Learning about Collaborative Design for Learning in a Multi-Surface Design Studio

This paper fuses research on CSCL and collaborative design for learning. It reports a study located in a novel multi-surface environment, configured to support small teams who are designing for other people’s learning. Despite growing awareness in the CSCL community of the importance of design in teachers’ work, there has been very little empirical research on how such design is carried out, or how design for CSCL can be supported and improved through the provision of better design tools and design methods. The paper offers an analysis of the work of four pairs of designers in our Multi-Surface Design Studio. These four dyads were completing a design task we set them, while simultaneously learning how to make good use of the various personal and shared digital tools, display surfaces and other resources in the studio. From observational and interview data, we show how collaborative design for learning needs to be understood as a complex, multiply-situated activity, in which design problem-solving, tools and space usage depend on the fluent deployment of intuitive knowledge about mutual awareness, shared perception, information persistence and movement.