Computer Support for Participatory Designing – A
Pilot Study
Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen 1, Henna Lahti 2, Marjut Iivonen2, & Kai Hakkarainen3
1 Savonlinna Department of Teacher Education, University of Joensuu
2 Department of Home Economics and Craft Science, University of Helsinki
3Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland
https://www.doczj.com/doc/e28540950.html,hti@Helsinki.fi
ABSTRACT
The purpose of the present study was to analyze whether and how students working in the collaborative learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE2) were able to share their design process with the intended user of the product. We organized a collaborative design course in which six teams of first-year university-level textile students (N=24) solved an authentic and complex design task -- designing bags of EuroCSCL conference -- with the help of FLE2-environment. The design course was based on the idea of participatory design process. The methods of social network analysis were applied to study interaction between the students, teacher and the users in the F LE2 database. A more detailed qualitative content analysis was carried out by analyzing the design thinking, design activities, and interaction between the students’ and teacher’s and the users’ statements posted to the F LE2 database by two of the design teams. The results indicated that in the more successful group, there was more active dialogue between students and expert users (i.e., avid conference-goers). In the case of this team, the expert user took a role of co-designer by participating in the design process through evaluating ideas produced by students. In the case of the less successful team, the teachers and users took the role of organizing students’ process of working with FLE2 and their collaborative designing. This group did not deliberately test their ideas with the expert user.
Keywords
Collaborative designing, knowledge-building environments, participatory design
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of the present study is to analyze how university students’ collaborative designing may be supported by an environment for computer-supported collaborative learning and to find new methods for evaluating the users’and teacher’s contribution to students’ design process. Collaboration and teamwork are essential aspects of professionals’ practical activity in the field of modern design (see, for example, F erguson, 1992; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). Professional designers routinely share knowledge, such as design ideas, visual sketches, and interpretations, among members of a design team. A few studies, however, have specifically analyzed design processes with respect to collaboration or teamwork (Hennessy & Murphy, 1999; Perry & Sanderson, 1998; Valkenburg & Dorst, 1998). An analysis of collaboration in networked virtual design studios (Gabriel & Maher, 2000) has appeared only recently.
Most design studies concentrate on students’ design processes yet the teachers’ or users’ roles have not been analyzed closely. Teacher modeling and demonstration, an important aspect of studio teaching, however, is known to be crucial in facilitating the development of students’ design expertise. The purpose of the present study is to examine how collaborative designing is supported in the CSCL environment. There are many open questions, however, concerning how virtual design studios should be arranged (Kvan, 2001). It is important that students are not left working alone without guidance in the design process. A teacher is needed to structure the process and provide advice for the students in traditional design studios as well as in virtual ones. According to Kvan (2001), the virtual design studio requires greater responsibility of the students to control and self-organize their works. The communication between the students and the teacher also has to be more structured than in face-to-face interaction. Wells (2001) has written about teachers as either co-inquirers or organizers of a learning community’s activities; similarly we may recognize corresponding roles of design teachers or expert users participating in designing, i.e., talk about 1) teachers and users as co-designers or 2) teachers and users as leaders and organizers of the design process.
The idea of giving an "expert user" an important role in designing relies on the notion of participatory designing. As the complexity of artifacts being designed increases, involvement of the users becomes more and more important
to ensure usability of the product. Participatory design emphasizes the importance of acquiring relevant information from the end user of the product and ensuring that the product manifest the end user’s viewpoint. The designer has to obtain relevant knowledge of users and their activity, and thus the design project should try to include users as a part of the project team from the very beginning (Popovic, 1999). In the present study, collaborative designing is understood as a process of actively communicating and working together in order to share a design task, jointly determine design constraints, and engage in coordinated efforts to create a shared design product (compare Dillenbourg, Baker, Blaye, & O’Malley, 1996; Lahti, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen & Hakkarainen, 2001).
The emergence of computer-supported environments for collaborative learning and working encourages one to explore the possibilities of participatory design. The present study relies on a web-based environment, the F uture Learning Environment (FLE2), that is a networked learning environment providing a distributed database designed to support collaborative designing (Leinonen, Mielonen, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, Muukkonen, & Hakkarainen, 1999; http://FLE2.uiah.fi). The F LE2 provide tools for collaborative designing, so that multiple actors can asynchronously work and communicate through discourse and visual representations in the virtual learning environment. The system provides tools for discussing ongoing design processes as well as sharing of conceptual and visual design ideas. In this research, FLE2’s Knowledge Building module was used for structuring students’collaborative design process. All KB messages within a project are posted to the shared space, visible as lists of messages, and the messages produced to the database can be included attachments files such as a text, graphics, video or www-links. Each KB discussion is accessible only to the users enlisted as participants of that specific course. By categorizing his or her design notes posted to KB-module, the user is guided to specify his or her design ideas, generate and articulate multiple design ideas and evaluate them critically, search for new information, comment on the fellow users’ design process and share the whole process with the other members of the design team in question. Figure 1 represents the Knowledge Building (KB) Module and one discussion thread.
Figure 1. Knowledge Building module and one thread with open message (from actual use in a course).
F igure 2 present Knowledge Building Module and how student’s store their design sketches during the design process.
Figure 2. The Knowledge Building (KB)–module window (with design created during
the EuroCSCL Conference Bag Course)
Our research team has conducted a number of different kinds of collaborative design projects in FLE2 -learning environment. In these studies we have focused on analyzing the students’ design thinking, design process phases and design elements (Seitamaa- Hakkarainen & Lahti, Muukkonen & Hakkarainen, 2000). Moreover, we have analyzed the intensity of the collaboration by distinguishing interaction within the shared design object and the role of process organization (Lahti, Seitamaa-Hakkarainen & Hakkarainen, 2001). The present study aims to investigate aspects of teacher and users role in a participatory design process, specifically:
?To explore how teacher and users worked in the virtual design environment to jointly advance students’ design process;
? To investigate the participatory design and users’ contribution to the design teams’ collaborative design process in a networked learning environment;
?To find good practices for supporting participatory design process and highlight the ideas regarding how designing in a virtual design studio benefits the ordinary design process.
METHOD
Participants and data collection
The data were collected from a 13-week collaborative design course on ‘Designing a EuroCSCL Conference Bags’, and students were using FLE2 -environment during design process. In the study the participants were 24 first-year -
students at the University of Joensuu, Savonlinna Department of Teacher Education. The project was organized so
that the students worked in six design teams consisting of four student in each team. The students were instructed to intensively collaborate within their own design team and to search for deepening knowledge from the users of the product during the project. The course consisted of weekly lectures, face-to-face design sessions during the lectures, and individual/team designing in the FLE2 -environment between the lectures. The present study followed a method of a design-studio teaching consisting of the following structure: a setting, a design problem and defining design context in the form of a brief, the exploration of the brief and users’ needs, presentation of the design ideas verbally or graphically and reviews of proposals (Gabriel & Maher, 2000; Kvan, 2001). In addition, three tutors helped students become accustomed to using the FLE2 -environment, and the teacher actively participated in the students’design process.
The design task was a very challenging -- authentic and complex -- design task: the students were asked to design and produce functionally and aesthetically delightful conference bags to the EuroCSCL conference. The client of the project was the chairman of the EuroCSCL conference committee. During the project the students received some background information, such as design brief, EuroCSCL Conference www pages and research articles concerning participatory design in general. Each of the teams had its’ own “expert user” (i.e., an avid conference goer), and a whole group of users also participated in the design process by providing information about conference bags and conferences in general in the FLE2- environment. The design lectures and tasks proceeded along within the project and students’ visual ideas were evaluated by the team of users and the teacher (a professor of craft science). The students also engaged in technical designing and tested their technical solutions in the textile laboratory. Each team designed one prototype, and the prototypes were evaluated by the users and teacher. The student teams were expected to work independently outside of the design lessons. In addition, the students were informed that productions of each whole group rather than of the contributions of individual students were going to be assessed. The present study was, however, based only on an analysis of participants’ written postings to F LE2’s Knowledge Building database. We videotaped two design teams’ activities but this material will be published in another context.
Analysis 1: Participants’ role in the social interaction of networked designing
Methods based on social network analysis (Scott, 1991) were used to study participants’ social position in the collaborative design process. The same methods have been used in other studies to analyze patterns of social interaction in CSCL (Palonen & Hakkarainen, 2000). The participants’ positions in the networked discussions were analyzed using Freeman’s degree as a centrality measure. Centrality describes the importance or isolation of a member in the communication network. The degrees were counted from the number of messages that the participants sent to others’ messages (outdegree) or received from others (indegree) in FLE2.
The measure of density was used to evaluate the general level of interaction in the design teams. Density is a simple way to measure a network: the more actors that have relationships with one another, the denser will be the network (Scott, 1991, 74); hence it indicates, here, proportionate measure of the intensity of interaction among the participants. Density was counted from a dichotomized matrix of KB -messages (the participants had or had not sent or received messages to each other, the frequency of messages did not matter) and, thus, it could vary from 0 to 1. The calculation of density of the design teams counted to all participants’ contribution. All social networked analyses were performed using the UCINET -program (Borgatti et al., 1999).
Analysis 2: Teacher’s and users’ participation in design process
The entire database consisted of 219 Knowledge Building messages. A detailed analysis was, however, limited to the database produced by two of the design teams; teacher and expert users postings consisting of 72 KB messages. We selected team 1 and 2 because expert users appeared to participate rather actively in these teams. The two teams, moreover, might provide contrasts: all evaluators found Team 2’s conference bag to be the best, whereas Team 1 conference bag was considered to be the poorest. To analyze the design process in F LE2 we considered teacher’s, users’ and students’ design thinking, design activities, and their exchange of information.
The knowledge-building messages posted to the database were segmented into propositions representing one main idea (Chi 1997). All text in each message was first divided into segments, each representing a separate idea. Two independent researchers were used to assess inter-coder reliability of the segmentation. To analyze the reliability of segmentation, an independent coder classified approximately 15% of messages posted by two design teams. The inter-coder reliability of segmentation was .85 indicating that the reliability of segmentation was satisfactory.
The qualitative content analysis was based on the classification that was developed in our earlier study, which analyzed university students’ collaborative design process (Seitamaa-Hakkarainen & Lahti, Muukkonen & Hakkarainen, 2000). The classification schema comprises the following categories: 1) design thinking, 2) design activity and 3) information exchange. The design-thinking category involves of specifying a) design context ,b) working idea, c) new information, d) comment, and e) metacomment. Each statement was considered to represent
just one of these subcategories. How these components succeed and relate to each other may be explained as follows: By specifying design context the design problem was determined (for example: Does anyone know about research conferences and conference bags?). Design progressed by articulating and elaborating working ideas through which the final design emerged. The participants also searched for and provided new information concerning design context or design elements. During the design process students commented on each other’s ideas and information. Through metacomments, students assessed whether the design process was progressing in the desired direction, and appropriate methods were being used; they considered how the design task was shared, and accomplishments of members of a design team.
We used the second category, design activity, to assess the students’ modes of participating in problem solving during the design process. These subcategories were easily identified in the design statements. The variable consists of a) analyzing, b) proposing, c) evaluating, and d) organizing the process. Each statement was considered to represent just one of these subcategories. Analyzing statements generated information (e.g., design constraint or design elements) that refined the design problem. Proposing refers to an active process of finding a solution for the design or stating new ideas. Evaluating statements refers to assessment of a design situation or solutions made with respect to particular design elements or sketches. Organizing the process refers to statements that helped the team to regulate the socially shared process of designing.
We used the third category, information exchange, to assess the content of interaction between teacher, users and students. This category became very fine graded and comprised the following aspects: a) a student asks user’s experience, b) a student asks user’s feedback, c) a student asks feedback from her fellow team members, d) a user provides his or her own experience, e) a user provides feedback, f) a student refers to outsider, user information, g) a student refers to general information and h) a student gives own opinion.
Each segment representing the main idea was coded and analyzed by using SPSSWIN program. To analyze the reliability of classification, an independent coder classified approximately 17% of all statements; the coefficient for rater agreement was .88, which was considered satisfactory.
RESULTS
Analysis 1: Participants’ role in the social interaction of networked designing
The entire database consisted of 211 Knowledge Building messages. The students posted 149 messages, on average 6.2 messages per student (minimum was 0, maximum 26 messages) to FLE2’s database during the course. The Teacher posted 35 messages, and users posted 27 messages. Team members’ activities and users’ participation varied considerably from one team to another (see Table 1). The teacher and user’ centrality in the design process was analyzed as set out, above. The analysis indicated that the participants’ social network had a relatively centralized structure; (92% in the case of sent, and 82% in the case of received messages). The teacher’s extremely high betweenness value indicates that she was mediating information exchange between the teams and expert users.
A main part of virtual design activity took place within the design teams, and students did not actively comment on design process across the teams.
Table 1 reveals that the teams had different patterns of participating in virtual designing. Team 4 appeared to be the most productive in posting KB messages, and the number of their sent and received messages was higher than those of other teams. Team 3 did not participate in virtual designing as actively as the other teams. Teams 1 and 2 appeared to have most active expert users, whereas in Team 6’s expert user did not participate (for technical reasons) in the ongoing discussion.
Table 1.
The Centralization of Participation in Virtual Designing
Sent messages Received messages Measure of betweenness Groups of
participants
N M SD M SD M SD Team 14 4.0 4.1 4.5 3.7 6.57.5 Team 24 5.8 5.4 6.3 6.113.919.1 Team 34 2.8 1.9 3.5 3.18.27.6
Team 448.3 4.38.8 3.412.810.6 Team 54 3.8 3.5 3.8 6.816.132.3 Team 64 5.8 6.8 5.37.923.735.1 Teacher134.0031.00272.00 Expert Users9 3.1 2.9 2.7 2.4 1.0 2.8 TOTAL34 5.4 6.5 5.4 6.517.848.3
The analysis indicated that the students’ network of interaction was not very dense; specifically, 0.22 (SD =0.86) for symmetrized data (direction of commenting ignored). In the case of the asymmetric graph based both on sent and received comments, the measure was 0.16 (SD =0.74) of the possible ties. Detailed analyses indicated that the teacher distributed her coaching efforts equally across design teams.
Even if the above figures give an impression of a shallow level of participation, one should take into consideration that much activity took place outside of the F LE2 -environment. In many cases, a few students appeared to take responsibility for organizing the virtual design process and interacting with the teachers and the expert users, whereas the others were more active in design processes that took place outside of the environment. In the case of Team 1 and Team 2, for instance, only three members actively participated in virtual designing, and there were, further, considerable differences in terms of the degree of participation.
Analysis 2: Teacher and users’ participation in design process
The second-level analysis was conducted to examine more closely two design teams, with respect to interaction between the teacher and the users. To analyze the design process in F LE2 we analyzed teachers’, users’, and students’ design thinking, design activities, and exchange of information. Teams 1 and 2 posted 72 knowledge-building messages, consisting 293 design statements. Team 1 produced 27 notes consisting of 118 design statements, and Team 2 produced 42 messages consisting of 175 design statements (both the teacher’s and users’statements were included this analysis). Most of the design statements were produced between weeks 3 and 8. Team 1’s knowledge-building messages were slightly longer, consisting about 4.5 statements per message, whereas Team 2 notes consisted of 3.8 statements per note. All the messages were task-oriented and relatively easily analyzable according to the current classification schema.
Table 2 presents the general frequencies and proportions for Teams 1 and 2, of students’, teacher’s and users’ design-thinking statements. There appeared to be significant differences in such statements between these two teams when the teacher and users were excluded from the data. The frequency distributions of design-thinking statements across Team 1 and Team 2 differed from each other in a statistically significant way (df=4; χ2= 32,0; p< .001). In order to examine whether the observed frequencies in each cell deviated from what could be expected by chance alone, we carried out cell-specific exact tests (Bergman & El-Khouri, 1987). The results indicated that Team 2 more often defined the design context (f=16; 14%) than did Team 1. An examination of frequencies of statements produced by students indicated that both teams provided more working ideas, approximately 49% (f=97), which was expected. In Team 1’s design process, the students processed new information (f=37; 45%) considerably more often than did Team 2. Approximately 14% (f=16) of Team 2’s design thinking dealt with new information. The teacher and expert user appeared, however, to provide new information more actively to Team 2’s design process (f=31; 52%) than they did in the case of Team 1’s design process (f=7; 19%). Moreover, the teacher and user appeared to provide more metacomments (f=13; 36%) in Team 1 designing than they did in Team 2 designing (f=9; 15%). Through metacomments students and teacher assessed whether the design process was progressing in the desired direction and how people should proceed in the task.
Table 2. Table 2. Frequency Distribution of Design Thinking.
Team 1Team 2
Students Teacher & Users Students Teacher & Users Design thinking f%f%f%f%
Context3 3.7719.41613.958.3
Working idea3846.35*13.95951.31525.0
New information3745.1719.416*13.931?51.7
Comment3 3.7411.1119.600
Metacomment1* 1.213?36.11311.3915.0
82100.036100.0115100.060100.0
Note. Significance tests are based on hyper-geometric probability estimations (see Bergman & El-Khouri, 1987);
* = Observed frequency smaller than expected by chance alone (p < .001);
? = Observed frequency larger than expected by chance alone (p < .001).
Table 3 presents the general frequency distribution of students’, teacher’s, and users’ design-activity statements. The students’ design-activity statements appeared to significantly differ between the two teams when the teacher and user were excluded from the data (df=3; χ2= 22.5, p< .001). Team 1 students appeared to engage in the activity of design analysis two times more often (f=41; 50%) than Team 2 students (f=25; 22%). Members of Team 2 appeared, further, to self-organize their process (f=15; 13%) much more often than did members of Team 1. The teacher and the users appeared to evaluate Team 2 students’ design ideas more frequently (f=22; 37%) than they did with Team 1 (f=10; 28%).
Table 3. Frequency Distribution of Design Activity.
Team 1Team 2
Students Teacher & Users Students Teacher & Users Design activity f%f%f%f%
Analyzing41?50.01438.925*21.71728.3
Proposing3441.5513.956?48.71220.0
Evaluating5* 6.11027.81916.522?36.7
Process organization2 2.4719.41513.0915.0
82100.036100.0115100.060100.0
Note. Significance tests are based on hyper-geometric probability estimations (see Bergman & El-Khouri, 1987);
* = Observed frequency smaller than expected by chance alone (p < .001);
? = Observed frequency larger than expected by chance alone (p < .001).
The above results indicated that there were considerable differences between the teams’ designing; also the contribution of the teacher and users appeared to differ between the teams. Compared to those of Team 2, the students of Team 1 appeared to analyze more design constraints and design context, and the teacher and user’s contribution appeared to provide new information and help students to organize their design process. The teacher’s and user’s contribution to Team 2’s design process appeared to focus on helping to evaluate students’ ideas. In order to analyze more closely the interaction patterns between the students, teacher, and the users, we analyzed the categories of the information exchange. Table 4 presents frequencies and proportions of Team 1’s and Team 2’s exchange of information.
Table 4. Frequency Distribution of Type of Information Exchange.
Team 1Team 2
Information exchange f%f%
Ask User’s experience7 5.911 6.3
Ask User’s feedback0011 6.3
Ask feedback from team members4 3.4148.0
User gives own experience1613.62112.0
User gives feedback97.63117.7
Refers to outsider user information24?20.35* 2.9
Refers to general information2521.2169.1 Students own opinion3328.06637.7
TOTAL 118100.0175100.0Note . Significance tests are based on binomial probability estimations (Bergman & El-Khouri, 1987);
* = Observed frequency smaller than expected by chance alone (p < .001);
? = Observed frequency larger than expected by chance alone (p < .001).
Table 4 shows that there appeared to be significant differences between the teams’ designing concerning how they used information and acquired knowledge and feedback from the users (df =7; χ2= 46.3; p< .001). Both teams directly asked user’s experiences in approximately 6% of their design statements but only Team 2 explicitly asked users for feedback. Moreover, Team 2 students also asked for more feedback (f =14; 8%) from their fellow members than did Team 1 (f =4; 3%). Both teams received an approximately equal amount of statements representing users’experience during their designing. It follows that both users were active and supported students’ designing by providing their own experiences with conference bags. Team 1 acquired, however, much more information from the users outside the present network environment by interviewing some other conference goers (f =24; 20%). In the case of Team 2, the users gave feedback about the students’ ideas twice as often (f =31; 18%) as in the case of Team 1(f =9; 8%). Team 1 produced design ideas, but they did not ask for any direct feedback for their ideas, from the teacher or the users. The following excerpt describes how the students in Team 1 acquired outside users’information and how their expert user provided new information about this particular conference:
Deepening Knowledge 2000-10-10 Student Elaine ”I was asking something”
Hi! I had an "interview" with one conference visitor, who gave me some ideas and requests. He
thought that briefcase shaped bags that had a shoulder strap in addition to handles were among
the best ones he had been using. He had also been satisfied with their subdued colors. Anyway, he
was not that sure if we should also have subdued colors after I told him something about this
particular conference. I think that we should emphasize it a bit, so that even an outsider can
recognize what it was meant for.
As an improvement, he suggested carefully chosen closing mechanisms. The cover is usually
fastened with a clip with opens easily by itself. The inside pockets lose their contents easily
because they cannot be closed at all. He thought that a zipper would be the best solution. (A
costly one, maybe). He had one more idea, a pocket for passport. One has to carry it quite often.
Comment 2000-10-29 Student Theresa ”I was asking…”
I was asking a friend of mine what kind of bag it should be. The answer was that there must be
no pockets inside. Putting folders into the bag is difficult if there are extra pockets. The bag must
be big enough for a big folder. There is usually a separate briefcase for the laptop. Pockets
outside are good (for passport, mobile phone etc.).
Problem 2000-11-01Student Elaine ”Note”
In the briefing, it was said the \out\look of the bag should reveal the subject of the conference.
How should we do that?
Problem 2000-11-09“User Mina” The subject of the conference”
Here we have an interesting question. The subject is, after all, computer supported collaborative
learning, which combines modern techniques and educational theories. The participants are not
tech freaks but the researchers in the field of learning who use the new technologies. Did you
know that the conference is also the first European Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
conference? There have been other ones in the United States earlier. What means of expressing the
nature of the conference are there in the look of the bag? Colour? Logo? I have never thought
about that. The bag should not be too streamlined and at least not blue, as it is in the
traditional engineer style.
The second series of excerpts show clearly how the teacher and the user gave feedback and the students actively asked feedback for solutions in Team 2’s designing.
Working Theory 2000-10-18 S tudent Ann ”Bag sketch”
Here is an idea about the shape of the bag. Actually we thought that the bag would be more
round, it is the way things are today (modern cars etc.). Joining the handles together looks like a
good idea. For sure it is something new. There should be a cushion in it [joined handles] to
make carrying the bag more comfortable. Later it would be suitable for a shopping bag. There
would not be a partition in the bag, but large pockets and a few smaller ones on both sides of
the bag. Attachments: bagsketch.jpg
Comment 2000-10-18 Teacher “Nice shape”
I found the shape pretty good, but does the way it is carried give too feminine an impression? At
least I think so. The large pockets and some small pockets to the both sides of the bag are a good
decision.
Comment 2000-10-20 User Lisa" Handbag or bag?”
Hi,
Of the two sketches I liked the one on left, the other one was too handbag-like.
Cheers, Lisa the user.
Working Theory 2000-10-20 Ann “Commenting the comments”
Lots of thanks for the comments! The latest sketches seemed to give you a lot of thoughts.
Something worth refining, being too feminine seemed to be a problem. Cute; we wondered,
before publishing the picture, Does the round shape that we eventually gave to the bag make it
look too feminine ? Apparently not. Well, there is again an attachment with sketch and possible
patterns. If there are any men reading this please comment on the topic of the day, would a man
also like to carry this one on his shoulder?
In my opinion the original sketch had a touch of youth and "worth keeping" in it, though I say it
myself. We thought that a good choice of colors would compensate for the feminine feel of the
bag, if it is still here in the new proposal. Attachments: patterns.jpg
While assessing designs of the participating students, many expert users emphasized how a good conference bag could be used for many purposes afterwards. A very good conference bag could, for instance, not only function in other academic situations but also serve a participant who is going on a picnic or to beach for swimming. DISCUSSION
We examined how the F LE2 -environment supported collaborative designing through organizing a participatory design course in which teams of first-year students of textile teacher solved an authentic and complex design task --designing a conference bag to the EuroCSCL conference. The students were guided to collaborate by sharing their design knowledge and searching for new information provided by the expert users who were active conference goers and who volunteered for this study. In general, the qualitative content analysis of the students’ productions posted to FLE2’s database indicated that the knowledge produced by the participants represented the prototypical elements of design process revealed in previous studies (e.g., Seitamaa-Hakkarainen & Lahti, Muukkonen & Hakkarainen, 2000) The students generated their solutions through a sustained process of developing and testing of design ideas, they analyzed the design context, generated their working ideas, and evaluated them. However, the F LE2 -environment was used most effectively during weeks 3 to 8, but not any further during the stage of actually manufacturing the prototype.
Currently, however, we are exploring different ways of using CSCL environments for supporting virtual designing in university level education. In the future, it might be important to organize a whole series of courses in which students share their knowledge and competencies among themselves and engage in intensive interaction with experts. In the present case, it took a considerable effort on the part of the participants -- many of them with limited computer skills -- to learn to use the FLE2 environment. The students were not, further, given a sufficient number of credit units for the course; it was more laborious and time-consuming than expected by the organizers. This might have affected to the use of the virtual designing. Some of the participants did not understand why they were asked to share their design through the networked learning environment rather than face-to-face meetings although it was explained to them. It is not a part of design culture of textile students to work within virtual environments. Toward the end of the course, however, the advantages of virtual working became more apparent to the students involved.
These results, as well as our previous studies indicate that the virtual design environment can support the design process, especially during the stages of problem structuring and visual designing, but does not so much support the process after the final decision of the product or prototype has been made. It appears to us that the cognitive scaffolding of expert-like designing encouraged and provided conceptual tools for the students to reflect on their own design thinking, and that participatory designing (i.e., including the user as a designer’s partner) is indeed possible to arrange in the F LE-environment. There are limitations to these findings: Since the study involved intensive investigation of a small number of students, all of whom operated in the new networked environment, the data do not support the drawing of comparative conclusions; in particular there is no direct evidence permitting the
assessment of the degree to which students’ performance in the design task may have performed better than in some alternate context. We do not know about the representativeness of this sample of students, and our provisional conclusions need to be refined with other samples and other settings.
Our previous studies have indicated that there are two important aspects of designing that virtual design environments may scaffold: defining the design context and acquiring new information. In the present study, Team 2 focused more on defining design context than did Team 1, whereas Team 1 acquired more new information and reported it to the fellow students. In the case of Team 2’s design process, the expert user directly provided his or her own experiences and feedback for the participants about their solutions. Students of Team 1 also acquired outsider users’ experiences but did not rely on interaction with the expert user while testing their design. Moreover, Team 2 appeared to autonomously control their designing by assessing how they proceeded in the process, i.e., they posted more metacomments and process organization statements than did Team 1. The teacher tried to assist Team 1’s design process by providing comments helping them to organize their design process. In this sense the teacher became more the leader and organizer of Team 1’s design process than she or he did in Team 2’s designing.
In order to establish close and continuous collaboration with users, in the present study, we extended the users’ role into the design process; from being a main source of information, to being a design partner or as an equal member of the design team. In Team 2’s design process, the teacher and user became more involved in the students’designing since they were actively invited to the discussion of the relative merits of solutions. The user and teacher became more co-designers with the students even if they did not directly provide new solutions or sketches. Our conclusion is that there is some evidence of participatory designing in Team 2’s activities.
These findings suggest that collaborative technology may provide new tools for students and designers to share important aspects of their design thinking. A essential aim of the present study was to facilitate direct student-expert partnership, i.e., provide the students with access to authentic expert users’ knowledge and so that the student designers might apply it. In the present case, however, the activity of the user also varied: Either the student did not ask the active user’s contribution, or the volunteer expert user did not have enough time to participate in the virtual design process. As we continue with the F LE2 project, we will explore possibilities of facilitating more intensive and on-line interaction between students and experts so that the students learn to work productively with customers from the very beginning of their projects. It might be important to improve the participants’ awareness of what is going on within a networked learning environment (e.g., setting up a notification system that transmits information about students’ activities to the experts), so that very busy experts could follow what students are doing and provide timely feedback for students. To conclude, it appears to be profitable to engage experts more closely in knowledge-building discourse with the students.
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