Heidrun Allert, Elgard Maier, Christoph Richter, Eva Zöserl and Christian Vogel
FH OÖ Forschungs und Entwicklungs GmbH, Austria
October 31, 2006

Course name: Mediaproduction and ePublishing

Institution: University of Applied Sciences Hagenberg.

Course instructors: Heidrun Allert, Michael Frühmann

Scope:  Course implemented in October 2006

No. of participants: 30

Target population:
Students of the "KWM (Kommunikation, Wissen, Medien)" (Communication, Knowledge, New Media) study program

Content areas/Disciplines:

• Mediaproduction and -practice
• Psychological and Sociological Foundations of Design

Duration of the course: 1 semester (14 weeks)

No. of instructional hours:

• Mediaproduction and -practice: 4 units à 50 minutes per week
• Psychological and Sociological Foundations of Design: 2 units à 50 minutes per week

Additional background information:
The bachelor-program "Communication, Knowledge and New Media" at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austrica in Hagenberg is an interdisciplinary study program and is organized in so called "Berufsfeld"-modules. Each "Berufsfeld" module thereby focuses on a specific field of work that students can enter after graduation for example "Electronic Communication", "Information Design", "Computer-Supported Learning and Work".  Entering these fields of work students will have to work on interdisciplinary design solutions, requiring the joint appliance of knowledge of different domains. Therefore each "Berufsfeld" module is organized of courses of different domains that cover the knowledge and skills necessary to foster an integrative view on the field of work. Each module consists of several courses relevant to the certain occupational field.

Course description:

The "Berufsfeld"-module "Media production and ePublishing" encompasses among others the courses "Psychological and Sociological Foundations of Design" and "Mediaproduction and -Practice" that are held by different lecturers. In the Mediaproduction course students learn how to create and manipulate electronic media from a technical point of view, while in the course of "Psychological and Sociological Foundations of Design" topics related to the creation and use of electronic artefacts from the psychological and sociological point of view are taught.

During the winter-semester 2006/2007 both courses will be held in conjunction with each other in order to let students work on design-problems taking into account both the technological as well as the psychological and sociological perspective. The aim for the students is to create design-solutions that are sound not only from a technical point of view, but which are also founded from a psychological and sociological perspective. For this purpose students will be asked to work on 6 interdisciplinary design tasks disseminated over the semester. Each design task is associated with the metatopic "rescue" and students have 2 weeks time to work on the respective task.

For example: In the first design task assigned, students are asked to do research on the term "rescue" and to create an information entity encompassing 5 to 8 html pages.

Thereby following requirements from the psychological and sociological point of view must be fulfilled:

• The topic of "rescue" must be worked up individually and be structured and summarized to an information entity in an understandable, clear way.
• Users must given the possibility to orient themselves and keep track of the sites visited/not visited.
• Problems and problem solution approaches during the design process shall be documented.

Additionally, the requirements in terms of media production are as follows:

• Validation of the produced files according to XHTML 1.0 transitional
• Assignment of the html files with appropriate meta-tags
• No usage of formatting tags
• Only following tags may be used: <h1> - <h6>, <p>, <br>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>, <hr>, <img>, <div>, <span> and table tags

The chronological framework of the design task is thereby as follows:

Firstly, the students are confronted with the concrete design task relevant to technical and non-technical issues addressed in the respective lectures.  According to this, each student develops a solution to the given problem individually and collects problems and problem solution approaches during the design process.

Then, in the technical course of the "Berufsfeld" module, the student will receive feedback regarding the technical quality of his/her solution. Continuing, in the non-technical course "Psychological and Sociological Foundations of Design" the students collaboratively collect design challenges which aroused during the design of a solution. Then, groups consisting of 3 to 4 students are asked to work on problem solution approaches to one design challenge and reflect on advantages and disadvantages of each problem solution approach. Additionally, each group tries to find properties and components of an overall strategy to resolve or face the respective design challenge.

To facilitate this process, students are handed out a pre-structured template to fill in and also a pre-filled in example of a showcase design challenge. As soon as the students have finished, the found problem solution approaches are presented to the plenary. Here the student groups present their problem solution approaches of their assigned design challenge as well as a resume of components of an overall strategy to face this design challenge.

While working on problem solution approaches students have to collaboratively reflect on and discuss their problem solution approaches to the design challenge.  In order to find approaches students need to draw on knowledge gained in both courses and reflect how to apply to solve the respective design challenge. As both courses focus on different aspects of the design problem or design challenge a certain area of conflict will arise, which allows students to reflect on the ill-structured nature of the design-challenges. Students shall realize that a technical sophisticated and sound solution is not necessarily the best one from a psychological or sociological point of view and that therefore a compromise has to be made in order to achieve an optimal result. Additionally the students shall also note that every design decision comes with certain advantages and disadvantages therefore it will never exist a unique, right solution for a design challenge.

Objectives of this scenario:

• Fostering boundary crossing practices by solving interdisciplinary design problems
• Fostering of reflective design practitioners, designers that make reflective design decisions against the background of concepts of psychology and sociology
• Developing knowledge practices for solving design problems

Used Tools:

• Moodle, Digital Homework for Students (DHS), ePortfolios

Critical features/Requirements:

• Appliance of knowledge from different courses / fields

Technical requirements:

• Parallel display of the design solutions
• Possibility to annotate the design solutions
• Support of the evolution of the design solutions

Rationale:

• The design problems focus on the practical, ill-structured challenges of the occupational field.
• The design tasks require a problem solution process that again requires the interdisciplinary use and appliance of knowledge acquired in both courses.
• The design tasks represent a practical, complex probem to be solved which needs the creation of a design solution that has never existed before and is unique in its context.
• Each design solution contains a certain trade-off the designer (the student) has made during the design process. This trade-off is reflected and explicated in the design challenges students are asked to work on.
• In order to find problem solution approaches students need to face, realize, discuss and reflect on the multiple facets of the design challenge and its context.
• The exploration of problem solution approaches requires the collaborative reflection and discussion on advantages and disadvantages of their own work, the work of their colleagues in regard of the specific design challenge. Additionally it has to be discussed whether multiple problem solution approaches exist and which one to apply to the specific design problem.
• Out of a pool of problem solution approaches and their associated advantages and disadvantages students need to find components of a meta strategy to solve the design challenge. This requires the discussion and reflection on the existing problem solution approaches and their advantages and disadvantages within the context of the design challenge.

Research question and hypotheses:

Does the intervention foster design thinking?

Related hypotheses:

• During the course the number of contributed solution approaches per design problem increases.
• During the course the solution approaches are better justified (explicit reference to empirical findings, theories, or situational characteristics of the design problem).
• During the course the number of perspectives (e.g. psychological, sociological, technical, economic factors) taken into account when assessing a solution approach increases.
• During the course the number of considerations (advantages and disadvantages) per solution approach increases.

Open issues:

• How is the reflection process faciliated by the CMS (display of screenshots in parallel,...)?
• Does the CMS support the evolution of a certain solution? (e.g. history function?)
• Does the CMS support the annotation of documents?
• What is the common object of activity (design problem)?

Related tools and artifacts:

• KP-Lab Shared Space