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Fig. 25.4
Collaborative design activities as joint dual problem space involving content and form
of
at least two people
(see Fig. 25.4). The participants (students in our case)
have to cooperate, when they decide
what
to say/show and
how
to say/show
it, when they plan, transform, evaluate, and revise their video product. Thereby
they have to negotiate shared design goals and their understanding of content
(see Fig. 25.3). This adds not only to the educational value but also to the com-
plexity of problem solving (see Barron, 2003; see also Lowry, Curtis, & Lowry
(2004) who assume that in order to write a text in collaboration with others,
students have to share and negotiate their content knowledge, as well as task
schemas, genre knowledge, task goals, and task relevant strategies). In sum, we
perceive collaborative visual design as complex problem solving that eventually
can lead to deep understanding of content and new literacy skills acquisition in
students.
This framework serves for conducting systematic research concerning the real (as
opposed to the theoretical) learning potentials of collaborative visual design tasks.
Scientific reports confirming the effectiveness of visual design that would go beyond
the level of assumptions or case studies are very rare. However, this research has
shown that in
realistic
scenarios (e.g., university seminars), student performance
depends on situational factors including instructional support of the problem solv-
ing process (e.g., Stahl, Zahn, Schwan, & Finke, 2005). Hence, from a pedagogical
perspective, the additional question arises
how
to instructionally support the com-
plex process of collaborative visual design in class. Similar questions have inspired
educational research approaches, such as for example, Kolodner's (e.g., 2003) influ-
ential works on Learning By Design
TM
in science classes. The present endeavor
reflects our scientific interest in providing new experimental work based on the the-
oretical considerations described above, to shed light on the application of visual
design in an instructional framework.
