Ole Sejer Iversen

Aarhus University | AU · Center for Computational Thinking & Design

The paper addresses the current lack of emerging technology education in both research and practice and the urgent need for preparing future generations for a digital future. Based on a two-year participatory design process with Danish researchers and pioneer teachers, the article presents outcomes on the collaborative development of interdisciplin...

It-fagligheden er under udvikling i den danske grundskole og i gymnasiale uddannelser med fagbeskrivelsen af informatik til gymnasieskolen og forsøgsfaget teknologiforståelse i grundskolen. Der foreligger endnu ikke forskningsbaserede analyser af de to fagligheders samstemthed til trods for, at elever, undervisere og uddannelsesinstitutioner forven...

Increasingly, IoT kits are used in pedagogical contexts to support learning experiences and teach students about IoT. However, few of them focus on both the technical aspects and the societal implications of IoT, such as cybersecurity and privacy. In this paper, we describe the Orbit IoT Kit, a micro:bit-based toolkit that supports teachers in IoT...

Technologies based on AI/ML are playing an increasingly prominent role in teenagers’ everyday lives. Mirroring this trend is a concomitant interest in teaching young people about intelligent technologies. Whereas previous research in the field of Child–Computer Interaction has proposed curriculum and learning activities that describe what teenagers...

This paper presents and explores an analytical, research-based model for computational empowerment in K-9 education. The model, entitled DORIT (“Do your Own Research In Technology”), contributes to Child-Computer Interaction research by providing scaffolding for teachers to create teaching activities emphasising a critical inquiry approach to compu...

There is a global consensus that computational thinking (CT) should be integrated into education, and empowerment is often used as an argument for why future generations need to be able to think computationally. In this paper we report on a systematic literature survey that categorises various strands of empowerment as they unfold in CT education r...

This systematic mapping review sheds light on how emerging technologies have been introduced and taught in various K-12 learning settings, particularly with regard to artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), the internet of things (IoT), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR). These technologies are rapidly being integrated in...

Whereas computational empowerment is well established in child–computer interaction research, less effort has been made to integrate this approach in practice. Building on four existing principles in child–computer interaction, namely Closeness, Embodied Learning, Design Process and Decoding, we explore how computational empowerment can be scaffold...

A guide to computational thinking education, with a focus on artificial intelligence literacy and the integration of computing and physical objects. Computing has become an essential part of today's primary and secondary school curricula. In recent years, K–12 computer education has shifted from computer science itself to the broader perspective of...

Where the previous chapters outlined the main principles of Participatory Design (Chapter 2) and their history (Chapter 3), this chapter addresses the question of where and when Participatory De-sign is used. There is no algorithm to determine whether or not Participatory Design is applicable in a given situation or in response to a given design pr...

The following three chapters describe how Participatory Design research has matured during the past ten years by focusing on scalability and sustainability of Participatory Design results, and a focus on how the political concerns in Participatory Design have been rekindled. Starting from the four eras of Participatory Design described in Chapter 3...

In the previous chapters we have addressed activities, methods, tools, and materials used in Partic-ipatory Design. As we have of course also mentioned, it is an important principle of Participatory Design to organize design and development so as to involve users in various ways. This is partly done through the tools and techniques mentioned in the...

In the previous chapter, we looked at the kinds of results that Participatory Design pursues. One of the main points is that Participatory Design strives to produce outcomes that reach beyond the design of useful and usable products and services and include new ways of working, the development of new communities, increased influence and opportuniti...

Participatory Design, User-Centered Design, People Centered Design, User-oriented Design, Hu-man-Centered Design, Contextual Design, Co-design, Cooperative Design, Experience Design, or just simply Interaction Design. The literature on design approaches that incorporate elements of people engagement in design of computer technologies is promoted un...

At first sight Participatory Design is characterized by the active participation of users in the design process. However, as we have discussed, the commitment to Participatory Design reaches far be-yond active user engagement. In Chapter 2, we learned that Participatory Design has four strong commitments: (workplace) democracy; empowerment of peopl...

In the following three chapters we address Participatory Design from the perspective of practice and methods. We do this by exploring the main activities and methods of Participatory Design in this chapter, the tools and materials in Chapter 6, and the principles of organizing Participatory Design processes, specifically with respect to the collabo...

This chapter looks into the tools and materials of Participatory Design. Participatory Design makes use of a number of tools and materials that aid both the collaboration in the joint activities, the documentation of design suggestions and the hands-on activities that pervade Participatory Design. Many of these tools and materials are not unique to...

After having presented the activities and toolbox of Participatory Design we will turn to the plan-ning and structuring of a project: how to initiate, implement, and navigate a Participatory Design project. We will offer guiding questions, models, and a compass to scaffold your Participatory Design process. We do that since Participatory Design pro...

We start our discussion of the 11 questions with exploring a definition of Participatory Design. Asking for one definition of Participatory Design is, however, easier said than done as we shall see. We will start with how various textbooks define Participatory Design and focus our definition from there.

In this book we presented Participatory Design based on our experiences from more than 40 years of Participatory Design research. Our intention is to provide a research-based starting point for bringing Participatory Design to live in future projects, whether at a university or in industry.

2020 marks the beginning of a new era as the pandemic catapulted us into new digital and virtual ways of everyday life. As the world changes, we reimagine empowering, equitable, accessible, diverse, and inclusive digital futures, through a series of projects and workshops with a diverse set of participants - children in schools and Child Computer I...

In response to the increasing digitization of society, the subject “Computing Education” is currently being implemented in 1st–9th grade education in several countries. Teaching children to be (more) creative in their use and understanding of technology is among the key didactic goals in this global effort. We contribute a detailed overview of how...

Based on a systematic review we explore how empowerment has been articulated in 188 papers in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) literature since 2003. Using an existing framework outlining functional, educational, democratic, mainstream, and critical empowerment, our analysis shows that while empowerment is rarely defined in CCI papers, a wide range...

Based on a comprehensive account of digital design literacy, we report from an interview study with pioneer teachers to disclose their experiences from teaching design in formal K-9 education. Unique for the study is that the interviewees were highly qualified K-9 teachers with research-based in-service training in design and more than three years...

We report from a research-based professional development program-the fellowship program-aimed at scaling digital design literacy in Danish K-9 education. The fellowship program was designed to engage with experienced K-9 teachers to provide them with the knowledge, experience and resources needed to further develop digital design literacy in their...

In this paper, we describe an exploratory study of how design fiction can be used to introduce machine learning (ML) to 14-15 year old students in an engaging way. The study describes three sessions conducted online that combined hands-on and design fiction activities related to supervised ML, focusing on facial analysis. Based on semi-structured i...

Honourable Mention Award at the 20th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC 2021) for the paper 'A Systematic Review of Empowerment in Child-Computer Interaction Research'. Award winners are determined through a selective process. An awards panel, chaired by Maria Roussou and Suleman Shahid, determined the awardees.

Recent years have seen growing interest in 'ethics' within the Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) community. In this paper, we take stock of 18 years of CCI research by conducting a systematic literature study exploring how and to what extent ethics has been dealt with in the community's leading venues: the Interaction Design and Children (IDC) confe...

Despite the Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) community’s rapid growth in the past two decades, there has traditionally been less focus on developing a curriculum to teach CCI to students. This entails a risk for a gap between the accumulation of knowledge and the transfer of this knowledge to new generations of researchers and designers. Building o...

While several studies have addressed the challenge of sustaining PD initiatives over time and supporting large-scale participatory processes, little is known about how PD and ideals fare on a national scale. We examine the process in which outcomes from a PD project were used and implemented as part of a mandatory course in Technology Comprehension...

While several studies have addressed the challenge of sustaining PD initiatives over time and supporting large-scale participatory processes, little is known about how PD and ideals fare on a national scale. We examine the process in which outcomes from a PD project were used and implemented as part of a mandatory course in Technology Comprehension...

We propose computational empowerment as an approach and a Participatory Design (PD) response to challenges related to the emerging need for digital literacy in lower secondary education. Our approach extends the current focus on computational thinking to include a concern for how children and youth are empowered through constructive, analytical and...

We argue that the distinguishing features of Participatory Design are not the participatory activities as such but the mechanisms used, the effects produced and the way in which these are sustained. We use program theory to illuminate how participatory design works and how it may be understood as more than a collection of methods or a matter of con...

We present a comparative, quantitative assessment, focused on measuring ‘stances towards inquiry’ among middle-school students who have received design education. Our assessments are based on results of a written survey questionnaire and a statistical analysis using ‘The Design Literacy assessment tool’. Our analysis suggest that participating stud...

In this paper, we present the FUBImethod, a method based on six stages to co-design interactive experiences based on Full-Body Interaction. The FUBImethod aims specifically to engage children in co-design processes and to benefit from their natural playfulness and expertise in movement. This approach allows designers to go beyond the surface level...

FabLearn has primarily been concerned with studies of digital fabrication technologies in education, however, we witness an increased interest in integrating other related topics such as computational thinking, digital design and empowerment as an integrated whole. In this paper, we present a five years design research program for digital fabricati...

This article considers the implementation of a new learning subject ”Technology Comprehension” into lower secondary schools in Denmark, as part of an initiative by the Danish Ministry of Education. The subject consists of learning objectives related to computing, design, and societal reflection and was first introduced as an elective course in 13 s...

In this forum we celebrate research that helps to successfully bring the benefits of computing technologies to children, older adults, people with disabilities, and other populations that are often ignored in the design of mass-marketed products. --- Juan Pablo Hourcade, Editor

We propose computational empowerment as an approach and a Participatory Design response to challenges related to digitalization of society and the emerging need for digital literacy in K12 education. Our approach extends the current focus on computational thinking to include contextual, human-centred and societal challenges and impacts involved in...

How does participatory design work and what are the links between investments in terms of time, people and skills, the processes and the resulting effects? This paper explores program theory as a way for Participatory Design (PD) to investigate and evaluate these issues. Program theory comes out of the evaluation field and is a way to make explicit...

Tendencies in contemporary participatory design suggest a move away from engagement of limited stakeholders in preconfigured design processes and predefined technology outcomes, towards more complex and long-term engagement with heterogeneous communities and larger ecologies of social and technological transformation. Building on core values of par...

We account for the first research results from a governmentinitiated experiment that scales Making to a national discipline. The Ministry of Education, in Denmark, has introduced Technology Comprehension as a new discipline for lower secondary education. Technology Comprehension is first experimented as an elective subject in 13 schools. The discip...

This SIG will provide child-computer interaction researchers and practitioners an opportunity to discuss topics related to challenges brought about by the increasing ubiquity of computing in children's lives, including the collection, and use of "big data". Topics include control and ownership of children's data, the impact of personalization on in...

The Make2Learn workshop aims to explore the introduction in the learning processes of tools and methods for creative and joyful ideation, design and prototyping of Internet of Things (IoT) artifacts. Making IoT artefacts enable children to foster co-creativity and joy in learning processes and to construct knowledge; leading to STEM concepts. Makin...

We suggest that a commitment to political participatory design defines a new role for children in participatory practices--the role of protagonist. The objective here transcends the goal of giving children a voice in design, and addresses more broadly how children can be empowered to shape technological development and critically reflect on the rol...

This SIG will provide child-computer interaction researchers and practitioners an opportunity to discuss topics related to ethical challenges in the design, and use of interactive technologies for children. Topics include the role of big data, the impact of technology in children's social and physical ecosystem, and the consideration of ethics in c...

Today, most design projects are infrastructuring projects, because they build on technologies, competencies and practices that already exist. While infrastructuring was originally seen as being full of conflicts and contradictions with what is already present, we find that many contemporary reports seem to mainly address participatory infrastructur...

Making is a relatively new concept applied to describe the increasing attention paid to constructing activities to enable entertaining, and engaging learning. Making focuses on the process that occurs in digital and/or physical spaces that is not always learning oriented, but enables qualities such as problem solving, design thinking, collaboration...

Design thinking and digital technologies are increasingly introduced in education to develop children's design literacy. This shift demands a change in teachers' mindsets, capabilities and approaches to design and technology as well as new teaching practices. This paper reports on a research-based master's course developed to address and study the...

In this paper, we present a framework to expand the design language used to articulate form properties and types of feedback that happen between children’s actions and the intended functionality of maker technologies. Based on field observations in Danish schools we analyze children’s (aged 11-14 years old) interactions with three maker technologie...

This paper focuses on evaluation in Participatory Design (PD), and especially upon how the central aims of mutual learning, empowerment, democracy and workplace quality have been assessed. We surveyed all Participatory Design Conference papers (1990-2014) and papers from special journal issues on PD, focusing on systematic, explicit evaluations. Th...

We suggest using seven hacker ethic values as lenses in a conceptual " tool-to-think-with " when designing digital fabrication technologies and materials that aims to develop digital design literacy among adolescents in school. We discuss how this conceptual tool can be used to help promote critical reflection on design values, and provide a langua...

Highlights: • We present an assessment tool for measuring aspects of design literacy. • Design and analysis of an open-ended survey item with wicked characteristics. • We assess student's stance towards inquiry as an aspect of design literacy. • We provide evidence for student's lack of a designerly stance toward inquiry. We present a tool for qua...

We introduce the participation gestalt framework for analysing participation in public interactive installations. Building on the concept of interaction gestalt, we define the participation gestalt as the unified perception and experience of participatory qualities as they unfold through interaction with the installation in a socio-cultural setting...

This SIG will provide child-computer interaction researchers and practitioners an opportunity to discuss four topics that represent new challenges and opportunities for the community. The four areas are: interactive technologies for children under the age of five, technology for inclusion, privacy and information security in the age of the quantifi...

In this course participants are introduced to the theory and practice of Participatory Design. The course offers an overview of state of the art Participatory Design literature, practices and methods, and provides participants with the opportunity to work practically on a Participatory Design case. The instructors have substantial experience in Par...

Digital fabrication technologies are increasingly integrated across subjects in primary and secondary education. Focus on the potentials of these technologies has mainly been on the support to STEM oriented learning goals, while emphasis on teachers' roles with the new learning processes of technology and design is largely absent. The paper address...

Participatory Design (PD) is inherently concerned with inquiring into and supporting human values when designing IT. We argue that a PD approach that is led by a focus upon participants' values can allow participants to discover meaningful alternatives – alternative uses and alternative conceptualizations for IT that are particularly meaningful to...

In this paper, we argue that digital fabrication in education may benefit from design thinking, to foster a more profound understanding of digital fabrication processes among students. Two related studies of digital fabrication in education are presented in the paper. In an observational study we found that students (eleven to fifteen) lacked an un...

div class="page" title="Page 1"> 1975-1985-1995-2005 — the decennial Aarhus conferences have traditionally been instrumental for setting new agendas for critically engaged thinking about information technology. The conference series is fundamentally interdisciplinary and emphasizes thinking that is firmly anchored in action, intervention, and scho...

The International Workshop of Making as a Pathway to Foster Joyful Engagement and Creativity in Learning (Make2Learn) aims to discuss the introduction of creative and joyful production of artifacts " maker movement " in the learning processes. A variety of environments have been developed by researchers to introduce making principles to young stude...

The International Workshop of Making as a Pathway to Foster Joyful Engagement and Creativity in Learning (Make2Learn) took place on September 29 2015. Make2Learn is organized in conjunction with the International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC 2015) in Trondheim, Norway.

The International Workshop of Making as a Pathway to Foster Joyful Engagement and Creativity in Learning (Make2Learn) aims to discuss the introduction of creative and joyful production of artifacts in the learning processes. A variety of environments have been developed by researchers to introduce making principles to young students. Making princip...