The Inclusion Potential of Student Production of Digital Learning Objects

This account of the inclusion potential of students’ digital production is based on the large-scale research and development project Students’ Digital Production and Students as Learning Designers (2013–2015), funded by the Danish Ministry of Education. The target groups were primary and lower-secondary schools. The project explored teacher-designed frameworks that engage students’ agency as digital producers of learning objects for their peers. The findings indicate that digital production facilitates students’ learning processes and qualifies their learning outcome when executed within a teacher-designed framework that accommodates and empowers students’ agency. The Danish parliament passed the Law of Inclusion In 2012 with the objective that by 2015, 96% of all students would be included in normal classes. Inclusion was not part of the initial research agenda, but this changed unexpectedly during the project. Specifically, students who did not participate or participated only sporadically in everyday school activities at the beginning of the project adopted new positions as participants and agents. We understand these changes as inclusive processes initiated by the combination of teacher-designed frameworks, student agency and digital production. This paper describes two representative cases, analysed from a post-phenomenological perspective to explore the inclusive potential and role of digital artefacts and digital learning production. We found that 25 out of 50 student we at first identified as non-participants changed position during the project. We argue that both the learning design and the use of specific technological resources played a major role as actors in the observed emerging process of inclusion for both students and teachers.