A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Playing on the Globe: Facilitating virtual communications between Namibian and Finnish learners to co-design an interactive map game
Authors: Rötkönen Erkki, Winschiers-Theophilus Heike, Goagoses Naska, Itenge Helvi, Shinedima Gabriel, Sutinen Erkki
Conference name: Interaction Design and Children
Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Publication year: 2021
Book title : IDC '21: Interaction Design and Children
Journal name in source: Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children, IDC 2021
First page : 160
Last page: 170
ISBN: 978-1-4503-8452-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3459990.3460707(external)
An increasing trend of digitally enhancing learning provides unique opportunities to expand from local to global learning environments. However, current technologies and educational approaches do not adequately support creative communication and learning for primary school learners across the globe. We maintain that it is important to promote agentic engagement amongst learners by involving them in the design of their own digitally enhanced learning environment. In this study, we connected ten learners from a Namibian and a Finnish school in virtual communications to co-design an interactive map game. Following a research through design approach, we share a detailed account of the case study in which we facilitated a distributed co-design process, using Skype, a custom made VR environment, and Microsoft Whiteboard. We reflect on the co-design sessions, focusing on communication and the design concept evolution contributing to distributed co-design methods and techniques not only for the design community but also as an agentic learning process that could be incorporated into formal learning environments. With a paucity of existing empirical work of geographically distributed co-design with children, our case study provides an empirical foundation pointing at critical issues to be further investigated such as multilingual design, social cohesion, facilitation roles, technologies, design breadcrumbs, negotiations and learner’s pride.