Collaboration is considered as one of the 21st century skills. However, collaboration is a very complex skill which involves coordination, cooperation and at its most advanced level, reflective communication. In a time where remote collaboration has become increasingly more important, the need for designing and developing technologies that efficiently support collaborative interaction has become a high priority. Based on previous work on the design of collaborative technologies by the project partners, TEDCO aims to actively spread the knowledge gained in this work to students in higher education by developing teaching materials for designing technologies that support collaborative interaction mediated by technology (online and onsite, targeted at several different user groups).
Designing technologies to mediate collaboration does not necessarily have to be limited to communication applications such as Skype or Zoom, but could also be applied to emergent technologies such as drones, games, collaborative writing and project management tools, online whiteboard applications for visual and creative collaboration, hybrid meeting technologies, and so on. The more detailed aim of the project is thus to iteratively design, develop, pilot test and implement teaching resources for teaching technology design approaches that address and consider effective forms of collaboration, such as found in Activity Theory, educational fields, psychology, design, and human-computer interaction.
The objectives of the project are to: a) develop effective and innovative teaching and assessment materials and activities aimed at training students and practitioners in technology design for collaborative interaction, b) pilot the teaching and assessment resources with students at technology design programmes, c) make the teaching resources accessible to all by publishing them online as an open educational resource, d) share the results of the project to a network of teachers at technology design programmes, and e) disseminate and share project results in sustainable ways.
Teachers will benefit from the project by getting access to and knowledge of teaching materials and activities to teach the important topic of designing for collaborative interaction. Students will benefit from the new subject knowledge and pedagogical competencies acquired by their teachers and will be able to make grounded decisions in their design of collaborative technologies. The knowledge about the design of collaborative technologies will be not limited to certain specific technologies, but will be on a higher level to accommodate the translation to new technologies the students may encounter in their future careers.