Dewa Wardak

Encapsulating Concepts in Gestures and Drawings During Educational Design Team Meetings

ABSTRACT Design activities in which two or more people are participating are always multimodal and thus require a multimodal analytical framework. This article reports how a multimodal analytical framework is used in a microanalysis of a segment from an educational design team meeting in which 3 participants created and reused a metaphoric gesture in support of their discussion. The gesture was associated with a diagram through a combination of talk, gaze, and other nonverbal communicative modes. The repetition of the gesture as a single semiotic resource helped evoke a rich, shared team history, which made it easier to discuss complex concepts.

The synthesis approach to analysing educational design dataset: Application of three scaffolds to a learning by design task for postgraduate education students

The aims of the Synthesis and Scaffolding Project were to understand: the role of specific scaffolds in relation to the activity of learners, and the activity of learners during a collaborative design task from multiple perspectives, through the collection and analysis of multiple streams of data and the adoption of a synthesis approach to the research. The Synthesis Approach to Analysing Educational Design (SAAED) dataset is comprised of video, audio and image files, transcripts of the discourse, as well as copies of physical artefacts generated by three groups of three postgraduate education students during a 90-minute design session. The data were collected in January 2013. Each group was given a different scaffold related to the design process, the social interactions or the use of the tools available to the participants. Researchers interested in analysing the SAAED are required to sign a collaborator agreement to become part of the project team.

Analysing the Structural Properties of Learning Networks

A good repertoire of methods for analysing and sharing ideas about existing designs can make a useful contribution to improving the quality and efficiency of educational design work. Just as architects can improve their practice by studying historic and contemporary buildings, so people who design to help people learn can get better at what they do by understanding the designs of others.