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Vol.30 No.4, October 1998
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Vol.30 No.4, October 1998 |
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The first workshop on learner-centered design gathered together 21 participants at CHI 98 in Los Angeles. For a 1-day workshop, our agenda was ambitious. Our goals were to synthesize a shared understanding of an emerging area of HCI that specifically addresses learners and education beyond the design principles borne of research on routine cognitive tasks, walk-up systems, and groupware, and to begin to think deeply about "how to design for learning?" We were successful in bringing many central issues the surface and well as common approaches of HCI practitioners and education research/learning technology designers. Yet, we reached consensus on few issues and recognized the need for the community of LCD designers to better identify novel differences between current methods employed in UCD and the weaknesses of UCD approaches to solve learning and schooling issues at all levels. The workshop results further motivate LCD practitioners to pursue future gatherings on this topic.
Designers of learning-support software are finding that the user-centered design (UCD) principles and approaches they were trained to employ fall short in addressing many design issues that are common in K-12 learning situations. How should designers create interfaces to support robust understanding of subject matter knowledge, construction of new knowledge, and higher-order thinking skills, while also improve kids' disposition toward lifelong inquiry? Traditional UCD task analytic methodologies (e.g., GOMS analysis) work well when a task or domain is well-specified. In the case of learning, goals not only differ across learners (both students and teachers) who have different intentions, but also across content domains and pedagogical approaches. Learner-centered system design recognizes that users have changing needs and abilities and user interfaces need to support these changes in the process (Soloway, Guzdial, & Hay, 1994; Guzdial, Kafai, et al, 1995). Learners often need more guidance or "learning scaffolds" at the beginning of instruction, but these supports need to change interactively and "fade" as the learner builds competencies and new expertise. LCD recognizes the need to balance the amount of help provided to users while encouraging users to become more independent in their learning. LCD also recognizes the diversity of learners and teaching styles: topics and problems need to be selected to promote interest in the task at hand and motivate further inquiry independent of the technology (Norman & Spohrer, 1996).
LCD practitioners address the following core design challenges:
A goal of learner-centered designers is to create software that "make people more effective learners" while also designing interfaces that make them want to learn and know how to learn beyond the computer task at hand. The goals of this workshop were to share some examples of learner-centered design that demonstrate large gains in learning, motivation to learn, teacher adoption, and peer collaboration, as well as address questions raised above.
Participants represented different institutions designing for various social contexts and audiences. Participants were a combination of young researchers engaged in designing learning technologies and conducting classroom-centered research, as well as established members of the CHI community. Our group also welcomed international participants.
Ron Baecker (University of Toronto), Danny Edelson (Northwestern University/Institute for Learning Sciences), Jean Gasen (Virginia Commonwealth University), Mark Guzdial (Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center, Georgia Institute of Technology/EduTech), Libby Hanna (Microsoft), Tom Hewett (Drexel University), Sherry Hsi (Center for Innovative Learning Technologies/The Concord Consortium), Yasmin Kafai (UCLA), Kari Kuuti (University of Oulu, Finland), Brad Meyers (CMU), Tim Oshea (University of London, UK), Mitchell Resnick (MIT Media Lab), Mary Beth Rossen (Virginia Tech), Roy Pea (SRI Center for Technology in Learning), Mark Schlager (SRI Center for Technology in Learning), Brian Smith (MIT Media Lab), Elliot Soloway (University of Michigan), Erik Strommen (Microsoft), Philip Vahey (UC Berkeley), Yvonne Wærn (Linköping University, Sweden), Terry Winograd (Stanford University).
Before the workshop, participants were invited to read participant abstracts, join an on-line discussion, and share their work via the workshop web site. (http://www.soe.berkeley.edu/chi/index.html) Mark Guzdial, one of the participants, offered his creation, FrontPage, a collaborative web-site building tool to the group. Sherry Hsi offered a SpeakEasy web-based discussion as well. An email discussion among the organizing committee members also provided prompts for workshop discussion.
The workshop was organized around a mix of whole group discussions and small break out activities that first started with a debate.
A morning mock-debate served to accentuate and perhaps over exaggerate differences between two perspectives. Mark Schalger from SRI (aka "Marky Rooney") gave a humorously cynical 15 minute position on why LCD was no different than UCD as a design approach. Mark Guzdial followed with strong arguments advocating the need for a new learner-centered design approach, how UCD addresses learning, but different kinds of learning and the need for new methodologies for learning technologies. Five minute rebuttals prompted a lively discussion by the group.
Participants were then divided into small groups by topic areas with the goal of identifying specific characteristics and features of LCD systems that were unique to that genre of systems. Group members conducting studies with learners shared their designs using, in some cases, paper handouts with members in their group.
Group 1: Young Learners, Hands-on, Construction
Group 2: Programming and Design
Group 3: Visualization, Modeling, and Science
Group 4: Distance Learning, Adult Learners
Group 5: Collaboration and Design
After lunch, the group convened as a large group to brainstorm on the powers and weaknesses of the current LCD framework proposed by Elliot Soloway: growth, diversity, and engagement. Mitchell Resnick offered an example from LOGO about how to focus learner's attention on relevant learning, and harder and easier ways to teach procedural abstraction. Kari Kuuti offered a mini-presentation on activity theory and view of learning through operations, actions, context. More discussion ensued.
Further group brainstorming redefined the afternoon break out group activity. Each group addressed cross cutting themes in a particular area to help complete the table below. For example, a small group interested in engagement issues in learning discussed interface design elements that could contribute to student motivation and interest, as well as what kinds of design methods and learning assessments could address engagement in learning. Other similar groups formed around the themes of diversity and growth. Groups then reconvened to share their thoughts.
| Interface Design | Design Methods | Assessment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Growth | |||
| Diversity | |||
| Engagement |
In both small and large group discussions, participants raised many issues and reached consensus on some key principles that are important for designing for learners, but also raised many other issues and questions drawing out differences in theories on learning, design methodologies, and audiences including a comparison between novices and experts. A condensed summary is provided here as the "do's" for learner-centered design as well as the open questions that remain to be answered.
How to we do scaffolding well? When do we fade? There is a tension between "doing things well" and "helping you learn" like an apprentice.
Should we force kids to do things that are hard? How much of learning should be a black box versus a glass box? Students need help seeing deep structure and procedures, but also some tasks and skills become obsolete.
Should we be capturing practices of "expert teachers" when teachers are also learners?
What does design mean? How should we include design of context, curriculum, institutions, and assessment?
How should tools for experts be redesigned for kids?
How should "learning to use the system" square with "learn about stuff?" Should systems necessarily be easy to learn how to use? Like pianos versus stereos for learning music.
How we design for organizational change in schools?
How should we as designers address differences in cultural, cognitive, motivational, and linguistic differences in learners?
What is the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for learning?
How will LCD practices address the design of social structures for learning?
"Make thinking visible"
"Design for assessment"
"Low threshold, high ceiling"
"Learning doesn't just happen in schools."
"User-centered design is about completing the task. LCD is about changing the learner."
"Let's not re-invent the wheel and forget the path UCD followed."
"LCD necessarily involves multidisciplinary design teams"
"This isn't too far from scenario-based design"
"The goal is not to find a univariate solution."
"What we really want is transformation-centered design"
"It's time to stop playing with Barney (Erik Strommen's Actimates), it's circle time!"
The workshop discussion was broad and far-ranging reflecting the breadth of the topic and the diversity of the participants. While no definitive methodologies were identified that were uniquely learner-centered design, a large collection of design principles emerged and the areas within the shared problem space were made more explicit.
The many discussions among researchers with various backgrounds left us with an appreciation for existing UCD approaches and the awareness of current skepticism of many HCI researchers for education design experiments approach to software design. There was some consensus that UCD carried too much baggage and that broader discussions that go beyond defining terms would help further our joint understanding. Furthermore, "design for learning" is a formidable design task necessarily involving multidisciplinary teams and iterative refinement. The discussions in this one day workshop are invaluable for encouraging richer discussions and a deeper understanding of "design for learning" in years ahead.
The next steps follow along the same goals of the workshop. First, researchers engaged in this kind of research desire to build a stronger community of researchers doing learner-centered design with the aim of better defining common methodologies, frameworks, and best practices to support design for learning and education reform. If the size of the applicant pool was any indication, especially from graduate students in cross-disciplinary programs in education, cognitive psychology, and computer sciences, the workshop represents an expanding community of young designers creating software and software-mediated contexts to address thorny education issues and learning impasses both conceptually and motivationally. Our immediate plans are to engage in proposal writing to host another workshop to help establish an emerging area of research. And, to share results with LCD community through publication and dissemination through cross-institutional education research efforts like CILT, the Center for Integrated Learning Technologies (cilt.org).
The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the help of the program committee for their input: Danny Edelson, Mark Schlager, Tim Oshea, Mark Guzdial, Yasmin Kafai, and Philip Vahey. Special thanks to Yasmin Kafai, Mark Guzdial, and Philip Vahey for helping to prepare and present our CHI 98 poster.
1. Guzdial, M., Kafai, Y., Carroll, J. B., Fischer, G., Schank, R., and Soloway, E. (1995) "Learner-Centered System Design: HCI Perspective for the Future", Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interface Systems.
2. Norman, D. A., and Spohrer, J. C. (1996). Learner-centered education. Communications of the ACM, 39 (4), pp. 24-27
3. Soloway, E., Guzdial, M., & Hay, K. E. (1994). Learner-centered design: The challenge for HCI in the 21st century. Interactions, 1(2), 36-48.
Sherry Hsi
Center for Innovative Learning Technologies
4331 Tolman Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-1670, USA
email: sherry@concord.org
Elliot Soloway
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI, USA
email: soloway@umich.edu
Tel: +1-313-763 6988
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Vol.30 No.4, October 1998 |
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