Learning design is not a prescription: Framing and disposition in collaborative infrastructure

Abstract

Same task, same instructions, same tools, different outcomes. What students bring to a group assessment task, their disposition, and how they make sense of what is being asked of them, their framing, will influence how they explicitly and tacitly construct and use a collaborative infrastructure. Learning design can nudge towards a particular path, but a project and its supporting infrastructure is ultimately the epistemic work of the student group. In findings from case studies of seven group projects at an Australian university I compare framing and disposition of the groups with the infrastructure that they created around assessment tasks. I place the cases under three loose categories of shared knowledge creation and proffer suggestions for learning design, including individually-produced artefacts as part of group knowledge creation.