Facebook). Moreover, Ponti (2013) conducted a interesting
study to identify the mechanisms involved in open educational resources
and the role of the teacher in this process. In Ponti’s study, she identified
‘tensions’ connected to empowering students to participate in open ed-
ucational courses and how they appropriate open educational resources
that are not fixed a priori by a teacher, but adapted by the students to
their own needs (Ponti, 2013). A direction for further work could be to
investigate the tensions that arise in situations where students are expect-
ed to be active participants and when the quality of the course is direct-
ly dependent on their participation. Following from this, directions for
further work based on the current study could be to take a closer look
at what tensions can be associated with customer initiated development
(such as the issue of property rights) and what strengths and weakness-
es are associated with problem-based and self-directed learning within
mutual development in professional contexts. Further work could start
by studying mutual development in another domain, and by employing
research methods (other than interview) for data collection and analysis.
We are currently pursuing the latter by involving social network analysis
and combining qualitative (interview, interaction analysis) and quantita-
tive methods (SNA).

328
Summary and conclusions
We have described a set of processes of collaborative software product
development that involves customers in processes of adaptation, gener-
alization, improvement request, and scaffolding. Improvement request
and adaptation involve problems that customers encounter in their daily
work and they serve as drivers for further development. During scaffold-
ing, facets of self-directed learning are revealed in the way that developers
help the customers to help themselves. Generalization is more elaborated
process and involves short-term collaboration (between customers and
customer support) embedded within a longer-term cycle of cooperation
(between end-user developers and professional developers). Our analysis
shows that mutual development provides opportunities for learning in
terms of problem-based and self-directed learning. This chapter therefore
contributes to the discourse of discussing PBL outside formal educational
settings. In addition, this chapter suggests that Problem-Based Learn-
ing can be part of product development processes, and that the learning
opportunities can enrich the development process for the participants
involved. The lessons learned from this study may provide new ideas that
can be adopted in educational settings.

Acknowledgements
The authors thank the former members of the KIKK project at InterMe-
dia, University of Oslo, for contributing to the ideas presented here, in
particular Anne Moen, Kathrine Nygård, and Shazia Mushtaq. Previous
versions of this chapter have been presented in the SCANDLE (SCandi-
navian Approach to the Design of Learning Environments) network. We
thank the SCANDLE members and the editors of this book for valuable
feedback during the process.

329
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MUSICALLY SKILLED GAMERS’ USE
AND EXPRESSIONS OF KNOWLEDGE
OF MUSIC AND MUSIC MAKING
WHEN PLAYING GUITAR HERO

Jens Ideland

Background
A great deal of musical learning often takes place outside traditional mu-
sic educational environments (Folkestad, 2007). Listening to music while
doing other things, or consuming multimedia with background music,
contributes to knowledge of music (Ericsson, 2007; Green, 2001; Wing-
stedt, 2008). It has been suggested that playing the digital music game
Guitar Hero (GH) is an activity that ‘isn’t just like playing a real instru-
ment, but it’s nothing at all like just listening to music’ (Miller, 2009, p.
424). When introduced in 2005 Guitar Hero rapidly became widespread
and very popular, and for some years many youths spent a lot of time
mastering this game challenge based on guitar parts of heavy rock songs.
Many Swedish pupils refer to Guitar Hero and other digital music games,
e.g., Rock Band or Sing Star, when talking about music or what it means
to be musically talented (Hellgren, 2011). Nowadays these games also
affect what is being done during music lessons in Sweden (Ericsson &
Lindgren, 2010).
Since Guitar Hero runs on a game console (e.g., PlayStation, X-box
or Wii) and the player sees the game track and hears sounds and music
through a television set, it is in one sense a ‘traditional’ digital game. But
unlike most digital games, Guitar Hero has a customised game control
(fig. 3). The guitarlike shape, the five colourful buttons, and the strum
bar do not make the control a real guitar, but nevertheless it has some
physical resemblance to an electric guitar. Together with the display of a
virtual band, stage, and audience on the game screen, this control frames

337
the game as a kind of simulation of playing the guitar in a rock band,
thus urging the gamer to act with some resemblance to a guitar player (see
Arsenault, 2008). Playing Guitar Hero thereby offers an activity in which
the digitally generated game screen, as well as the sounds and actions
heard and performed in front of the television set, are important (see
Miller, 2008, 2009).
The game-specific notation displayed on the game screen similarly
represents some aspects of the original guitar part. Since the notation and
the guitarlike interface use only five colours/buttons, it is impossible to
represent tonal movements and different chords accurately. But, as the
former music educator Shultz (2008) argues, the reduction used to cre-
ate the game track is often quite successful and has many similarities to
the reduction used by music theorists when analysing basic structures in
compositions. A gamer that succeeds when playing the game thus per-
forms a simplified representation of the guitar part on the plastic GH
guitar. When doing so correctly, s/he is rewarded with points, but even
more importantly, s/he gets to hear the original guitar part through the
speakers. This way the gamer is sometimes offered an illusion of ‘playing’
the guitar part him/herself.
Arsenault (2008) argues that Guitar Hero is a rather good simula-
tion of what rock guitarists do. This is not because the game accurately
simulates any single aspect of playing an electric guitar in detail, but be-
cause, through representing many different aspects of playing guitar in a
rock band in a fairly good way Guitar Hero simulates ‘the idea of playing
guitar’ (p. 2). Miller (2009) comes to a similar conclusion when arguing
that Guitar Hero is a type of rock performance simulation somewhere
between listening to music and playing an instrument. Although playing
Guitar Hero or Rock Band stands out here as a form of tribute to rock
music and rock musicians, Miller’s study reveals that many musically in-
terested adults, i.e., music journalists and musicians, are negative about
this kind of music games. They often describe playing Guitar Hero as an
activity with no meaningful connection to music or musical learning,
and one that kills both time and creativity (Miller, 2009).
As a commercial off-the-shelf game made for entertainment (Sving-
by & Nilsson, 2010), Guitar Hero is not designed primarily to enhance
education or the development of musical skills. Nevertheless, it can be

338
argued that some popular entertainment games provide good environ-
ments for learning (Becker, 2008; Gee, 2003), offering opportunities for
players taking support from smart tools and distributed knowledge to
view, perform, and feel a depicted activity in a ‘professionalised way’ (see
Goodwin, 1994; Gee, 2007). Some researchers (e.g., Walker & Shelton,
2008) argue that many digital games for education function as environ-
ments for problem-based learning (PBL). Considering that players taking
on the seemingly authentic ‘problem’ offered by Guitar Hero (Arsenault,
2008) often develop knowledge and skills in small groups and/or Internet
communities (see Miller, 2009; Väkevä, 2010), this entertainment game,
too, stands out as a kind of informal PBL environmnet.
In line with such arguments, some researchers advocate the possibili-
ties of incorporating games like Guitar Hero into music education (Gower
& McDowall, 2012). Other researchers problematize high expectations
on learning through gaming when arguing that what gamers do and learn
in digital environments cannot easily be foreseen (Peterson, 2011). Rather
than gaining knowledge of a ‘reality’ depicted by a game, players often
learn how to read and handle the visual game screen itself (Linderoth &
Bennerstedt, 2007; Linderoth, 2010). Furthermore, many commercial
games give an illusion of learning rather than pushing gamers to develop
new skills (Linderoth, 2008; 2010). In this study, though, playing Guitar
Hero is viewed as a practice in its own right, a spare time activity outside
the didactic framing and predefined goals of education that offers increas-
ingly demanding challenges to gamers moving on to higher levels.
The challenge that players need to tackle to succeed can in itself be
viewed as a skill and drill task, drawing on behaviouristic ideas about
learning (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2006). On the other hand, Guitar Hero was
originally developed to be a sort of rock performance simulator, a kind
of microworld (Papert, 1980) in the sense that it offers possibilities of ex-
ploring and expressing the showmanship of rock musicians (Miller, 2009,
p. 412). Consequently, it is not only managing the game challenge and
getting high scores that are important. How this is done and expressed as
a musical experience, using bodily movements, etc., is often as important
to many gamers interested in rock music (Miller, 2009). Guitar Hero
can thus be viewed as a sociocultural environment and situated practice,
rooted in both music making and gaming practices, which offers ‘new’

339
ways to experience, act, and express knowledge as well as identity to par-
ticipating players (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2006; Gee, 2003; Nilsson, 2010;
see also Dewey, 1938; Säljö, 2010). Rather than learning itself, the scope
of this study is to examine how this environment affords performing and
expressing knowledge of music and musicianship.
Features of the GH tools and technology at hand thus play an im-
portant role since they affect players’ abilities to express who they are and
what they are doing in the current situation (Gee, 1999; 2003; Säljö,
2010; Turkle, 1984). A common adult perspective on Guitar Hero is
that players have to obey the rules and scoring system, and therefore be-
come ‘enslaved’ by the game (Miller, 2009; Svec, 2008). But the smart
tools and scenic qualities offered also facilitate actions and performances
that make GH playing an expressive and creative activity (Säljö, 2010;
Turkle, 1984). People ‘playing’ the GH guitar and who take on the role
as a guitar hero are thus often able to express themselves to real or virtual
others in new ways (Miller, 2008; 2009; Väkevä, 2010), often feeling like
professionals though performing before competence (Gee, 2007; Miller
2009). When doing so, players articulate discourses, knowledge, and un-
derstanding of music and gaming in ways that are not always accepted as
legitimate or even possible outside the activity of ‘playing’ the guitarlike
GH control (Väkevä, 2010).
This does not mean that all musical knowledge or skills can be used
or articulated smoothly when playing Guitar Hero. Entering a new prac-
tice or context, offering different resources and tools for communication
and meaning-making, causes a transduction phenomenon that forces in-
dividuals to redesign their ways of articulating knowledge and identity
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Wingstedt, 2008). One way to study what
affordances Guitar Hero offers is to examine more closely what young
rock musicians do and how they perform musical knowledge when tak-
ing on the game. They express a great deal of knowledge of music and
musicianship when playing musical instruments in a rock band, but what
actions do musically skilled youths perform, what identities do they ar-
ticulate, and what genre clashes (Hanghøj, 2011) occur when playing
Guitar Hero? The game can be viewed as a kind of virtual stage, offering
people without musical training opportunities to make and participate
in musical performances (Miller, 2009; Väkevä, 2010). But what does

340
this environment mean to young musicians who are used to perform this
kind of music on a ‘real’ stage with ‘real’ instruments?

Analytical framing
Researchers interested in digital environments have pointed out that re-
search has to study what people do in these practices to visualise how
‘knowledge is expressed in our abilities to merge and collaborate with
external tools and to integrate them into the flow of our doings, wheth-
er these are intellectual, physical or mixed’ (Säljö, 2010, p. 62). When
people act and engage in a practice, they show knowledge, as well as who
they are and what they are doing, by using different resources and tools at
hand (Gee, 2003; Kress, 2010; Säljö, 2010). GH gaming is commu-
nicatively speaking a complex and highly multimodal practice that has to
be thoroughly analysed to understand the meaning or point of gamers’
actions and utterances (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; The New London
Group, 2000).
This work draws on a multimodal perspective on communication
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Kress, 2010) based on social semiotic the-
ories (van Leeuwen, 2005) that view practically all human actions and
products as communicative. For example, gestures, sounds and music as
well as speech and written texts used in the GH context can be seen as
important resources for meaning making. An important aspect of this
view is that a GH gamer makes signs and meaning based on his/her social
interest in the current situation (Kress, 2010). These are here understood
as representations of discourses or discursive knowledge.

We have defined discourse as a knowledge which is 1) a knowl-

edge of practices, of how things are or must be done (at the level
of discourse these two merge), together with specific evaluations
and legitimations of and purposes for these practices, and 2) a
knowledge which is linked to and activated in the context of
specific communicative practices. This means that people may at
different times draw on different discourses about the same prac-
tice or practices, choosing the one they see as most adequate to
their own interests in the given context (Kress & van Leeuwen,
2001, p. 114).

341
When designing and producing signs, people use social and material re-
sources at hand in the specific sociocultural environment that offers differ-
ent affordances (Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). This
is a kind of work that implies a process of learning because discourses and
discursive knowledge are reshaped and worked with (Kress & van Leeu-
wen, 2001). As individuals get experienced in using resources to produce
signs, they also enhance their capacity for making meaning and acting in
the world (e.g., Kress, 2010). This means that signs and communicative
resources, rather than having a fixed meaning, offer meaning potentials
that change over time as people use them for diverging purposes in differ-
ent contexts (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). A multimodal view on liter-
acy thus means that individuals using available communicative resources
are able to make sense of, and create, signs and products with a meaning
potential (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Wingstedt, 2008) accepted in the
practice and context at hand (Jewitt & Kress, 2003; Kress, 2010).
The physical and social framing has to be considered in order to un-
derstand such actions as part of individuals’ communicative work and
identity formation in relation to a certain affiliation group or practice (Gee,
2003; Kress, 2010; Säljö, 2010). But a focus on contextual premises is
not sufficient to understand why GH players express themselves and their
knowledge in certain ways, or why some situations lead to breakdowns
(Winograd & Flores, 1987). As in Gibson’s original view (1986), affor-
dances are here viewed as a relational matter because previous experiences
of handling available tools and resources, as well as different social interests
in the particular situation, mean that playing Guitar Hero offers diverging
possibilities and constraints to different players (e.g., Kress, 2010).
Based on this perspective, actions performed when playing Guitar
Hero can be understood and analysed as signs of the individual’s dis-
cursive knowledge and capacity to handle communicative resources at
hand, i.e., the GH guitar, GH notation, and audible music, as well as
whatever social position the individual finds attractive in the current sit-
uation. Those actions can also be understood as the young musician’s
expressions of who he is and what he is doing when playing Guitar Hero.
Through taking a position in this context the player articulates a socially
motivated situated identity (Gee, 1999) and understanding of how Guitar
Hero should be handled in this particular social framing. One way to de-

342
scribe the affordances of playing Guitar Hero is therefore to analyse what
meaningful action space (fig. 1) the player has, e.g., what possibilities he is
offered to make meaningful actions articulating a situated identity in line
with the social interest.

Fig. 1. Model visualising how the meaningful action space relates to the
young musician’s social interest (S.I.) in, discursive knowledge (D.K.) of,
and capacity to handle tools and communicative resources (C.R.)
available in this GH context (see also Ideland, 2011).

The aim of this study is to examine what playing the digital music game
Guitar Hero means to youths trained in, and used to, making music on
‘real’ instruments. Through analysing how young musicians perform and
express musical knowledge and situated identities, in this borderland of
gaming and music making, affordances of handling game-specific tools
and resources as well as the social context are made visible. Individual
case descriptions are used to answer the following research questions:

»»What situated identity is the player articulating?

»»What knowledge of music, music making, and gaming is the

player using and/or expressing?

»»What meaningful action space is the player offered in this envi-

ronment?

343
In the discussion, these cases are compared and analysed one step further
to illuminate what, and how, affordances offered affect musically skilled
players’ possibilities of using and expressing knowledge of music and mu-
sic making within a meaningful action space.

Method
Following these theoretical underpinnings, it is important to look at what
young musicians do when taking on the game challenge in the practice of
playing Guitar Hero. To enable a thorough analysis of how GH gamers
act and utilise available resources and tools, it is necessary to examine the
complex multimodal communication. No device can capture it all (Jew-
itt, 2006; Rostvall & West, 2005), but an audio/video recorder was used
to document the section of the room where important actions analysed
in this study took place. An additional display was used to be able to have
the currently gaming informant in focus and simultaneously catch what
was happening on the game screen.

Fig. 2. Screen shot from the first version of Guitar Hero

344
The setup used when playing guitar versions of Guitar Hero consists of
a game console, a television set and one or two guitarlike game con-
trols. The basic idea of the single player mode used in this study23
is that the gamer has to read and ‘play’ according to colourful notes
scrolling towards him on the game screen (fig. 2). This game notation
is a simplified representation of the guitar part of the typically heavy
rock song that the gamer chooses to play. Each of the five colours used
has its own lane on the game track, arranged to correspond to the five
coloured buttons on the plastic GH guitar (fig. 3). In lower levels (easy
and medium), the game specific notation represents a heavily reduced
and basic skeleton of the audible guitar part. In higher levels (high and
expert), all five colours are used in different combinations in such a way
that the game notation more closely represents the rhythmic and tonal
movements played by the original guitarist (Shultz, 2008).

Fig. 3. The guitarlike game control used in Guitar Hero World Tour

23 The World Tour edition released in 2008 is used in this study. This version offers new controls
(drums and microphone) as well as new gaming modes. However, the single player and quick play
mode used here are basically true to the original GH concept.

345
 When a round or stretched GH note reaches a certain position on
the lower part of the screen, the gamer must press the corresponding
button and hit the strum bar on the GH guitar. Hitting notes in Guitar
Hero triggers the game to play the sound of the original guitar part, and
the player is also rewarded with points and the sound of an ecstatic au-
dience. If the gamer tilts the guitar, presses the star power button or uses
the whammy bar correctly, s/he gets more points (fig. 3). Missed notes,
on the other hand, do not give any points at all. Even worse, the original
guitar part stays numb and dull ‘clunks’ are heard when the gamer fails.
Eventually bad gaming makes the virtual audience boo as the song is
interrupted.
To reach the goal of this study, a group of six 16-18-year-old male
informants attending a specialised music programme in a Swedish upper
secondary school was used. These voluntarily participating music students
make it possible to illuminate what, and how, knowledge of ‘real’ music
and music making can be performed when playing Guitar Hero. Their
previous experiences of playing Guitar Hero and other digital games var-
ied greatly, from novices to experienced gamers. Musically they had much
more in common. At the time they were studying different instruments
or singing, but they all had the experience of playing the guitar as well as
pop and rock music, and in school they were brought together to form
a ‘traditional’ rock band. In this study two of these informants are used
as examples because their ways of taking on Guitar Hero illuminate how
diverging the affordances offered gamers with different experiences and
knowledge of this environment sometimes are.
The main material analysed is a video recording of a gaming session
conducted in late 2009. During this session the informants took turns
playing the guitar part of Guitar Hero using the guitarlike GH control.24
The more experienced GH gamers played one song each, while the two
newcomers took on two and three songs respectively. In order not to put
the informants under unnecessary pressure, the session was conducted
in a youth centre, out of reach of the immediate influence of teachers
and schoolfellows. As background material, the informants were filmed
during one lesson in ensemble playing (the rock band) and one in ear

24 The informants chose to play the Quick Play mode of the World tour edition.

346
training and music theory. Additional individual interviews were con-
ducted approximately one month after the gaming session.

Processing and analysing

Early results visualise an important difference between GH gaming and
speech-based forms of interaction. Unlike, e.g., verbal conversation, it is
not that fruitful to analyse GH gaming as a sequence primarily based on
taking turns (Heath, Hindmarsh, & Luff, 2010). Musicians playing in a
group make musically synchronized meaningful actions simultaneously
(Sawyer, 2005). Typically in pop and rock music, they often act and re-
spond to a known pattern and/or situation, spread out over time, rather
than the most recent ‘prompt’ (Green, 2001; Johansson, 2010). Actions
performed by participating GH gamers similarly make more sense when
analysed as responses to communicatively consistent sections and/or pat-
terns of the song played.
In keeping with those insights, the video documentation was divid-
ed into clips aligned with, and based on, such communicative consistent
situations. A scheme was used when transcribing to secure that bodily ac-
tions, oral utterances, and the informant’s way of handling the GH guitar
in relation to the specific game context, e.g., sounding music and game
specific notation, were considered and described. Situations, actions, and
approaches that reoccurred or stood out as typical or important when
looking at the video and reading the transcripts were compiled in matri-
ces, one for each informant. These matrices were analysed in several steps
to create individual case descriptions.
A first round of analysis was made to summarise and describe the
informant’s actions and ways of handling the game and guitar inter-
face in different situations. A special focus was put on how strumming,
‘button pressing’, tilting and use of the whammy bar (fig. 3), as well
as bodily movements and oral utterances, relate to the game context,
e.g., the game notation and sounding music. The second step examines
what view of Guitar Hero and GH gaming this manner of taking on
the game articulates, as well as what relation to knowledge of music this
approach implies. The informant’s way of approaching the game was
then analysed to illuminate what gamer position and situated identity
he expresses. This level of analysis also considers how these expressions

347
relate to the informants’ articulation of a situated identity when playing
a ‘real’ instrument in a ‘real’ band. The fourth and final step focuses on
what possibilities and constraints on using and expression knowledge
of music and musicianship, and also digital gaming, the player faces
when approaching the game and articulating a situated identity in this
manner.

Results
Two case descriptions are here condensed and briefly summarised. In each
case a short description of the informant’s previous experiences of digital
games and music is presented to visualise the background of analyses
made. Since the experienced gamer played one song with a rather consis-
tent approach while the newcomer tried different approaches during his
three attempts, the structure of the cases is somewhat different.

Joel, the experienced gamer

Joel is a talented young musician. He plays the guitar and keyboard and
he also likes to stand in front of his band and sing. When playing or
singing with a band he often emphasises the expressive aspects of being a
musician. He is also an experienced gamer, who has been playing various
kinds of digital games for a long time. Joel plays Guitar Hero a lot, and
he prefers to do so with friends or family. When talking about the game,
Joel often points out that Guitar Hero is a game with a primarily visual
reading challenge. He argues that Guitar Hero is quite similar to the old
computer and arcade game Tetris, but with a good soundtrack.
When taking on Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a prayer’ on the hard level,
Joel usually stamps or marks the pulse bodily. Often he somewhat exag-
geratedly moves like a guitarist, i.e., when tilting the GH guitar or using
the whammy bar, and/or sings the melody with a playful smile on his
face. Occasionally he sings the guitar part, and at one point he also sings
an improvised fill, imitating the sound of an electric guitar. At the same
time Joel is using an often fluctuating and consequently earlier timing
than musically motivated, as well as a gamer efficient ‘thumb grip’, when
strumming the GH guitar. During the solo, and other parts not consist-
ing of reoccurring patterns, Joel is sometimes strumming so early and
unsteady that he fails to hit some of the GH notation.

348
 Through ‘playing’ the GH notation on the plastic guitar without a
clear and distinct relation to the pulse or the original guitar part, Joel’s ear-
ly and fluctuating timing makes the GH challenge stand out as primarily
visual game task. Guitar Hero seems to be about strumming and pressing
buttons when GH notes are at a certain position on the screen. Handling
the guitarlike game control this way is distinctly different from the way
musicians use timing and strumming techniques when playing guitar in
a band. Through expressing GH gaming as different from playing a ‘real’
guitar, Joel articulates Guitar Hero as a non-musical game task. At the same
time Joel is articulating Guitar Hero as playing a game by using theatrical
and playful mimicry and bodily movements when stamping the pulse,
moving like a guitarist, and/or singing the melody. Acting like this makes
GH gaming stand out as a playful and scenic activity where musician-like
actions are expressed as part of a theatrical play.
With this double-layered approach Joel takes a position as a play-
ing gamer that stands out as highly valued in this context. This position
has a clear connectedness to the situated identity and knowledge Joel
expresses when making music in school. Through approaching Guitar
Hero as playing a game he is drawing on, emphasising, and exaggerating
the importance of expressive actions and ‘show’ as a means of articulating
musical knowledge, experience, and commitment when being onstage.
Despite the theatrical and playful touch this musician-like approach in
itself could be misinterpreted as a position, which means that Joel makes
no clear distinction between making music and playing Guitar Hero. The
use of early timing and gamer efficient strumming, however, simultane-
ously underlines that Guitar Hero is a game which Joel handles by using
gaming skills. Thus the parallel articulation of Guitar Hero as a non-musi-
cal game task makes Joel stand out as a skilled gamer with a great love for
music instead of a socially problematic ‘fake musician’.
Through articulating Guitar Hero as playing a game Joel creates an
opportunity to use his voice and bodily movements to show and express
a great deal of knowledge of music and musicianship, as well as the abil-
ity to perceive musical aspects. When taking on ‘Living on a prayer’, he
shows knowledge of, e.g., the melody, form and guitar part of this song
as well as knowledge of guitar sounds, fills, improvisation, and how gui-
tarists often move on stage. Furthermore, articulating Guitar Hero as a

349
non-musical game task when ‘playing’ the GH guitar means that Joel in
an efficient way can express gamer specific skills and knowledge through,
e.g., using gamer efficient strumming technique, timing, and way of han-
dling the whammy bar. Relating to the game task as a primarily visual
and nonmusical challenge is at the same time a constriction. It is not
possible for Joel to show or use guitarist-like timing and strumming skills
when taking on and articulating the game challenge in this manner.

Pierre, the newcomer

Pierre is a skilled and disciplined young bass player. He often takes on the
role of a competent background musician using discreet body language.
Also when singing in a band he normally emphasises the musical expres-
sion rather than expressive body language. Digital games are not Pierre’s
priority and he has practically no previous experience of playing Guitar
Hero or Rock Band. His main prior source of knowledge of those games
is his classmates’ and friends’ discussions about digital music games and
gaming.

Scenario 1: In his first attempt to play Guitar Hero (‘Eye of

the tiger’, medium level) Pierre is sitting still, with no musi-
cian-like bodily expressions of musical experience. Nor does
his strumming on the GH guitar have a recognisable relation
to the pulse or musical context. During the easy Intro he
misses a large part of the GH notes and he soon chooses to
abort the song. This indicates that the newcomer Pierre makes
an unsuccessful attempt to take on Guitar Hero without re-
lating to the musical context. It is likely that this approach
is based on, and an attempt to act in line with, a discourse
articulating Guitar Hero as different from making music that
the more GH-experienced classmates (like Joel) often artic-
ulate when talking about the game. But Pierre cannot yet, as
the classmates advocate, read the unfamiliar GH notation or
‘play’ the strange GH guitar without support from the mu-
sical context. Consequently this attempt to articulate Guitar
Hero as a non-musical game leads to a breakdown.

350
Scenario 2: When retrying (‘Eye of the tiger’, easy level)
Pierre stamps the pulse and discretely moves his body in
musician-like ways. When strumming the guitarlike control
there is a clear and musician-like timing and relation to the
pulse and/or musical context/original. This time he misses
rather few GH notes during the whole song. Acting like this
indicates that Pierre uses knowledge of, and ability to per-
ceive, the musical context as well as musician-like skills and
strategies as supports when reading the game notation and
‘playing’ the guitarlike game control. In so doing, his way of
taking on the game articulates Guitar Hero as a music-related
game. When using this approach, Pierre has very few prob-
lems in managing the game task. But on the other hand, this
way of using the communicative tools in a musician-like way
means that he cannot articulate the discursive view on Gui-
tar Hero as a nonmusical activity he most probably made an
attempted to articulate at first.

Scenario 3: At the end of the second song and during the

main part of the third (‘Feel the pain’, easy level) Pierre is
leaning back on the sofa, stretching his legs with a slight-
ly bored expression on his face. Pierre uses a musician-like
timing when hitting the GH notation that indicates that he
still strums in relation to the musical context and/or pulse.
But with the exception of sometimes wiggling his toes he ex-
presses no musical experience or commitment. It seems that
Pierre avoids actions that are musician-like and/or express a
musical experience. Instead the laidback and slightly bored
expression articulates Guitar Hero as a music related but un-
interesting game task. Handling the game like this stands out
as a way of getting closer to the ‘standpoint’ in scenario 1;
through using newly acquired abilities to handle tools and
resources at hand Pierre is approaching a position as an un-
interested gamer.

351
Superficially Pierre’s musician-like strategies in scenario 2 can be analysed
as if he were successfully expressing skills and ‘everyday’ identity as a mu-
sician in the GH context. But when he uses his gradually growing expe-
rience of, and ability to handle, the game specific tools and resources to
articulate Guitar Hero as a music-related but uninteresting game task, it in-
dicates that Pierre does not think of the musician-like position in scenario
2 as desirable. A probable explanation is that the position in scenario 2
means that Pierre might stand out as a ‘fake musician’ who tries to make
music on the plastic GH guitar. Such a position could easily come in con-
flict with Pierre’s situated identity as a serious and ‘real’ musician expressed
in the school context. Pierre’s choice is to maintain a distance from, and
articulate, Guitar Hero as both uninteresting and distinctly different from
making music. Through approaching and striving towards a position as an
uninterested gamer, Pierre also shows a growing ability to handle the game
challenge. This position simultaneously makes the alternative activity of
playing ‘real’ music in a band stand out as more interesting and valuable.

Discussion
In the cases studied, exemplified here by Joel and Pierre, Guitar Hero
stands out as an environment offering varied and sometimes ample,
meaningful action spaces to musically skilled gamers. Largely due to the
guitarlike interface and scenic space offered (Miller, 2008; 2009) players
perform expressions of knowledge and situated identities in many dif-
ferent ways. But it is not self-evident that young gamers with experience
of playing the guitar in real life can easily use or express this knowledge
when ‘playing’ the GH guitar. Nor is the ability to play instruments in
a rock band in itself sufficient to succeed as a ‘guitar hero’ in the game.
This is most evident in the newcomer Pierre’s first attempt that leads to
a breakdown (Winograd & Flores, 1987). Without a useful discursive
understanding of the Guitar Hero concept and experiences of the game
specific tools and resources, he can neither manage the game challenge
nor express musical skills or understanding in a way that is accepted as
legitimate in this context. The more experienced gamer Joel has already
developed a double-layered approach that works well in this environ-
ment. To use such early timing and strumming when playing guitar in a
real band would, on the other hand, most certainly lead to breakdowns,

352
and he would run the risk of standing out as a lousy musician.
These cases thus illuminate how tools and resources offered in the
Guitar Hero environment cause a sometimes problematic transduction
phenomenon (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) when forcing musically
skilled players to redesign and perform new expressions of musical skills
and knowledge. In a rock band, where musicians often play by ear, it is
common that notation and reading sheet music have a low status and
are ‘secondary to the aural’ (Green, 2001, p. 96; Gullberg, 2002). Play-
ing Guitar Hero, though, is a different activity. Newcomers like Pierre
have to develop an ability to read and understand the game notation to
be able to take any of the gamer positions standing out as attractive in
this study. On the other hand, this environment quite efficiently scaf-
folds (Bruner, 1986; Gee, 2007) the newcomers’ abilities to participate
and perform in the game (Gee, 2003). In his second attempted Pierre
chooses a lower level (easy) that uses only three out of five colours/but-
tons and a more reduced rhythm to represent the original guitar part. As
this support lowers the learning load (Gee, 2007) he is able to ‘crack the
code’ and make actions necessary to succeed.

Using and expressing knowledge of music

When the original guitarist plays, e.g., a solo or fill, Joel usually uses very
early and fluctuating timing. This indicates that he, as other informants
with experience of playing Guitar Hero, reads the GH notation in such
situations without relating it to the musical context. Typical for those
situations is that the guitar part does not represent an easily recognisable
and/or reoccurring musical pattern. Often, the relationship between the
sounding original and the game notation is also less clear. In line with
Linderoth’s (2010) argument it is likely that players in those situations
have to rely on their ability to read the visual game notation itself. To
use or show musical knowledge or experience cannot be easy under such
circumstances. On the other hand, these situations offer an opportunity
to express visual reading ability and generic gaming skills (Gee, 2007)
explicitly.
Situations where the original guitar part plays a recognisable and/or
reoccurring pattern or riff are often treated rather differently. These situ-
ations often illuminate that young musicians, at least now and then, lean

353
on a musical memory of the original and/or an ability to understand the
audible music as a support when handling and acting in the game con-
text. This is most evident when Joel and Pierre, e.g., stamp the pulse, use
musically correct or motivated timing, move like a guitarist, and/or sing
the melody or guitar part. This shows that young musicians in many dif-
ferent situations and ways can use and express some knowledge of music,
e.g., form, riffs, and accompaniment patterns, and musicianship when
taking on Guitar Hero.
Additionally, skilled players taking on games where the music is not
as central often use and relate to patterns (Turkle, 1984). But in con-
trast to the cases studied by Linderoth (2008; 2010), and the Pac-Man
game in Turkle’s (1984) example, patterns standing out as important in
this GH context are often not a game-specific construction or represen-
tation of a ‘real’ world. The young musicians ‘playing’ the GH guitar
often relate to known and/or recognisable musical patterns in the audi-
ble music or guitar part, e.g., form and riffs, as well as accompaniment
and strumming patterns, produced in the ‘real’ world by musicians (see
also Miller, 2009). Their ways of relating to these patterns are sometimes
quite similar to what rock or pop musicians do when playing music by
ear (Green, 2001; Johansson, 2010). Now and then Joel and Pierre even
strike ‘chords’ or ‘notes’ played by the original guitarist that are not rep-
resented in the game notation. They then make their own representations
of the original and audible guitar part using the GH guitar. But not even
when ‘homemade’ signs such as these are produced in coherence with
the internal logic and musical reductions used in Guitar Hero (Shultz,
2008) are such creative expressions of musical understanding accepted
and awarded by the game.

Strumming like a gamer or a like musician

Despite this connection to the musical context, the experienced gamer
Joel is largely using earlier timing than musically motivated. Instead of
hitting the strum bar (fig. 2) when the original guitarist plays the note/
chord represented in the GH notation, the results show that Joel ‘plays’
this a little bit earlier. This is also true for the other three more experi-
enced GH gamers in this study (Ideland, 2011). Since Joel, like all par-
ticipants, uses musically motivated timing correctly when playing a ‘real’

354
musical instrument in a band, it is not likely that Joel, or the others,
lack the actual capacity to perceive the musical context or synchronise
strumming when taking on Guitar Hero. The use of early timing must be
explained in a different way.
One probable explanation of using early timing is that many GH
set ups, when, e.g., using a LCD-TV without adjusting for the lag, often
cause a problematic latency25 (see also Gower & McDowall, 2012). Thus,
musically correct timing is often judged as too late by the game, thereby
forcing the gamer to ‘play ahead’. Hitting the GH notation earlier than
motivated by the musical context is essential under such circumstances,
if one wants to manage the game and stand out as a skilled gamer. But
the GH setup used during the gaming session analysed in this chapter
did not cause such a problematic latency. Instead, the few mistakes that
Joel and the other experienced gamers make are often caused by timing
that is too early. Despite this, Joel sticks to approaching Guitar Hero as a
non-musical game task, and when interviewed about how to handle the
game he says (translation by author); ‘To manage it I think I put more
concentration on looking [than listening], because it is not synchronised’.
Thus this approach stands out as a sign of Joel’s genuine understanding of
how the game must be played.
A look at Pierre and the other newcomer reveals that they lean on
musical knowledge and perception to understand and handle the unfa-
miliar gaming context (Ideland, 2011). Initially both depend on musi-
cian-like approaches and a musically correct timing to hit the GH no-
tation in the right position. With the support from the musical context
and the simplified game track on lower levels they can perform easy, but
in this context important, communicative actions. When doing so they
more or less instantly gain a form of local literacy (Gee, 2003; Jewitt &
Kress, 2003). An interesting question, though, is what would have hap-
pened if the setup used during this GH session had caused a severe la-
tency. Then the newcomers’ successful use of musician-like timing would
have been rejected, most probably causing breakdowns forcing them to
reconsider their ways of tackling the game. It seems that latency, or not,

25 On my private set-up the lag caused by the LCD-TV is approximately 0.15 seconds.

355
is one of the features of the GH setup that heavily affects what it means
to be literate in this context, as well as what discursive knowledge of GH
gaming and what ability to handle available communicative tools and
resources gamers can utilise.

Expressing Guitar Hero as different from making music

Many situations, as for example large parts of the Joel case, indicate that
when the informant has the discursive knowledge and ability to handle
the communicative tools and resources needed, then the player is able to
articulate a situated identity, expressed as a gamer position, accepted as
legitimate and valued in this context (Gee, 1999; Kress, 2010). Like Joel,
other informants with prior experiences of playing Guitar Hero usually
express a gamer position that stands out as attractive in this context, but
which is also in line with a situated identity articulated in the musically
imprinted school context (Ideland, 2011). The Pierre case, on the oth-
er hand, illuminates that newcomers initially might have rather limit-
ed meaningful action spaces, e.g., possibilities to express themselves in,
or choose to take, such a desirable position. A common characteristic
though is that all informants, like Joel and Pierre, avoid expressing their
way of ‘playing’ Guitar Hero as making music. Instead, they all take or
strive towards positions meaning that their ability to understand the mu-
sical context, as well as their knowledge of musical aspects and musician-
ship, can be articulated as gamer actions.
A probable reason for this is that young musicians are under the in-
fluence of ideas about rock music as real and authentic. Such discourses
are often strong and drawn on by rock musicians and music journalists
talking about rock music and digital music games (Miller, 2009) as well as
music students in Swedish upper secondary schools (Scheid, 2009). Even
though some researchers view Guitar Hero as a fairly good simulation of
the idea of playing rock guitar (i.e., Arsenault, 2008), the GH guitar itself
is a heavy reduction of the six strings and many frets of an electric guitar.
The results indicate that this reduction, and a real or anticipated latency,
makes it hard for young musicians to articulate their extensive knowledge
of music making and musicianship explicitly enough. It is simply not
possible to articulate musical skills and knowledge in a way that makes
them stand out as ‘real’ rock musicians when ‘playing’ the GH guitar.

356
The risk of coming out as a socially problematic ‘fake musician’, thereby
risking their position and situated identity as ‘real’ musicians in school, is
thus the most probable reason why all informants strive to articulate GH
gaming as distinctly separated from music making. Through articulating
and acting in line with a discourse describing Guitar Hero as different from
making music they tackle genre clashes (Hanghøj, 2011) arising when
gaming and musician practices collide.
A complementary explanation of Joel’s use of early timing from this
perspective is that consistent and successful use of early strumming effi-
ciently makes him stand out as a successful gamer, distinctly separated
from the musician who plays in a band. Notably, also, the other three
informants with previous experiences of playing Guitar Hero use early
timing in a similar way. The player viewed as most skilled and cool by
the others even adjusts how much earlier than the musically motivated
timing he strums, depending on the current gaming situation, i.e., solo,
rhythmic pattern or long chords (Ideland, 2011). Early timing, once a
way of handling a technical shortcoming of the game, thus stands out
in this context as a communicative resource used in combination with
other resources by experienced players to articulate a situated identity as
a skilled, playful or uninterested gamer. Intentionally or not, Guitar Hero
itself supports this use of early timing as a sign of being a skilled gamer
when asking a player who is about to adjust the lag to get rid of a prob-
lematic latency: ‘Are you ready to blame your TV?’ Adjusting the lag thus
stands out as a sort of cheating, which supports the view that a real GH
gamer can handle latency problems.

Conclusion
On the one hand this study supports the view that Guitar Hero is an
environment supporting the possibility for players to participate in a
kind of musical performance (Gower & McDowall, 2012; Miller, 2009;
Väkevä, 2010), an activity that also musically skilled gamers use, express,
and through which they eventually develop some knowledge of rock songs
and guitar parts. On the other hand, small details and features of com-
municative tools and resources at hand have a big impact on the prac-
tice of playing the GH guitar. A seemingly small and here only imag-
ined latency, not even a feature of the set-up used, accentuates an often

357
problematic transduction phenomenon (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001).
Together with other communicative constraints, e.g., sometimes inco-
herent or unpredictable relationships between the sounding music and
the game notation, this anticipated latency is affecting what and how
participating young musicians make use and signs of their music-related
skills and knowledge (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). Viewing music mak-
ing through the ‘lens’ of the game may lend many nonmusicians a con-
text-bound ‘professionalised’ vision and ability to perform (Gee, 2007;
Squire, 2006). But to these young musicians it means that their (semi-)
professional vision (Goodwin, 1994), hearing, and capacity to act is often
blurred and ‘gamerised’ (compare Linderoth, 2010).
Consequently such constraints also have an impact on communica-
tive actions expressing who they are and what they are doing (Gee, 1999)
when taking on the game. In the long run, the absent latency even seems
to have had a crucial effect on what actions and situated identities these
young musicians accept as socially legitimate signs (Kress, 2010) of being
a successful, skilled and/or cool musician playing Guitar Hero. Thus this
study illuminates that occurring constraints, as well as meaningful action
spaces offered, are not necessarily the consequences of players’ abilities to
handle features of available tools or technology per see. Discursive views
and meaning potentials of playing the GH guitar have evolved as gamers
interplaying with different setups and versions of Guitar Hero have made
efforts to perform actions that stand out as meaningful and legitimate
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Säljö, 2010), not only to other gamers but
also to, e.g., fellow musicians and classmates interested in music.

358
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PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING AS A
DOUBLE DRIVER FOR LEARNING
– FOR STUDENTS AND EXTERNAL
PARTNERS

Marianne Lykke & Tom Nyvang

Introduction
This chapter reports from research on the learning process that emerges
when students’ learning revolves around real-life problems provided by
organizations outside the university. Firstly, we research how problems
can drive learning within a course module with a fixed curriculum, and
secondly, we research how the same problems can drive university-soci-
ety/industry interaction thus contributing to learning inside as well as
outside the university. We thus regard the learning a double-sided process
in which students as well as organizations providing problems are offered
opportunities to learn.
Prior studies tend to focus on either students or external organiza-
tions, but mostly on students’ learning. Gavin (2011) is just one example
of a study that shows how problems and tasks from industry can be a ve-
hicle for learning among engineering students. When it comes to external
organizations learning from academia, most research focuses on indus-
try-researcher collaboration. This is done with reference to specific mod-
els for collaboration (Bruneel, D’Este, & Salter, 2010) or with reference
to higher-level models such as the triple helix that agues for an approach
to innovation that includes industry-university-state collaboration (Ley-
desdorff, 2009) . It appears to be an unspoken assumption that external
partners cannot learn very much from collaboration with students, at
least not students in bachelor programmes. Perhaps their knowledge is

365
not regarded as sufficiently advanced for external partners to gain from it.
Our starting idea is, however, that student-external organization collab-
oration with the appropriate scaffold will induce learning in both groups
of learners. We assume that bachelor students under the right circum-
stances offer an innovative potential in the problem-solving process that
provides new insights for external partners.
Our examination is a case study with 158 students in the third se-
mester of a bachelor programme at Aalborg University and four external
partners who offer problems to provide a direction for student learning.
During the course, the students analyse and develop solutions for six de-
sign problems related to the design and development of communication
systems for internal and/or external communication in the organizations.
We study the problem-solving process, designs and reflections developed
by the students during the project work, and the companies satisfaction
and comments on the students’ designs, in order to gain insight into how
the students and the external partners learned from the project work.
In our analysis we focus on analysing if and how the students and
organizations learned from the project work. We seek to answer whether
the project work represents a productive interpretation of PBL (Barge,
2010), the triple helix interaction between state, academia, and industry
(Leydesdorff, 2009). Before we turn to more specific research questions,
we give a short review of literature in the field of PBL and university-in-
dustry collaboration related to PBL.

PBL is not just PBL

Our test case is situated in a learning environment that is familiar with
PBL – at least it is familiar with one interpretation of what PBL is – an
interpretation that is summarized by Barge (2010). The research litera-
ture does, however, show different practices and approaches to PBL. First
of all, the understanding of the source and constituents of a problem
differ. Some sources stress that the problem originates in the students’
experience of the world, that problems are ill structured and that prob-
lems do not always fit a traditional fixed curriculum very well (Dirck-
inck-Holmfeld, 2002; Kjærsdam & Enemark, 1994; Kolmos, Fink, &
Krogh, 2004). According to these sources student ownership of the prob-
lem and the solution are core motivational factors. Other sources suggest

366
a (somewhat) different source of the problem by stressing the impor-
tance of working on real-life problems or, more precisely, real problems
from the work domain the students train to enter (Gavin, 2011; Herreid,
Schiller, Herreid, & Wright, 2011; Shafi, Quadri, Ahmed, Mahmud, &
Iqbal, 2010; Tonts, 2011; Warren, Dondlinger, McLeod, & Bigenho,
2012; Williamson & Gregory, 2010). In that case, it is the teacher or
professor that provides or at least approves problems within a relative-
ly narrow professional framework. This interpretation is often found in
medicine (Raupach, Munscher, Pukrop, Anders, & Harendza, 2010;
Shafi et al., 2010), engineering (Gavin, 2011), or science (Herreid et al.,
2011; Overton & Bradley, 2010) but it is also found in the social sciences
(Williamson & Gregory, 2010), and more rarely in the humanities.
Few authors suggest that problems could have a third source –
namely, in industry (Sas, 2009). Students solving problems with roots
in industry and research are then offered a way to convey knowledge
back and forth between industry and university. Jarzabek, Pettersson, &
Zhang (2011) report from a university-industry collaboration with stu-
dents involvement, too. In this case students completed tasks that sprung
out of the collaboration between industry and researchers. As the collab-
oration developed, students also used it as a springboard to internships
with the industrial partner. There is, however, no mention of problem
identification or problem solving as a vehicle for learning on the part of
the students.
Gavin (2011) brings us back to the discussion about PBL and cur-
riculum. He discusses an implementation of PBL where students are giv-
en open-ended problems to solve in teams (he thus uses the term proj-
ect-based learning). These students have completed at least three years of
traditional university studies before being ‘allowed’ to enter into PBL ac-
tivities. Aalborg University (among others) chooses a different approach
by applying PBL from the very first semester. The underlying assump-
tion about the relationship between a set curriculum and PBL appears to
differ. PBL is either something that follows when students have learned
most of the curriculum (acquired a solid foundation of knowledge and
skills) or it is applied from early on to be a continuous part of student
learning and motivation, thus being a part of the curriculum. Teacher
defined or structured problems appear to fit a traditional set curriculum

367
whereas student defined problems appear to require a more open cur-
riculum. The student-controlled problems influence the curriculum by
directing student attention to the subject, theories, and methods that
are most relevant to solving the problem. This observation is supported
by researchers that report the need for a more integrative thinking about
curriculum because students working on problems tend to or perhaps
even need to think across what used to be difference subjects (Shafi et al.,
2010).
Some of the differences in approaches to PBL stem from different
assumptions about learning. Most authors place PBL within a framework
of constructivism or social constructivism, exactly as do Tonts (2011) and
Warren et al. (2012). The references to constructivism are however often
quite subtle with few or no explicit references to constructivist theory.
Authors merely refer to the experiences that students learn more or better
when they acquire new knowledge through negotiation with peers. Lately
we have also begun to see networked learning and connectivist approach-
es to learning mentioned in relation to PBL (Ryberg, Glud, Buus, &
Georgsen, 2010). In either case the reasons for choosing PBL are mainly
that it is said to be popular among students and teachers for various rea-
sons.
In the current case we work in a university context where PBL plays
a major role in the learning environment. A recent AAU PBL guide tells
us that students are the owners of problems and that participation in
collaborative processes for the majority of a semester is the way for stu-
dents to work on the problems they have identified (Barge, 2010). Barge
(2010) also distinguishes between core PBL activity in project groups
and the more traditional course modules implying that courses support
PBL without PBL taking place within courses. Earlier studies grounded
in the practice of Aalborg University offer a similar distinction between
courses and PBL-based learning (Dirckinck-Holmfeld, 2002; Kjærsdam
& Enemark, 1994; Kolmos, Fink, & Krogh, 2004). These sources also
link PBL with a collaborative effort on the part of students in solving
problems.
To research how the collaboration between students and external
organizations induced learning in both students and external partners, we
aim to answer the following research questions:

368
 1. How did the students react to the realistic design problems?

a. Did they understand the problems?

b. Did they obtain ownership to the problems?
c. Did they find solutions for the design problems?

The first research question originates in the discussion about different

origins of the problems from which students learn. Since the problems
in this case (more about that later) came from external partners, student
understanding as well as ownership of the problems is questioned, but it
is also questioned whether a problem that is real to someone else has the
power to motivate learning among students.

2. How did the students relate the problems to theories, models,

and methods presented during the course?

a. Did they understand the theories, models, and methods?

b. Did they use the theories, models, and methods to analyze
the problems and develop design?
c. Did they use other related literature?

The second research question originates in the discussion about the rela-
tionship between problem and curriculum. Since the curricula were set
by the teachers (more about that later), it can be questioned whether the
students learned that curriculum or another curriculum defined by the
problem (or if they learned too little due to a bad fit between problem
and curriculum, lack of motivation due to lack of problem ownership, or
some other problem).

3. How did the students develop solutions and system design for
the design problems?

The third research question originates in one of the original assumptions

about PBL. Students were expected not only to learn abstract theory and
methodology, but also to design solutions to real problems in the orga-
nizations of external partners. Therefore, we question how they did that

369
and in what way other parts of the curriculum came into play.

4. How did the organizations gain and learn from the collabora-
tion?

a. Did they look at and consider design proposals developed

by the students in later system design work?

The fourth research question originates in our assumption that sec-

ond-year university students with sufficient scaffolding can in fact supply
external partners with useful insights and/or concrete solutions to actual
problems.
These research questions come together in a further developed over-
all hypothesis that students will find the motivation to learn a set curric-
ulum and shape meaningful design solutions in problems they know are
real problems for potential future employers. It is consequently also our
hypothesis that external partners will gain from the collaboration with
the students. In the following section we will show how we aim to answer
the research questions and test our hypothesis.

Overall methodology
We have studied this possible mutual learning concept in a case study with
158 second-year bachelor students, 135 humanistic informatics students,
and 23 information technology students. We tried out problem-based
learning design as part of the study course ‘Design and ICT with organi-
zations as context’. The course forms part of a third-semester module that
focuses on strategic communication in and from organizations.
The third semester consists of three individual courses, the project
course ‘Communication and strategy’ (20 ETCS), and two study cours-
es ‘Methods for investigation, analysis and intervention’ (5 ECTS), and
‘Design and ICT with organizations as context’ (5 ECTS).
The design and ICT study course looks at how different communi-
cation forms and ICT systems are used with strategic purposes in orga-
nizations. The course focuses on interaction and usability. The students
can choose to focus on internal or external communication. The course
is organized into 5 themes. Themes 1, 2, 3, and 5 are taught through

370
4-hour lectures, and theme 4 through three 4-hour lectures, totalling sev-
en 4-hour lectures in all:

1. Strategies for knowledge sharing in organisations – here the

concept of knowledge and strategies for knowledge sharing are
presented.

2. Theoretical approaches to interaction design and usability –

here approaches and theories of ICT-mediated interaction and
usability are presented.

3. Communication systems – here systems, technologies, and

functionalities supporting internal and external communication
in and from organizations are covered, including studies of prac-
tices and challenges in the use of technologies.

4. Interaction design and information architecture – here de-

sign principles for interface design and information architecture,
including methods for user-driven innovation and design, are
presented.

5. Usability evaluation – here methodologies for the evaluation of

usability are discussed, with a focus on user-oriented methods.

The teaching is organized around four realistic case studies describing

actual design problems for the design of a communication system for
either internal or external communication in an organization. The cases
and design problems are provided by organizations outside the university.
Case A concerns design of a web-based system that facilitates knowledge
sharing and task coordination for the Aalborg Carnival office that orga-
nizes the yearly carnival. Case B deals with redesign of the information
website for Gigantium, a large cultural and sports center in Aalborg; case
C concerns design of a web-based knowledge sharing system facilitating
communication and knowledge sharing internally between employees
and externally between employees and customers of Bjerg Architecture,
an international architect company with branches in Denmark and Po-

371
land. Case D concerns design of either functionalities or organizational
procedures that motivate and make it easy for local government employ-
ees at Hjørring Community to consult the local intranet more frequently.
The teaching is organized so that each lecture has a theme, a design
problem, and two student tasks, a design task that students solve in proj-
ect groups and a reflection task where the students reflect on the project
work, learning process, and learning outcome. The students answer the
reflection task individually. The design problems are solved in groups of
3-5 students. Figure 1 provides an overview of the design for learning, di-
viding the design into learning tasks, learning support, learning resourc-
es, and assessment. Learning tasks are tasks that learners are required to
do, learning resources support learners in conducting the tasks, learning
support consists of mechanisms that exist from the teacher to support the
learning and task solving, and assessment is the evaluation tools to assess
the learning outcome.

Fig. 1. Learning design.

The lectures are four-hour sessions consisting of a two-hour introductory

lecture presenting theories and models relevant for the overall theme, and
two hours of group work, in which the students solve the design tasks.

372
The design tasks are comprised of design problems, e.g., choice of knowl-
edge sharing and communication strategy, development of wireframe
and blueprints for the interaction design, or design of usability tests. All
problems are related to specific designs of the communication systems
outlined in the case studies developed by the external partners. The tasks
and problems are defined by the lecturers and given to the students. The
students are instructed to use concepts, theories, and models presented
during the introductory lecture to find solutions for the design problems.
The students solve six design problems in all. During the seven, two-hour
group work sessions, the lecturer and three student tutors help out and
are available for consultation. Table 1 shows examples of design problems
as they are formulated in respectively a design and a portfolio task.

Design task (solved in groups) Portfolio task (solved individually)

Describe the concepts, models and Reflect upon and discuss:
technologies introduced in the lecture.
Discuss how they can be used to analyse − How concepts and models contrib-
and determine level of interactivity and ute to the understanding of the case
system functionality of the future knowl- problem
edge sharing system: − How they contribute to analysis
and design decisions concerning
− What type of knowledge should be choice of communication system,
included and communicated by the knowledge sharing strategy, inter-
system? action levels, and communication
− What knowledge sharing strategies functions
and activities should be supported
by the system?
− What functions and interactions are
needed?

Table1. Course tasks for Communication system theme

Solutions for the design problems are answered through a poster that the
students develop in common. The posters are supposed to report consid-
erations and solutions for the design problems. The posters are presented

373
and discussed with the external partners at a poster seminar at the end
of the course. The individual reflection tasks are reported through an
e-portfolio, uploaded weekly to the course site at Moodle. In the reflec-
tion task the students are expected to discuss and make reflections about
the design problems, group work, and the work process. The individual
portfolios are later revised to create a project report that constitutes the
exam of the study course. The supervisor and an internal censor grade the
project report internally. Each project group chooses freely among the
four case studies.

Data collection and analysis

We collect a set of different data to study and understand whether and
how students and organizations learn from the problem-based project
work. Data include the individual portfolio contributions from the 158
students, posters from 31 project groups, observation data generated by
the three tutors and the two teachers, the final project reports, and inter-
view data from post-semester interviews with two of the external partners.

Individual portfolio contributions

At each lecture the students were invited to upload portfolio entries for
the individual portfolio tasks. Not all 158 students uploaded portfolios
during the course work. 120 students uploaded portfolios for portfolio
task 1, 111 students for task 2, 95 students for task 380 students for task
4/5, 65 students for task 6, and 52 students for task 7. The portfolios
contained descriptions, arguments, and discussions of design solutions
for the six design problems. The lecturers provided oral and written feed-
back for the portfolios at the following lecture. The written feedback was
uploaded to Moodle.

Posters
All 31 project groups developed posters. The posters primarily contained
descriptions of the design solutions in form of short summaries, screen
dumps, wireframes, blueprints, usability test plans, etc. Figure 2 shows
a poster example summing up decisions concerning content (indhold)
of the proposed knowledge sharing system, design considerations and
decisions (design), design of usability evaluation (undersøgelse), strate-

374
gies for knowledge sharing and implementation (implementering), and a
wireframe for the entry page for the system.

Fig. 2. Poster example.

Observation data
During the six group work sessions, the two teachers and the three tutors
made observations about how the students worked with the design prob-
lems. They used a structured observation scheme for the observation.
They collected about the following variables:

375
 Problem How do the students react to the problems that have been formu-
lated by the external partners? Are the cases motivating? Do the
students consider the problems as their ‘own’? How is their under-
standing of the problems? Do the students concentrate on the prob-
lems? Do they stay the full time for group work? Do they quarrel
about the problems? What problems have they been working with
today? What solutions did they work with today?
Learning Did the students understand today’s lecture, theories, and methods?
Are there essential misunderstandings? Is it possible to see a con-
nection between today’s lecture and their discussions and problem
solving? How? Do the students ask simple, clarifying questions,
or very fundamental questions? Are today’s theories present in the
discussions? Is there a relation to previous lectures? Which? Do the
students include material, questions or work from previous lectures?
Which?

Table 2. Scheme for structured observation.

Project reports
The project reports are compilations of the six individual portfolios that
have been developed during the course work. The portfolios contain ana-
lytical and critical reflections to the work process and problems appearing
during the project work. The students were instructed to ground reflec-
tions on the theoretical course literature. The recommended structure for
the reports included:

»»Short presentation of the case and its problem (approx. 1 page);

»»Summary and discussion of solutions for the 6 design problems

(approx. 7 pages);

»»Resume of the overall ICT design and solution to the case prob-
lem (approx. 1 page); and

»»References (approx. 1 page).

376
Interview data
Approximately a month after the poster session, two of the external part-
ners were interviewed about their experience and benefits of the collabo-
ration. The interviews were semistructured following the interview guide
presented in table 3. The interviews were recorded. They were not tran-
scribed, but informants’ utterances and viewpoints were condensed to
short, precise formulations. Meaning condensation abridges the thoughts
expressed by the interviewees into briefer, more concise statements (Kvale
& Brinkmann, 2008).

Interview guide for interviews with external partners

1) What motivated your participation as external partner?
2) What were your expectations for the collaboration?
3) Did you have previous experiences with student-external organization
collaboration?
4) Did you like the proposed design solutions? Why/why not?
5) How did you gain from the collaboration and design solutions – why/
why not?
a) Design:
i) Strategy for knowledge sharing, technologies, and functional-
ities
ii) Interface design
iii) Wireframe and label
iv) Usability evaluation
b) Methodologies – development process
c) Ideas
6) Have you used any of the design solutions or student ideas?
7) Were your expectations for the collaboration fulfilled?
8) Do you want to participate another time?

Table 3. Interview guide for external organizations.

All data types, portfolios, posters, observation schemes, and meaning

condensations were coded and analyzed into themes using the same ma-
trix-based method for ordering and synthesizing empirical data (Bryman,
2008). In the analysis themes and subthemes were developed from a

377
combination of thorough reading and rereading of the data material and
reading of literature outlining challenges and problems typically faced in
problem-based learning (The Aalborg PBL model, 2004). Table 4 pres-
ents and defines the analytical themes.

Analytical theme Description

Problem understanding Analysis if and how the students understand the
design problem, described in the design tasks.
Problem ownership Analysis if and how the students relate to and take
ownership of the design problems.
Analysis if and how the students understand the
Theory understanding,
presented theories, models and methods and use
use and application
them to solve the design problems.
Theory compilation Analysis if and how the students relate theory
from other lectures or semesters.
Learning outcome Analysis if and how respectively the students and
the external partners learn from the project work.

Table 4: Analytical themes. Double-driver learning

All together, the students understood well the design problems, took
ownership, and were good at using the presented theories, models, and
concepts to analyze, discuss, and develop design solutions. The students
also created useful as well as interesting and creative design solutions. The
average marks were 7.4 that are above average in a 7-point scale, given for
a good report of completed course goals with few failures.
However, it is a characteristic of their project work that they did not
reflect upon or criticize the relevance or usefulness of the concepts and
models. Only a few students discussed whether and how the theoretical
foundation truly contributes to the analysis and understanding of the
design problems. Below we will discuss findings in detail. The structure
of the discussion follows the analytical themes.

378
Problem understanding
In general, the students understood well the topics and problems of the
design tasks, and were capable of analyzing the problems and finding
solutions. The posters and final project reports show this clearly. Howev-
er, understanding the problem was a learning process. At first when the
students were presented with the problems, they were confused and did
not know how to approach them. Many groups had to work with the
problems before they reached an understanding and took ownership. In
many cases they developed their own understanding of the problem. As
such the students also gained knowledge and experience in identifying
and defining realistic problems for future project work.

Throughout the course there was some confusion concerning the

organizations’ problems, but soon they reached a conclusion and
defined some clear problems. The groups had their nuances on the
problem, and also some different solutions (Student observer 2).

The difficulty in defining and constructing a clear understanding of the

problem was twofold. The students had problems in understanding the
meaning and implication of the design problems, and in determining
how to approach it methodologically, what analysis method to use, what
tools to apply.

Test. They are not sure whether they should make a test or just
write about their considerations (Student observer 1).

Two of the interaction design problems, the prototype problem and the
wireframe problem, appeared very similar to the students. This similarity
caused confusion regarding the meaning of the problem. It also demoti-
vated the students because they felt that they repeated and found solu-
tions for apparently similar problems.

Some groups were confused about making prototype and later a

wireframe. Some doubt whether they do it correctly because they
think that they do the same again and again. (Student observer
2).

379
 In addition, the students had problems in understanding the details
of the learning design, how to report the project work on, respectively,
the posters and in the portfolios. The students especially had difficulties
in differentiating what to report in the group task and the individual
task, what to present and discuss in the poster and in the portfolio. This
two-sided structure of the learning design dividing the project work into
group tasks reported in posters and individual tasks, reported in the port-
folios, was very confusing for the students, and the students used much
effort to figure out the structure.

They are not aware what a poster should contain. Practically,

only few students know that there is a template for a poster at
Moodle. They ask whether they should make it digital or in pa-
per (Student observer 1).

Problem ownership
The realistic setup with real organizations and real design problems were
very motivating for the students. Additionally, the fact that the external
partners would attend the poster session and provide feedback was very
inspiring for the students. Feedback from external partners was indis-
pensable compared to feedback from the teachers.

They take it very seriously that they are going to present the solu-
tion, it seems to motivate a lot (Student observer 1).

The students seem quite motivated by the fact that it is a ‘real’

case’ (Student observer 1).

No students questioned the fact that the cases and problems were de-
fined beforehand by the teachers and external partners. However, the
case descriptions lacked information, or at least it was frustrating for the
students that they were not allowed to ask questions and communicate
directly with the external partners during the problem-solving process.
Many students found technical information in the case descrip-
tions upsetting and worrisome. As a consequence, several project groups
chose the Gigantium case with less technical description. Some students

380
commented later that they regretted to have chosen the less technical
case instead of choosing the case that they found most interesting.

Technological platform and hardware info seem to frighten

when they choose case. Annoying (Student observer 3).

From the posters and project reports it appears that the students that
chose the more technically rich case descriptions did very well, also with
regard to marks. The conclusion is that technical information is import-
ant and necessary, but it should be better explained to the students how
to use it in the problem solving process, and by this avert the practice of
students with less technical knowledge avoiding more technical cases.

Theory understanding, use and application

In general, the students were rather skillful in using theories, models, and
concepts from the literature to analyze the problems and develop design
solutions.

The theories were well understood by most while others had to

fight a bit (Student observer 2).

We can see this clearly in the project reports, where students in general
are very skilled in using the theories to limit and define a scope for the de-
sign. The theoretical literature provided overview and helped the students
to structure the project work.

Knowledge about and learning of theoretical concepts and mod-

els are thus essential for the development of such a system, be-
cause these are fundamental for the understanding and solution
of the problem (Student 5).

The concepts help us to identify the individual elements of the

design process, which in the end make it possible to define our
whole design task. Furthermore, the concepts show what is rel-
evant in relation to this course – give us something concrete to
consider such as the communication function instead of just tak-

381
 ing a shot in the dark and looking at something that is inter-
esting, but not relevant in relation to interaction and usability,
which are keywords in this task (Student 12).

Several students wrote in the reflection reports that the theoretical con-
cepts and models made the analysis more concrete.

The above-mentioned theories have each been helpful in finding

a focus, design proposals, and ideas. The design problem has been
more structured and thus been made clear for the group (Student
10).

All these models and concepts help to understand what functions

the system should contain, to carry out the demands as best as
possible. Setting this focus early in the process, one can have some
important thoughts how communication should ‘flow’ in the or-
ganization, who can do what, who should have access to what.
This early focus on function and knowledge means, too, that one
more concretely can start the discussion of what technologies you
should use for the system, as different knowledge types put differ-
ent demands on what technology fits best (Student 2).

The concepts that we found relevant for our case helped to pro-
vide overall insight into the problems that the group faced (Stu-
dent 9).

The students furthermore described how the theoretical literature made

it possible to work in a more nuanced way with problem solving and
develop innovative ideas.

The theoretical concepts and models that so far have been pre-
sented in the Design and ICT course contribute to the under-
standing of the chosen case, Gigantium, in a way where it is
possible to work with the nuances of the case … . The theoretical
concepts and models provide a better understanding of the sug-
gestions that the company has described (Student 8).

382
 When we talk about knowledge types, knowledge sharing,
knowledge sharing strategies, and type of organizations, all these
factors help determine what type of knowledge the organization
should share internally and externally, how it should go on, de-
pending the knowledge type and the type of organization (Black-
ler, 1995) (Student 11).

All in all, it is always a challenge to learn a new field and new

concepts. However, in this case it is necessary in order to under-
stand a very difficult problem that is extra difficult for us as new
designers. We are in an area very new to us (Student 13).

The students discussed how the theories helped to develop convincing

and well-argued solutions.

The theoretical concepts and models mentioned above contribute

to the understanding, not only by providing a theoretical ap-
proach to the problem, but at the same time to provide a broader
perspective and a well-argued solution to the company. In order
to develop a solution to such a problem, the answer must and
should be well-argued from theoretical and professional concepts
that can ensure the company that the work has followed guide-
lines from the subject area (Student 5).

The theoretical concepts and related controlled terminology became fur-

thermore a means in the communication between students, and provided
the students with a common language.

The use of these concepts becomes much clearer, after a long time
of monotone and mechanical reading. Suddenly these concepts
are useful as a communication means. When you present the
term ‘internal communication’, suddenly all in the group know
what you are talking about, and then all concepts show to their
best [advantage] (Student 1).

All I talked to had the case open at the computer that they had

383
 chosen so that they could switch back and forth from the theory
in the slides, to the task and to the case (Student observer 2).

However, it also appears from the discussions and argumentation in the

project reports that the students use experiences from their personal daily
use of websites and online communities, e.g., Facebook. In a similar vein,
one student adds that the theories are good for framing, but that they
may also limit the creative process of problem solving.

We had the experience that the theories were useful in limiting

what forms of knowledge and interaction should be available in
the design. We had a feeling that it was easier to create visual
thoughts about design possibilities. However, the theories also
had a drawback: this limitation could reduce the possibilities for
new ideas outside the framework of the theories. In this way, a
limitation could appear on innovative and original additions to
the design (Student 4).

Some students mentioned that the number of presented theories, mod-

els, and concepts was overwhelming, that the large number of presented
theories confused more than helped. The finding suggests that it might
be useful to scope the choice of theoretical backgrounds. However, at
the same time the very same students said that the different perspectives
in the literature made the considerations and discussion more detailed,
more nuanced, and well considered.

The above-mentioned theories and models have provided a

knowledge foundation for the design, but it’s clear that they have
caused many considerations because we as inexperienced design-
ers do not have previous experience to use. Therefore, we had to
work from the different theories, from what we found best in
relation to the problem (Student 7).

Several of the knowledge sharing theories that were presented

in the lecture overlap a bit. One could discuss whether it is nec-
essary to use so many theories developing a solution, as it may

384
 confuse us more than form an overview. A few theories could
have been chosen as most relevant for the project, and then go
into detail with these. On the contrary, using many theories
provides an understanding of knowledge sharing and commu-
nication in an organization from many different perspectives
(Student 6).

ICT/Moodle provided a useful framework for teachers to gain insight

into the progress of students.

Theory compilation
The students used literature mostly related to the design problem, and
did not transfer literature from one lecture to another. However, the in-
formation technology students, especially, did integrate previous course
literature from earlier, related courses in the Computer Science depart-
ment.

They relate to stuff from other lectures, but only from this course
(Student observer 1).

Some has included stuff from the previous lecture in the con-
struction and design of labels (Student observer 2).

Learning outcome
In general, the project reports show that the students obtained a good un-
derstanding of the theories, models, and concepts as well as how to apply
them and relate to realistic design problems. The learning design seems
to have encouraged the students to truly explore the theoretical literature
and exploit it as analytical tool for real-life problem solving.

To be thrown into this project as we are, without much knowl-

edge and without a language to formulate the task is a big task,
but it has at the same time a greater learning potential than
if we had known the concepts, terms, and theories beforehand.
Here it is up to us to explore and examine (Student 14).

385
The external partners all were motivated to participate in the collabora-
tion because they wanted to get ideas and new perspectives on the design
tasks. The organizations were either in the planning or analysis phase of
the system development projects described in the design cases, and they
saw the collaboration as a means to get inspiration. One partner found the
subject ICT for knowledge sharing was interesting and appealing; they
were in the process of dividing the organization into knowledge groups
with the purpose both of enhancing the internal knowledge sharing and
innovation and strengthening the collaboration and knowledge sharing
with customers and other stakeholders. Another motivation was the wish
to obtain the knowledge generated at the university, and to generate new
knowledge in collaboration with the university. The informant explained
that it is as important for peripheral regions as the region around Aalborg
University that all regional knowledge resources are exploited and work
together. Another external partner expressed that she sees the collabora-
tion as payback. She knows from her university time how fruitful and
rewarding it is to work with realistic problems, how motivating and en-
couraging it is that the solutions will be used.
The primary learning outcome for the external partners is the design
proposals, the set of different ideas that were presented during the poster
session. They found it especially inspiring that the project groups had
interpreted the design tasks differently, and as a consequence approached
the problem from slightly different perspectives, e.g., prioritized the goals
for the systems differently. They explained how they have used the ideas
in later project meetings as points of departure for brainstorming dis-
cussions. Both the overall solutions and specific parts, e.g., suggestions
on how to encourage dialogue or ensure security, have been used by the
external partners. One partner also said that he had gained from learning
about the structured system development process, from the division into
development phases and specific design problems. Before this, he did not
have any particular knowledge about system design, and he obtained a
better understanding of the design process by the way that the project
work was structured into design problems and design phrases.
The external partners praised the oral as well as written description
of the design solutions. They found that the oral presentations, posters,
and dialogues around the posters altogether provided an adequate picture

386
of the solutions. They appreciated the short form and short time needed
to get an overview and understanding of the ideas. In general, they found
the presentations and posters clear and precise, and the talk around the
posters a good way to get detailed information and arguments and ex-
planations to the solutions. All four external partners are interested and
willing to become partners again in similar collaborations.

Further reflections
It was a drawback that two of the external partners did not attend the
poster session and did not give any feedback. Their absence demotivated
the students. Students that had worked with these cases left the poster
session early. The finding shows that attention and interest from the ex-
ternal partners is essential for the motivation.

At the end of the process it would have been an advantage to get

feedback from Gigantium. By this we could have gotten some
knowledge about whether the design fulfilled the defined wishes
and demands, and as such fulfilled the desired image. Further-
more, this feedback could have been a further step to the devel-
opment of the design (Student 4).

Summing up the experiences

It is a common understanding in the PBL literature that problems orig-
inating from students’ own experience of the world are a core factor for
learning and motivation. Other research shows that problems based on
students’ experiences are often ill structured and do not always fit a tra-
ditional fixed curriculum well. The starting idea for the current work is
that realistic problems originate from external partners and are closely
integrated into the learning design; it is possible that this will increase
students’ motivation and understanding of the problem, provide focus
for the project work, and induce learning for students as well as external
partners. Thus, in the study we have focused on analyzing whether real-
istic problems defined by external partners represent a productive inter-
pretation of PBL.
We have investigated this possible mutual learning concept in a case
study with 158 second-year, humanistic informatics and information

387
technology bachelor students that are following a third-semester mod-
ule on strategic communication in and from organizations. The learning
design consisted of seven lectures, organized so that each lecture had a
theme, a design problem, and two student tasks, a design task that stu-
dents solve in project groups and a reflection task on the project work,
learning process, and learning outcome. The students answered the re-
flection task individually. The design problems were solved in groups of
3-5 students, and reported on posters.
In order to study the learning outcome, we collected a set of data in-
cluding individual portfolio contributions, posters, and observation data
generated by the teachers and three tutors; final project reports and in-
terview data from post-semester interviews with two of the external part-
ners. We investigated the following variables: problem understanding,
problem motivation, theory understanding, use and application, theory
compilation, and learning outcome.
Concerning problem understanding, motivation, and ownership, the
findings show that realistic cases and external collaboration truly moti-
vated the students. In particular, the fact that the external partners partic-
ipated in the poster session and intended to use the designs was a moti-
vating factor. No students questioned the fact that the cases were defined
beforehand by the teachers. The controlled problems provided structure
for the project work, and helped the students to focus and concentrate on
combining problems, theories, and solutions. The students developed and
formed the problems according to their own understanding and interests
during the project work, thereby increasing understanding and motiva-
tion as well as ownership of the problems. However, several students re-
port that it was frustrating that, due to practical implications, they were
not allowed to make direct contact with external partners to ask additional
questions and shape the problems. A midway dialogue between students
and external partners may be a way to overcome this problem.
As regards theory understanding and use, the strong integration be-
tween lectures and design problems provided guidance and stimulated
the students to apply the theoretical framework in the problem solving.
However, the structured learning design and frequent use of PowerPoint
slides as a primary teaching tool invited the students primarily to base
analysis and problem solving on the teaching material instead of the orig-

388
inal literature. As a consequence, there appeared a need to force the stu-
dents to actually read and use the course literature. Multiple theoretical
frameworks were presented for each design problem. This provided, on
the one hand, a rich and productive theoretical framework for the stu-
dents, but on the other hand, appeared to be overwhelming and some-
times confusing for the students. However, at the same time students also
pointed out that those different perspectives produced more nuanced dis-
cussions and solutions. The close integration between problems and the-
ories eased the communication between students, providing them with a
common language. In total, the findings suggest that it might be useful to
evaluate the choice of theoretical background literature, and moreover be
clearer in instructions that the students should decide on and approach
the problem from only one theoretical viewpoint.
Concerning learning outcome, the project reports show that the stu-
dents obtained a good understanding of the presented theories and con-
cepts. The learning design seems to have encouraged the students to truly
explore the theoretical literature and exploit the literature as an analytical
tool for real-life problem solving. It is clear from the reports that the stu-
dents truly learned how to apply theories and methods in system design.
For the external partners, the primary learning outcome was the de-
sign proposals presented during the poster session. Especially, they found
it inspiring that the project groups had interpreted the design tasks dif-
ferently, and as a consequence approached the problem from different
perspectives. They explained how they have used the ideas in later project
meetings as points of departure for brainstorm discussions. One partner
also expressed that he had gained from the learning design, dividing the
system development into phases, each with specific design problems.
The overall conclusion is that motivation can be found in problems
given to the students. The findings also confirm that problem-based
learning based on realistic design problems and collaboration with ex-
ternal partners may facilitate double-sided learning, even double up. The
external partners gain design ideas as well as a better understanding of
theoretical frameworks for design. The students learn to apply theories
for realistic problem solving and to identify realistic problems for future
project work.

389
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AUTHORS

Anders Siig Andersen, Head of Department

Department of Psychology and Educational Studies,
University of Roskilde, Denmark
[email protected]

Renate Andersen, Ph.D. student

Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway
[email protected]

Linda Bradley, Ph.D., Lecturer

Department of Applied IT, Division for
Language and Communication, Chalmers University of Technology
[email protected]

Ellen Christiansen, Professor

Department of Communication, E-Learning Lab,
Aalborg University, Denmark
[email protected]

Nina Bonderup Dohn, Associate Professor

Department of Design and Communication,
University of Southern Denmark
[email protected]

Lillian Buus, Ph.D. student

Department of Communication, E-Learning Lab,
Aalborg University, Denmark
[email protected]

Hannele Dufva, Professor

Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
[email protected]

393
Gerhard Fischer, Professor
Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D),
Department of Computer Science, and Institute of Cognitive Science,
University of Colorado Boulder, USA
[email protected]

Janne Gleerup, Assistant Professor

Department of Psychology and Educational Studies,
University of Roskilde, Denmark
[email protected]

Simon B. Heilesen, Associate Professor

Department of Psychology and Educational Studies,
University of Roskilde, Denmark
[email protected]

Jens Ideland, LicPhil, Ph.D. student

Department of applied IT, The Linnaeus Centre for
Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in
Contemporary Society (LinCS), University of Gothenburg, Sweden
[email protected]

Juha Jalkanen, Lecturer, Ph.D. student

Language Centre, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
[email protected]

Niklas Karlsson, Ph.D. student

Department of Zoophysiology, Center for Educational Science and
Teacher Research (CUL),The Linnaeus Centre for Research on
Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary
Society (LinCS), University of Gothenburg, Sweden
[email protected]

Petter Karlström, Associate Professor

Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, DSV, University of
Stockholm, Sweden
[email protected]

394
Tiina Keisanen, University Lecturer, Adjunct Professor
Faculty of Humanities, English Philology, University of Oulu, Finland
[email protected]

Ola Knutsson, Senior Lecturer

Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, DSV,
University of Stockholm, Sweden
[email protected]

Leena Kuure, Professor

Faculty of Humanities, English Philology, University of Oulu, Finland
[email protected]

Annika Lantz-Andersson, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer

Department of Education, Communication and Learning, The Linnae-
us Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Commu-
nication in Contemporary Society (LinCS)
The University of Gothenburg Learning and Media Technology Studio
(LETStudio), Sweden
[email protected]

Berner Lindström, Professor

Department of Education, Communication and Learning,
The Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and
Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS),
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
[email protected]

Marianne Lykke, Professor

Department of Communication and Psychology,
Aalborg University, Denmark
[email protected]

Kevin Mogensen, Postdoctoral Researcher

Department of Psychology and Educational Studies,
University of Roskilde, Denmark
[email protected]

395
Anders Mørch, Professor
Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway
[email protected]

Tom Nyvang, Ph.D., Associate Professor

Department of Communication and Psychology,
Aalborg University, Denmark
[email protected]

Torbjörn Ott, Ph.D. student

Department of Applied IT, Research School at the Center for
Educational Science and Teacher Research (CUL),
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
[email protected]

Emma Petersson, Ph.D. student

Department of Education, Communication and Learning,
The Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and
Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS)
The University of Gothenburg Learning and Media Technology Studio
(LETStudio), Sweden
[email protected]

Maritta Riekki, Ph.D. student

Faculty of Humanities, English Philology, University of Oulu, Finland
[email protected]

Thomas Ryberg, Professor

E-learning Lab - Center for User-driven Innovation, Learning and
Design, Department of Communication and Psychology,
Aalborg University, Denmark
[email protected]

Roger Säljö, Professor

Department of Education, Communication and Learning, The Linnae-
us Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Commu-

396
nication in Contemporary Society (LinCS), The University of Gothen-
burg Learning and Media Technology Studio (LETStudio), Sweden
[email protected]

Peppi Taalas, Director, Adjunct Professor

Language Centre, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
[email protected]

Sylvi Vigmo, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer

Department of Education, Communication and Learning, The Linnae-
us Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Commu-
nication in Contemporary Society (LinCS), The University of Gothen-
burg Learning and Media Technology Studio (LETStudio), Sweden
[email protected]

397
Education has become available to everyone with Internet access and the
ability to read and write, and the cultural and personal inclination to do
so – anywhere, anytime. Monopolies and control systems will gradually
break down while new ones are emerging. Moreover, this is experienced
by all teachers on a day-to-day basis in a variety of ways. This book is
about the struggle of teachers to keep up with and build new practices
and, last but not least, to bring forth actual teacher experience reflected
through the lens of problem-based learning.

AALBORG UNIVERSITY PRESS