Theme 3: Crossing Interprofessional, Intercultural, and Interpersonal Boundaries in Knowledge Building Shared Resources: Telementoring and Distributed Expertise

Supporting experts' participatory designing in a higher educational setting Henna Lahti, Marjut Iivonen & Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen University of Joensuu, Finland

Poster Abstract The study focused on how experts participated in designing tactile books for visually impaired children in a higher educational setting. The data was collected from a collaborative learning environment called Knowledge Forum, which provided a distributed database for students and experts’ interaction. The study was carried out by employing qualitative content analysis of participants’ written notes posted on the database. The classification schema consisted of two categories: the type of design thinking and the content of the design. The analysis indicated how experts contributed to the conceptual and visual stage of designing, especially by evaluating students’ design ideas. A teacher and tutor took the roles of organizers in structuring students’ processes of working with Knowledge Forum and their collaborative designing.