Rikke Toft Nørgård

This paper takes as its point of departure the online-offline course “Design: theory, method & practice” that is part of the Master’s program in IT Didactic Design at Aarhus University and runs for the second time in the spring of 2014. The course tries to connect online networked learning in design teams within higher education with, on the one hand, international research communities and conferences – by making the student’s partake and contribute to these through making blog posts, prezis and video pitches – and, on the other hand, actual production of IT didactic designs based on fieldwork in and explorations of physical learning contexts – by making the students interact with and involve their participants (children) through processes of participatory design, ideation, digital fabrication and design thinking. The course is designed to give students insights into how the actual design of technologies impact learning contexts through designerly engaged conversations around digital literacy, digital fabrication and design thinking. This is done in order to facilitate an imaginative approach to digital technologies where technologies no longer are ‘black boxed’ solutions or packages – what might be labeled the content consumption/creation approach to digital technologies – but becomes something we build and design together to give rise to new educational settings and approaches that enable design competence, exploratory ideation and transformative learning interactions giving students the capacity to act creatively and innovative towards individual, educational and societal challenges – what might be labeled the expressive digital design literacy approach to digital technologies. This paper presents a multi-level case study and investigation of central potentials and pitfalls of this specific online course geared towards making participants engage and intervene in offline learning contexts and real research communities. The course specifically draws upon pedagogical ‘design thinking’ and ‘design bildung’ which suggests that to engage in (didactic) design theory and design processes one must engage in participatory production of reflective designs with others in real-life contexts. Hence, to make the online course connect with offline learning contexts requires careful and reflective structuring of both online/offline design tasks and the internal/external communities of practice students partake in in order for their interactions, communications and experiences to be satisfactory instructive designerly as well as scholarly. Using ethnographic methods the paper explores and discusses the course and its new patterns of communications and interactions in and across design teams.