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The participation of children in the design of new technology: a discussion paper
By Ben Williamson, Learning Researcher, Futurelab
Page 6 of 7 |
experimenting with methods that may work with the over-10s. Another drawback is, of course, the amount of time that needs to be invested in a program of cooperative inquiry. Dedicating upwards of a year with inter-generational groups of children, researchers, artists and computer scientists is likely to be outside the bounds of most project budgets and schedules - regardless of whether they are commercial or experimental ventures.
For these reasons, cooperative inquiry appears rather impractical. It is certainly a model which fits better within a university-funded research scheme, and while many of its basics can be applied in other contexts, it is a paradigm for design partnership which is unlikely to take hold in industry. From this perspective, informant design seems more practical to implement, and provides designers with child and teacher inputs staged to coincide with iterative development. In the practical implications which follow, we describe broadly informant design approaches which might benefit design teams or teachers wishing to involve children more in the process of developing new technology for education.
3. Implications and recommendations for practice
3.1 For educational new technology designers
The majority of the methods described in this document have been developed through university research programs. This does not mean that designers and developers from outside academia should not utilise them. Such child- or learner-centred approaches are possible within a commercially-driven context. Antle (2003), for example, describes a hybrid user-centred and informant design approach mobilised during the development of a web application for a major Canadian broadcaster. Over six months, 'children were involved as informants at the concept stage, informants and usability testers for critical tasks at the prototyping stage, and user testers at the beta stage' (59). Far from confining children only to user testing at a very late stage, then, a child- or learner-centred approach can demonstrably be applied within a commercial environment, as well as within a university lab.
Clearly, a full programme of cooperative inquiry could not be considered in this context. Utilising the input of children acting as informants is, however, feasible. These sessions can take place occasionally, and can be engineered to focus on specific issues, so that extended weekly sessions are unnecessary. Increasingly, schools are coming to recognise the benefits of educational new technology, and the staged involvement of staff and pupils will illuminate both the benefits and drawbacks of using technology in the classroom.
The challenge for the design team in the very earliest stage, working with teachers, is to establish the range of roles that children will be required to fulfil, and to map out what sorts of contributions will be expected. The design team will also need to clarify with the children at what stages they will be contributing, and how these contributions will be transformed into fuller production. The use of terminology that children do not understand could alienate them from the process before it has even properly begun. It is important to both provide opportunities for creativity, and to manage expectations so participants have the freedom to innovate but understand the constraints within which they can operate.
Designers of new technology wishing to involve teachers and students as participants in future developments should:
- recruit a partner school at the very earliest, conceptual stages of a project to define an area for development
- work with teachers and students simultaneously but separately to define problems in practice in the specific subject-related area
- describe the production process and how teacher and student inputs will be used in an iterative development schedule
- carefully select materials for low-tech prototyping that will allow both children and adults to express their ideas
- always be totally clear about design decisions made after informant participation, and demonstrate how the informants' ideas have been made real.
3.2 For teachers
The role of the teacher in the design of new technology for education is often neglected. Most participative design practices, from usability testing through cooperative inquiry, are conducted under laboratory conditions often outside of school. Clearly this is inappropriate when such technology is likely to be recruited by teachers into their teaching plans and mobilised according to pedagogical practice. By precluding teachers from design processes, design teams run the risk of developing technology that falls outside of pedagogical, or even curricular requirements. In fact, the new DfES E-learning Strategy document (2003) highlights the importance of teacher involvement in the design of new technology. Teachers, after all, spend a great deal of time designing and producing low-tech resources for use in classrooms already. They organise, transform and present data in ways which are manageable and contextual enough for students to understand and which can scaffold for them entry to more complex information and knowledge.
Again, informant design practices have included teaching staff, particularly in the early stages of defining the limitations of existing approaches to specific subject-related topics and problems. In the later low-tech prototyping sessions, working in groups with children alongside designers, teachers can gain the added benefit of understanding how children conceive of technology from their informal out-of-school uses of it. In these respects, we can begin to see teachers, as well as their students, as 'producers' of technology, not just 'consumers'.
To add to this, such informant design methodologies can be seen to be more inclusive than long-term design partnerships. Whereas design partnerships develop over many months and extend into years, informant design is occasional and can include a larger number of participants. Design partnerships depend on good interrelationships between a small number of participants in an open process of creativity and innovation outside of school. Informant design, on the other hand, is geared towards establishing specific connections between curricular and pedagogical issues which might even appropriately be explored within a classroom or lesson-based context. From this perspective, it is clear that teachers have much to offer and much to gain from informing a design project.
Teachers wishing to involve themselves and their students in informant design of new technologies should:
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