Facilitators:

Steven R. Harris(1) and Bettina Törpel(2)

(1) School of Computing University of Glamorgan

srharris@glam.ac.uk

(2) Fraunhofer FIT, Sankt Augustin

Bettina.Toerpel@gmd.de

Collaborative Learning Workshops at CSCL 2003

Workshop Summary

This workshop addresses the issues raised by seeking to include end-users as participants in CSCL research and design; our aim is to achieve a collective exploration of these issues through a structured discussion based on the views and experiences of the practitioners and researchers taking part. The workshop will be offered on Saturday, 3:00-5:00 pm.

Workshop Description

End-user participation in CSCL research and design is one potentially fruitful approach to addressing the complex and often contradictory relationships between individual and collective needs, motivations and objectives in computer-mediated learning activity. In many situations, the move from designing for toward learning and designing with is crucial for the development of innovative, creative, and empowering responses to the increasingly pervasive presence of computers in the classroom. The aim of this workshop is to explore some of the ways in which the CSCL community has been able to, or hopes to be able to, include end-users as participants in CSCL research and design – what lessons have we learned, what are the key issues still to be addressed? How can we more fully engage with recognizing and valuing other voices in our research/design practice? What theories and methods are best suited to supporting this process? How can we relate others’ learning and our own, how can end-users' participation in design support practitioners' growth and development?

Our goal for this session is to achieve a collective exploration of key themes and issues around end-user involvement in CSCL research/design through a discussion of the views, experiences and questions of workshop participants. The hoped-for outcome will be a collective (hyper)text that records, , the moments of debate as a series of key questions, points and principles. The aim will not be consensus, but rather a multi-voiced, open-ended description and commentary that will act to promote further debate within the CSCL community and beyond. The organizers will undertake to facilitate the documentation of the workshop using text, graphics, and (resources permitting) audio and video, to create a “journal” of the collective experience. If possible this hypertext will be uploaded during the pre-conference weekend, serving as a link between the workshop proceedings, the conference website, and the homepages of participants and their host organizations.