The TEDCO open educational resources are divided into the categories Concepts, Methods and Practices. The overarching learning objective is to develop student’s knowledge and skills for how to design technology that mediates human collaborative interaction.
The teaching activities do not need be applied as a whole. Rather, the idea is that teachers can apply a mix-and-match approach and select topics freely. There is a progression from the more general into more specific or applied topics though.
Concepts
The core concepts of the design of technology for collaborative interaction, and what are the strategies to link these theory and concepts to design practice. Explains the underlying conceptual and theoretical foundations that students need in order to take collaborative interaction into account, both in their methods and in their design process, as well as in taking responsibility for their end product or service.
- Introduction to Collaborative Interaction Mediated by Technology Design aims to introduce the terms collaboration and collaborative interaction, instances of mediating technologies in space and time dimensions in which a collaborative interaction takes place along with the opportunities and challenges offered in these types of interactions. Comes with an exercise where the students analyse the mediating elements of an existing technology that is designed and used for human collaboration.
- Activity Theory as a Lens for Analysis of Collaborative Interaction introduces the students to activity theory and how it can be used to understand mediation of technology as a tool in collaborative interaction. The accompanying exercise uses activity theory as an analytical framework to examine and re-conceptualize an existing technology mediating collaborative interaction.
Methods
The methods and approaches for understanding, investigating, and designing technologies for collaborative interaction. Addresses methods for students to engage with groups and their collaborative interaction mediated by technology design, and also to practically design and evaluate technologies for collaborative interaction.
- User research in the Design of Technologies for Collaborative Interaction introduces the students to relevant factors for performing user research when designing technology for collaborative interaction (distinctions from dyads to communities), three types of methods to achieve it (etnographic, artefact ecology, and network analysis) and then practice these methods while reflecting on the consequences of the methods, and consider their use in the light of feedback.
- Requirements Elicitation in the Design of Technologies for Collaborative Interaction is about exploring the problem space and defining what technology for collaborative interaction to develop. Requirements range from functional to contextual such as e.g. social, environment and user goals. Methods for gathering and analyzing data to elicit requirements in the design of technologies for collaborative interaction are presented.
- Evaluation of Technologies for Collaborative Interaction deals with how to evaluate user experiences with technologies for collaborative interaction. Methods of evaluating user experience are introduced, and students practice by applying an evaluation framework to a new or existing technology for collaborative interaction.
Practices
The practices and pedagogies, highlighting how design problems related to collaborative interaction mediated by technology are more uncertain, more nuanced, or more complex than originally assumed. This complexity will be unfolded through a number of case studies. Consist of case studies that illustrate practices in designing technologies for collaborative interaction.
- Designing Technologies for Hybrid Collaboration introduces the students to relevant concepts and aspects for recognizing, analysing and designing technology to support hybrid collaborative interaction, while reflecting on the consequences of the technologies. This includes understanding how hybridity matters to the tools and processes of collaboration.
- Designing for Mobile Co-located Collaborative Interaction presents the concept of designing for co-located collaborative interaction mediated by mobile devices. A framework for designing co-located mobile interactions is presented that can be a useful tool for work in this area. The accompanying exercise shows how the framework can be used both as an analytical and a generative tool for design.
- Extended Reality (XR) Systems that Mediate Collaborative Interaction introduces the students to the taxonomy for synchronous collaborative interaction in social extended reality (XR) environments. This includes understanding the main components for designing XR platforms that mediate collaboration. Opportunities and challenges of current virtual systems in mediating collaborative interaction are presented for future design considerations.
- Designing for Collaborative Co-Located Multi-Display Environments presents the concept of Multi-display environments (MDE), i.e., the coupling of several displays together to form a shared interactive environment. The concept is described through a taxonomy categorising MDE:s and illustrative examples. The accompanying exercise lets the students practice analysis and design of MDE:s.
- Designing for Collaborative Games introduces the students to the concept of collaborative games and some recommendations and challenges for their design. The concept of design patterns is introduced followed by gameplay design patterns and how these can be helpful for design. An exercise is used to let the student practice using gameplay design patterns as a generative source of inspiration for designing collaborative games.
- Collaborative Society introduces students to various cases of collaborative society (e.g., sharing economy, peer production, collaborative media consumption and production, collaborative knowledge) as described in “Collaborative Society” book by Jemielniak & Przegalinska (2018). With the exercise, the students examine how people succeed and fail to connect to each other and take action against a disastrous situation by using mediating tools to collaborate.