Teachers’ Learning Design Practice for Students as Learning Designers

This paper contributes with elements of an emerging learning design methodology. The paper takes as its starting point the theory of Students as Learning Designers, which was developed by Sørensen and Levinsen and based on more than a decade of research-and-development projects in Danish primary schools (first to 10th grade). The research focussed on information and communication technology (ICT) within the Scandinavian tradition of Problem Oriented Project Pedagogy (POPP), Problem Based Learning (PBL) and students’ production. In recent years, the projects that provide the grounding for the theory have focussed specifically on learning designs that constitute students as learning designers of digital productions (both multimodal and coded productions). This includes learning designs that contribute to students’ empowerment, involvement and autonomy within the teacher-designed frameworks that simultaneously scaffold students’ subject-related inquiry, agency, reflection and learning. Research studies have documented that this approach constitutes arenas that support students’ deep learning and mastery of both transdisciplinary and subject matter, along with their acquisition of digital literacy and 21st-century competencies. As this theory and its operationalization in practice have proven useful, it makes sense to move from researching the WHY of students as learning designers to look into HOW, that is the methodology of teachers practising learning design. For this purpose, we use the lens of the concepts metaphor and metonymy and interaction design theory to explore our empirical studies and previous findings and identify aspects of learning-design practice that teachers can apply as methods when creating learning designs aimed at students as learning designers.