Participatory Design
Cindy Kerawalla, 15 September 2008
The PI project has adopted a learner-centred participatory design approach to the design of learning scenarios and the PI tool kit. To date, we have carried out 2 pilot studies in 2008, both of which involved teachers early in the design process.
The OU developed a location-based inquiry learning toolset to support an eight week GCSE Geography coursework project, which has been completed by 78 students in Oakgrove School, Milton Keynes. In early meetings we explained the project goals and the type of technologies that we wanted to explore. In discussing potential topics, one of the teachers proposed the investigation of urban heat islands and suggested that they could run an inquiry project. Having agreed the context, we then discussed the design of the activities and the supporting tools and resources. A series of paper prototypes and sample datasets were used to inform the development of the activities and tools. In the course of developing our ideas it was agreed that pupils would collect a set of temperature and environmental data across Northampton and Milton Keynes. Using ScienceScope devices pupils measured air temperature, carbon monoxide, wind speed and infrared irradiance. The structure of the inquiry underwent much iteration, as the OU staff and teachers conducted walkthroughs of the field trip. Documents were also produced by both the OU and teachers, to support the pupils in their inquiry, and the students produced pieces of work submitted for their GCSE assessment.
We have held several stakeholder panel meetings at both the OU and UoN. Students have attended two meetings at the OU: one giving feedback on their experiences of the urban heat island activity described above, to support potential sustainability of this curricular item for future years; and the second was a participatory design workshop. This was attended by Oakgrove school students from year 8 and year 9, their teachers, David Crellin from Sciencescope, and Henk van Aswegen from MK City Discovery Centre. The aim of the workshop was to think of new and interesting ways to investigate geography. Students tested out our inquiry process framework that has emerged as a result of our literature review of the inquiry-learning research field. Also, the students used resources (Kellett 1995) to scaffold their creation of new and interesting inquiry questions related to several areas of the geography curriculum (e.g. tourism, crime) and built models of their ideas using various craft materials (see Figure 1). The PI team gained a lot of new insights from the workshops and we have received very positive feedback from both pupils and teachers.
