Students and Teachers as Developers of Visual Learning Designs with Augmented Reality for Visual Arts Education

Abstract
This paper reports on a project in which communication and digital media students collaborated with visual arts teacher students and their teacher trainer to develop visual digital designs for learning that involved Augmented Reality (AR) technology. The project exemplified a design-based research (DBR) practice for visual learning design that utilised the competencies of diverse stakeholders throughout the design process. The project’s pedagogical rationale for integrating digital technologies in the arts was that the visual digital designs should elicit different new art forms drawing on interactivity and social practices rather than replicate former art forms. Thus, the project participants explored the possibilities for developing a visual learning design based on digital communication technology and contemporary visual arts pedagogy. Furthermore, the project provided an exemplifying basis upon which to discuss the potential for reengineering the traditional role of the teacher/learning designer as the only supplier and the students as the receivers of digital learning designs in higher education. The discussion applies the actor-network theory and socio-material perspectives on education in order to enhance the meta-perspective of traditional teacher and student roles.