Digital Fabrication within Participatory Design to Change Children’s Perceptions of Factual Literature

Troels Lykkegaard Jensen MA student in ICT-based educational design, Aarhus University Præstbrovej 17 8664 Herskind, DK [email protected]

Jens Andersen-Mølgaard MA student in ICT-based educational design, Aarhus University Hybenvej 1, 2.13. 8700 Horsens, DK [email protected]

Heidi Svale Andersen MA student in ICT-based educational design, Aarhus University Vestergade 131, st. 7400 Herning, DK [email protected]

Rikke Toft Nørgård Assistant Prof, PhD. at Center for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Aarhus University Paludan-Müllers Vej 48 8200 Aarhus N, DK [email protected]

Susanne Nordquist MA student in ICT-based educational design, Aarhus University Tøndborgvej 53 8620 Kjellerup, DK [email protected] Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. FabLearn Europe, 16 June 2014, Aarhus University, Denmark.

Abstract This student project is aimed at supporting and improving schoolteachers‟ use of factual literature within 4th to 6th grade (children between 10 and 13 years). The purpose of the project is to change pupils perceptions of factual literature as something difficult and/or boring. The project tries to accomplish this by opening up to new experiences with factual literature through letting pupils design „inspirational toolboxes‟ for themselves and teachers. The toolboxes include a range of inspirational design proposals made by the pupils that participated in our workshops and can be used as inspirational material in lessons that include subject specific reading.

Author keywords Factual literature; Subject specific reading; Participatory design; Digital fabrication; Pupils‟ motivation; Probes; Inspirational toolbox

Introduction and background Teachers frequently experience that pupils lack motivation when they are asked to read factual literature. This often leads to a degraded learning

Case: Probes and inspirational toolboxes (containing different digital fabrication technologies among other things) in relation to factual literature in a public school context Process: A participatory process to create engaged and motivated subject specific readings in schools. Activities/Outcome: Pupils and designers collaborated as probing designers in a participatory design approach to create inspirational toolboxes that would be able to change pupils‟ perceptions of factual literature and improve their learning experience.

experience as pupils detach themselves from subject specific readings, which they deem difficult and/or boring. This student project aims at changing pupils perception of factual literature and, subsequently, improving their learning experience given that literacy is still an immensely important competence (even) in the 21st century [1] [5]. During our fieldwork we have charted the values pupils hold in relation to factual literature in order to ground our design-approach on participant values and secure a pupil-centered approach. This is important to the project, as we try to improve pupils perceptions of and experiences with factual literature in order to make subject specific readings more pertinent and engaging.

The goal of our design concept is to change these perceptions by actively involving pupils to invent and conceive new perceptions of and values in relation to factual literature that then are incorporated in the final design. In this way, we have made pupils participants in the design process [4] that allow us to build new perceptions together with them as they learn new ways of taking up a „factual stance‟ towards the world through developing a repertoire of designerly ways of exploring, establishing, gathering and designing. Therefore, pupils participated in probe workshops [2] where they could explore, gather and design their own (future) ideas, values and motivations in relation to factual literature. Through being invited to construct „inspirational toolboxes‟ pupils are handed empowering tools that potentially could make them self-reliant through helping them articulate or even solve some of the barriers they have in relation to factual literature.

At present we found that subject specific readings are often done solitarily or in small groups, which then are followed up with pupils answering teacher-posed questions through handwriting, text-programs or oral communication. This unidirectional approach of answering set questions is very common but, unfortunately, we found that it degrades the pupils‟ motivation for learning through engaging with factual literature. For pupils factual literature becomes „learning the only right answer‟ while fiction is perceived as „letting your imagination run free‟.

Handed the first „pencil inspirational toolbox‟ pupils were given two weeks to fill it with writings, drawings and sketches based on questions asked by us in order to collect the toolboxes as probes for designing.1

About the project/demo In the upcoming „technology inspirational toolbox‟ the same pupils will explore, establish, gather and design with Makey Makey, Scratch and/or Kinect technologies. With these different technologies, the students will be in groups of 3-4 exploring and designing with digital fabrication technologies followed by an inspiration card workshop [3] where pupils establish and gather

Project experiences so far The project‟s participants are constituted by of a class containing 26 pupils in a Danish 4th grade who have co-designed with us in workshops. We have visited the school two times for a duration of two-three hours where pupils have fabricated „inspirational toolboxes‟

1

You can watch this toolbox by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4tHCISB5Ic&feature=aut oshare

materials on the grounds of the same questions asked in the „pencil inspirational workshop‟.

„inspirational toolboxes‟. The presenters are three teachers and one pedagogue who are all currently studying a Master of Arts in ICT-based educational design at Aarhus University. We are all in different ways absorbed in making factual literature and subject specific reading more pertinent and engaging. We wish to empower pupils to help themselves through designing solutions that will improve their motivation for reading as comprehension of factual information will continue to be a central part of lifelong learning and 21st century skills.

Figure 1, 2 & 3. Pupils explore, establish, gather and design

Acknowledgements

„pencil inspirational toolboxes‟

We would like to thanks Morten Børup Skolen in Skanderborg for participating in our project and the teacher Axel who is head of middle school. And a special thanks to all the pupils who participated as codesigners in this project and its design process.

It is our hope that different inspirational toolboxes will unlock different kinds of ideas, values and motivations as well as show a development in pupils creations and design proposals.

References Expected project outcome 1) The generation of pupils own ideas, values and design proposals in relation to factual literature and subject specific reading in school. 2) Insight into and findings in relation to the potentials of digital fabrication technologies in relation to pupils idea power and design proposals. 3) A participatory design method to get pupils actively involved with exploring, establishing, gathering and designing own solutions to problems they face in school using probes, inspirational toolboxes and digital fabrication technologies.

Project presentation and presenters The project will be presented in the form of video showcasing the design concept, a poster outlining the workshops and our findings as well as the pupils

[1] Bawden, D. ”Origins and concepts of digital literacy”, 2008 [2] Boehner, K., Gaver, W. & Boucher, A. “Probes” in Lury, C. & Wakeford, N. (eds.) Inventive Methods, Routledge, 2012 [3] Bødker, S. & Iversen, O. “Staging a Professionel Participatory Design Practice”, 2002

[4] Druin, A. “Children as Codesigners of New

Technologies”. New Directions for Youth Development, Vol. 128, pp. 35-43, 2010.

[5] Poore, M. ”Digital Literacy: Human Flourishing and Collective Intelligence in a Knowledge Society”, 2011