Collaborative Design Practices in Technology Mediated Learning

Abstract

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