On Thursday and Friday last week, Ingvill Rasmussen defended her doctoral work entitled ‘Project work and ICT: Studying Learning as Participation Trajectories’. She gave two exemplary lectures and a very measured and engaged responses in the ‘disputas’. Read more in her press release (in Norwegian). Congratulations to Ingvill. And to Sten Ludvigsen her supervisor.

After much bated breath, we’re delighted to have news from Prof Gail Hawisher that Hampton Press has accepted our book proposal resulting from the MULTIMO project based at InterMedia. The book draws together several sub-projects and connects the making and study of multimodal discourse from the ICT-UCT project between InterMedia and CET at the University of Cape Town. Edited by Andrew Morrison, this book aims to draw together a range of interdisciplinary interests in making and designing digitally mediated artifacts and communication. Embodied interaction, electronic installation works, ethnographic blogging on dance, experimental web genres, museums and learners’ discourses, video and informations systems design in the reconstruction of a Viking boat to name a few. Interdisciplinarity, multiple methods, collaborative authoring, student comments on learning about film genres. There’s some solid work ahead of us this fall. Usinig our shared space in Confluence to connect all this.

In the past few weeks the Docudancing blog has been very active with entries related to the recent performances of A Rehearsal for Life, the second part of Per Roar Thorses’ kunststipend at KhiO. Photos and text are now entered, videos follow shortly. And then we are getting into the other producition mode of a joint book chapter. Its for the book resulting from the MULTIMO project (ed. Andrew Morrison) recently accepted by Hampton Press.

The Sept-Oct issue of Educational Technology: the magazine for managers of change in education is a special issue focus on European perspectives on technology based collaborative learning. Sten Ludvigsen and Anders Mørch from InterMedia have an article in this issue, entitled ‘Situating collaborative learning: educational technology in the wild’. They argue that good learning is in effect a summative experience, that is more than individual achievement. The socoi-technical conditions for sustainable learning are discussed with reference to learning activities in junior high schools classes in Norway whcih make use of the FLE discussion forum in the area of natural science. Following a sociocultural perspective, the authors situate their research with reference to knowledge building and progressive inquiry. The norms of the schools involved were found to be siginficant rather than the very similar Learning Environments (LES) used. What emerges as important are the boundary conditions (external phenomena) that impact on individual and collective selves. The ways in which users can customise technologies suggests a new direction for CSCL research. Its thus a case of students and teachers developing their own technologised walks in the wild together.

The full reference for this print only publication is:
Ludvigsen, S. & Mørch, A. 2005. ‘Situating collaborative learning: educational technology in the wild’. Educational Technology. Vol. 45. No. 5. 39-43.

Rasmussen har studert hvordan elever i syvende klassetrinn jobber sammen i grupper, og hvordan læreren veileder dem i prosjektarbeidet. Til tross for at prosjektarbeid er mye brukt i norsk grunnskole, har arbeidsformen vært lite studert. Et viktig spørsmål for kvaliteten på norsk skole er derfor hva som kjennetegner prosjektarbeid og bruk av IKT i praksis, og hva som er produktivt for elevenes læring.

Prosjektarbeid er krevende

I prosjektarbeid blir elevene gitt større ansvar for å definere hva de skal gjøre og hvordan dette skal gjøres, enn i mer tradisjonelle skoleoppgaver. I sin tur krever dette at elevene som jobber sammen i en gruppe skaper en felles forståelse av hva oppgaven innebærer og at de samarbeider om hvordan den skal gjennomføres.

Mye lærerstøtte

Lærerens rolle blir derfor særdeles viktig for elevenes læringsresultater og for kvaliteten på gruppearbeidet. Lærerne bruker mye tid på å lære elevene hvordan de kan tolke oppgaven og hvordan de skal planlegge arbeidet. Planlegging er sosialt og kognitivt krevende og studiet viser at elever trenger mye lærerstøtte for å mestre dette. Denne formen for lærerstøtte ser ut til å være avgjørende for at gruppearbeidet skal være produktivt og at elevene skal kunne jobbe faglig.

Kopiering kan være produktivt for læring

Ofte hevdes det at elever kopierer fra Internett eller skriver av tekster fra skolebøker for å unngå arbeid, men denne studien viser at kopiering også kan være produktivt for elevers læring. Når elevene skulle lage presentasjoer om et tema som for dem var ukjent, startet de med å kopiere tekster og bilder fra Internett eller fra skolebøker. Dette ga dem forståelse og innsikt i temaet de studerte og IKT fungerte støttende i denne prosessen.

The first ISCAR (International Society for Cultural and Activity Research) conference took place in Seville, Spain, on September 20 - 24. Approximately 10 researchers from InterMedia participated and presented papers and chaired sessions at this most important event. The contributions from InterMedia are listed below:

Hege-René Hansen & Leif Christian Lahn: Super Users’ Dual Role as End-User developers and knowledge Activators

Trond Eiliv Hauge: Teaching portfolios as means of student teachers’ professional development

Cecilie Flo Jahreie & Sten Ludvigsen: Transformation of co-developing activity systems: Co-configuration and the formation of a collective object

Cecilie Flo Jahreie & Eli Ottesen: Development of categories in and between multiple activity systems: An analysis of student teachers’ conceptions of project work

Ingeborg Krange & Sten Ludvigsen: Students’ and their teachers’ knoweldge construction in a networked 3D learning environment. Everyday and scientific concepts

Andreas Lund: Appropriation as a didactic concept: language, technology, and speech communities

Anne Moen, Judith Gregory & Ole Smørdal: Learning and construction in trajectories of recovery: New opportunities for multiple actors

Ingvill Rasmussen: Peer group work, ICT and the practice of copying

Ingvill Rasmussen & Sten Ludvigsen: Interdependency in teaching and learning. A study of project work and ICT

Dagny Stuedahl, Ole Smørdal, Judith Gregory & Terje Planke: Aligning heterogeneities

LAP prosjektet avsluttet med publikasjon av en ny bok om e-læring, editert av Anders Mørch og Ivar Solheim (NR) som introduserer begrepet “integrert e-læring”. Med dette menes at IKT og læring blir integrert med informasjonssystemene som allerede eksisterer i bedriften, for å legge til rette for læringsmuligheter innenfor arbeidskonteksten.

Forfatterne (14 tilsammen) tar for seg bruken av IKT for å støtte og effektivisere læring- og kunnskapsbygging på arbeidsplasses. Her er noen av spørsmålene de forsøker å gi svar på: Hva er kriteriene for en vellykket e-læring? Hvordan kan e-læring bli en viktig del av bedriftens kompetanseoppbygging? Hvordan kan bedriftene selv utvikle e-læringsløsninger tilpasset egne behov? Hvilken rolle bør ledelsen spille for å fremme e-læring i bedriften? Hvordan skal e-læring integreres i arbeidsprosessene slik at det blir til nyttig hjelp i medarbeidernes daglige arbeid og oppgaveløsning? Hvordan kan e-læring støtte både teori- og konseptlæring og kompetansebehovene i de daglige, løpende oppgavene, såkalte “just-in-time”-løsninger?

Boka bygger på resultater fra et flerårig, tverrfaglig forskningsprosjekt, “Læring og kunnskapsbygging på arbeidsplassen”, som involverte flere bedrifter (Visma Services ASA, Statoil Detaljhandel) og forskningsinstitusjoner (Norsk Regnesentral, Sintef IKT og InterMedia ved Universitetet i Oslo). Den er publisert av Unipub (www.akademika.no)

Over this Friday and Saturday 80 or so participants filled Aterlier Nord in Oslo for the Generator X Conference. Excellently compiled and arranged by Marius Watz, the conference saw presentations and discussions on ways in which arts and design ‘employ generative systems either as a tool or as an end in itself.’ Even Westvang, from InterMedia, presented on one of his own works, Nomen Nominandum, an ecologically expanding creature floating and transforming on the LAN net of Byåsen secondary school in Trondheim. Alongside the impressive work of leading lights I’d been lucky enough to see before, such as Casey Reas and Golan Levin, I was particularly taken with the presentation by Pablo Miranda Carranza and his approach to self-designing in generative domains. An inspiration to the MULTIMO project, says Andrew Morrison.

An article by Palmyre Pierroux titled ‘Dispensing with Formalities in Art Education’ will be published in the forthcoming issue of Nordisk Museologi. The article examines meaning making processes in encounters with modern and contemporary art among high school students in the USA and in Norway, both in classrooms and on guided school tours.

The Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University, Melbourne, and the Design Research Society hosted the 2004 international design research conference called FutureGround (17-21st November). As part of the MULTIMO project at InterMedia and as a contribution to the CMC network at the University of Oslo, three papers were delivered and are available on the cd-rom proceedings. The papers are:
Morrison, A., Skjulstad, S. & Smørdal, O. 2004. ‘Choreographing augmented space’
Skjulstad, S. 2004. ”Flashback”: tracing developments from electronic paper to dynamic environments in the software Flash’
Stuedahl, D., Smørdal, O. & Morrison, A. 2004. ‘Articulating knowledge from the Vikings to the digital age’.

Professor II på CMC-satsningen, Roger Säljö, har kommet med ny bok: Lärande & kulturella redskap. Om lärprosesser och det kollektive minnet

Organisering av rehabiliteringstilbod og oppfølging etter behandling i helsetenesten er viktig for dei som har mottatt helsehjelp. Det er likevel mange som ikkje får tilbod om eller har anledning til å delta i slike tilbod. I dette prosjektet er det arbeidd med nye former for pasientundervisning med spesielt fokus på egenomsorg, mestring og sjølvhjelp. Funn fra studien viser at pasientar og pårørande møter mange utfordringar etter at dei har mottatt helsehjelp, og som dei ikkje kjenner seg førebudd på. Nye modellar og strategiar for pasientopplæring basert på tilrettelagt informasjon og kommunikasjon kan derfor støtte egenomsorg og bidra til symptommestring og sjølvstendighet i ei elles krevande rekonvalesenstid. Den web-baserte prototypen REPARERE (learning REsources for PAtients and RElatives during REcovery) er eit eksempel på dette.

Pasient og deira familie er ei betydeleg, men i for mange sammanhengar ubruktinformasjons- og kunnskapsressurs for å forstå meir av korleis det er å leva med sjukdom, ivareta symptomhåndtering og egenomsorg. Basert på pasientar og pårørandes egne erfaringar i rekonvalesens, samt informasjon fra helsepersonell og litteraturstudier har vi utvikla prototypen REPARERE.

REPARERE inneheld informasjon knytta til rekonvalesens etter hjerteoperasjon, og det er lagt vekt på å inkludere og presentere informasjon om kva som er vanleg eller “normalt” i ulike faser av rekonvalesensen, forslag til mestringsstrategiar og sekundærprofylakse for å forsinke eller redusere vidareutvikling av hjarte-karsjukdom. Dette er repetisjon av tidlegare formidla informasjon, eksempel på vanlege utfordringar i rekonvalesens og lenker til andre informasjonsressursar.

Det er lagt opp til mulighet for å tilrettelegge informasjon og kommunikasjon, dvs. dette er truleg mest nyttig for deg nå (just-in-time presentasjon), og for å presentera informasjonen samla, dvs. dette er nyttig i forbindelse med rekonvalesens etter hjerteoperasjon (just-in-case presentasjon). Design for alle eller krav til universell utforming er ei sentral premiss i teknologien REPARERE er utvikla i, og det betyr at REPARERE er tilgjengelege og brukervennlig også for personar med forbigåande eller varig funksjonshemming. Som ein konsekvens av dette er krav til universell tilrettelegging no ein del av InterMedias web-publiseringsplattform.

Funn fra gjentatte diskusjonar med brukergruppene og design eksperiment tyder på at IKT-baserte læringsressursar som REPARERE er nyttige og møter eit udekt behov.

The 3rd part of Per Roar Thorsnes’ project into dance and documentary is now in motion. It is concerned with how to come to terms with loss, memory and identity and has a focus on events in the Balkans. This summer, together with the dancers in the project, Per Roar travelled to Srebrenica to mark the the 10th commemoration of events there that shook the world into seeing the horrors of the war in the former Yugoslavia.. This third performance work will blend documentary material and choreography in a piece that engages with how memory - historical, personal and community - is shaped. The blog has photos and text by the dancers and Per Roar and takes our earlier blogging about dance making and its reflections from our local studio into an international arena of coming to terms with conflict in the Balkans. Per Roar and Andrew are writing an article for an online journal. The article uses the blog as the site for composition and reflection.

A special guest edited issue of the new online journal IJEDICT - International Journal of Education and Development using ICT - is now available. Papers are selections form the innovative online conference e/merge hosted by CET at the University of Cape Town last summer. The conference has a specifically southern African focus. From InterMedia, Andrew Morrison contributed to the conference with a paper and online particiaption. In the current issue of IJEDICT he has a paper entitled ‘Border crossings and multimodal composition in the arts’. e/merge was established as a CET project and shows the growing professionalism of this fast emerging partner with which we co-design and co-research. Andrew’s paper is also an outcome of the MULTIMO project at InterMedia into multimodal discourse.

InterMedia collaborates with colleagues from the Centre for Educational technology (CET) at the University of Cape Town in the ICT-UCT project. ICT-UCT facilitates and studies the uses of ICTs by Humanities staff at UCT. The project contributed three conference papers to the recent 7th Annual Conference on WWW Applications: http://www.uj.ac.za/www2005/. These are:
AM Carr, A. et al. (2005) ‘Communities of practice in staff development: learning to teach with technology’.

A Deacon, A. & Brown, C. (2005) ‘Expansive designs for staff development workshops’.

Carr, A et al. (2005) ‘e-Mergent learning from an online conference’.

Further papers are in progress and will be posted on the project site. The project is proving to be a fruitful collaboration between InterMedia and CET and is a complement to InterMedia’a international profile and three EU projects.

‘Border crossings and multimodal composition in the arts’ is the latest paper by Andrew Morrison now published in the second issue of the new online referred journal IJEDICT. For detials of this and other papers, please see: http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu//viewarticle.php?id=45&layout=html

Papers from the First Nordic Design Research Conference - ‘In the Making’- are available at www.nordes.org (go to Proceedings). InterMedia has a paper by Andrew Morrison and his colleagues from the ICT-UCT project at CET, University of Cape Town. Also an outcome of InterMedia’s MULTIMO project into multimodal discourse, the paper is entitled ‘‘Designs for learning about film spectatorship’.

Friday 26. august, 10.00-12.00, Infra

Interdisciplinarity has recently become a focus of research and innovation in Australian universities. The traditional university structures, however, have not historically supported cross-faculty collaborations. This talk is about the challenges of working across faculties, forming and maintaining research teams, and producing measurable outcomes in one university setting. Three case studies of ongoing projects investigating sociotechnical issues are used to illustrate some of the challenges faced by researchers crossing the faculty divide.

Case Study 1 Building a Multidisciplinary Group: Describing the Process

The challenges of building a multidisciplinary team to conduct socio-technical change research are considered from the perspective of a participant observer. Soft Systems Methodology was initially used to develop the team and to foster the group learning of qualitative research approaches among engineers and IT researchers. This case study provides a detailed account of the first stages of developing this group including the challenges involved in overcoming the disciplinary separations traditionally inhibiting cross-faculty, cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Case Study 2 Designing an Interactive Cultural Experience

This research project draws together two areas; interactive art and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and was conducted in one stage of a larger project including designers, IT and interaction design researchers, among others. The development of personas and scenario design illustrates how empirical data can inform the design of a movement-based interface. Finally, low level prototypes were developed to aid the artist/ designers in their aims to create an interactive installation in which visitors could learn and interact with an interactive installation.

Case Study 3 Challenging Collaborations: Understanding and Facilitating Inter-organisational Networks

Knowledge in the Enterprise (KITE) is a research group involving academics from four faculties (Business, IT, Humanities and Social Sciences, Engineering). The members have expertise in a range of methods for studying software and technology implementation, work practices, organisational behaviour and networks. Specifically, KITE aims to develop a better understanding of these socio-technical issues through methodology development and integration beyond simple triangulation in order to help organisations effectively use their knowledge assets. This research marries the diverse, cross-disciplinary skills and expertise of the group to form a partnership with a non-profit National Employment Network to understand and develop knowledge sharing across the organisations within the network.

Melanie Kan is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Information and Communication Technologies (IICT), University of Technology, Sydney. Her previous studies and research include organisational psychology, management and leadership studies, nursing management in the public health sector and strategic change in the IT consulting sector. Some current research projects include, the development of multidisciplinary teams, Quality of Experience (QoE) in Experience Enriched (Next Generation) Networks, and knowledge sharing across remote organisations. Her research interests are research design, qualitative research approaches, organisational change and development/

Weiqin Chen, Jan Dolonen and Lars Eirik Rønning got the paper “Learning OO with Peers” accepted at ICCE 2005 that will be held in Singapore later this year. In the paper we describe the design and implementation of an extension to the BlueJ environment based on the findings from our experiments using BlueJ with existing distributed environments.

“Re-thinking technology in museums” is the name of a conference to be held in Limerick, Ireland on June 29-30th. Palmyre Pierroux will be presenting a short paper “The Language of Contextualism and Essentialism in Museum Education,” which will also be published in the conference proceedings.