Curriculum-focused design

Abstract

In this paper we describe a technique of CurriculumFocused Design, and the aspects of our research experience on which the technique is based. Our technique is a variant of Druin's Cooperative Inquiry. Cooperative Inquiry is a well-developed design practice for children, but it has been practised largely outside the classroom. Druin's technique has also been developed in American schools, which have greater curriculum flexibility than English schools, which are highly curriculum-focused. We studied the English curriculum and identified an area that we believed could fruitfully be augmented by technology. Our design approach was novel insofar as our evaluation sessions doubled as lessons for students. Our interdisciplinary design team, including a former teacher with over 10 years' classroom experience, evaluated the interface in a classroom setting, providing strong environmental validity to the design process.

Children's Involvement in the Design of Game-Based Learning Environments

“…The approach is also mainly school-based, yet less formally structured than a particular classroom-based approached called curriculum-focused design (see Rode et al 2003). Most of the design and evaluation sessions take place within the time frame of school lessons; they can be defined as design workshops taking place during the school day.…”

“…When it comes to designing educational or entertainment applications for children, a recently emerged perspective is child-computer interaction (CCI) (e.g. Read 2005), and another, more pedagogically oriented view to looking at the design of technology for children is an approach referred to as learner-centred design (LCD) (Good & Robertson 2006;Rode et al 2003;Soloway et al 1994;Soloway et al 1996). Figure 10 illustrates the components of the basic HCI view as well as the broadened child-focused view consisting of CCI and LCD.…”

“…Read 2005). Moreover, the design of educational software has broadened the mere HCI perspective towards the principles of pedagogical design: LCD has been introduced as a way of bringing together the HCI point of view on the one hand and the principles and theories of education and developmental psychology on the other (Good & Robertson 2006;Rode et al 2003;Soloway et al 1994;Soloway et al 1996).…”

“…Mukti and Hwa (2003) state, technology design for children should be based both on HCI principles and educational theories. The concept of learner-centred design (LCD) has been brought up as an educationally focused equivalent to UCD, combining HCI tenets and methods with educational and developmental principles (Good & Robertson 2006;Rode et al 2003;Soloway et al 1994;Soloway et al 1996). Soloway (1996;Soloway et al 1994) has proposed a learner-centred design approach which is based on the principles of scaffolding.…”

“…Soloway et al (1994; have distinguished the growth of the learner, the diversity of learners, and the motivation of learners as the three core issues requiring attention in the development of educational applications, and they have discussed the realization of these learners' needs in the development of the tasks, tools, and interfaces of learning applications. Rode et al (2003) have built their curriculum-focused design approach on the principles of learner-centred design. Testing sessions are arranged in the form of structured school lessons and deal with curriculum topics; one half of the group is led by the class teacher who teaches the topic without technology, and the other half is instructed -with the aid of the technological application under development -by an educational specialist from the development group (Rode et al 2003).…”