Resources

Keri Facer and Ben Williamson, Futurelab

The full version of this handbook is available to download in pdf format - see box below. On this page you'll find the handbook's executive summary.

Executive summary

In recent years there has been increasing concern about the apparent estrangement of developers of digital educational resources from those who are intended to use these resources - children, teachers or lecturers. The recent DfES E-Learning Strategy Consultation Document highlighted this as an area of concern, arguing that: ‘The lack of a direct relationship between the users and the suppliers means that the products developed are less likely to meet learners’ and teachers’ real needs.’

Within the academic arena there are a number of different strategies for co-design with users; these include:

• Ethnography and user observation: users observed in existing activities and/or in natural settings using prototypes. Can take place at the outset, during, and on completion of a project.
• User testing: children or teachers observed trialling technologies and asked to provide feedback. Most commonly used in commercial settings at the end of development phases.
• Informant design: children or teachers seen as experts or ‘native informants’ informing designers of key issues related to their experience, helping to develop early design ideas and testing prototypes in development.
• Participant design & cooperative inquiry: Children or teachers working as a core part of a design team to identify ways of improving the environments in which they learn or work through the development of digital resources.

Futurelab’s own approach to designing with users draws heavily on the informant design model and comprises expert informants, concept workshops, design testing, user observation and redesign of learning environments. Redesign of learning environments, in which we develop not only the digital resource but the pedagogic strategies and other resources required to create an effective learning environment, is an approach we believe has major benefits for realising the potential of digital technologies in education.

We have observed a number of significant benefits to the process of working with users:

• it offers first hand experience of the needs, interests and requirements of end-users
• it enables developers to ‘free-up’ their ideas and develop more innovative and creative resources
• it allows developers to be surprised by users and to avoid creating formulaic work
• it allows developers to avoid costly mistakes and to identify difficulties of design at an early stage
• it offers the opportunity to create resources that are embedded in teaching strategies and educational contexts, and which, consequently, actually achieve their educational aims.

There are a number of top level recommendations for working with users in the design process which include involving users at the earliest stage of concept development as co-creators, establishing a network of schools and advisors through contacts with LEAs and universities, developing a clear understanding of research techniques and establishing child protection policies. Advice on these can be found in the recommendations section of the handbook.

We recognise that for the small-scale multimedia development house, working to tight schedules and budgets, the incentive to find time to work with users in the development process can often seem slim. We hope that this handbook begins to offer a number of strategies for collaboration between developers and users of learning resources that might be adopted to fit the working practices of the real world.

top of page