Ito & Goldberg: A Digital Media and Learning Networked Studio
Filed at 8:00 am on May 27, 2008 in Civic Engagement, Credibility, Games, Identity, Digital Divide • Leave a comment
David Theo Goldberg and Mimi Ito detail plans to develop a “research collaboratory” on digital media and learning.
by David Theo Golberg and Mimi Ito
As the Digital Media and Learning (DML) Initiative enters its second year, there is an impressive and diverse array of projects under its umbrella, including qualitative and quantitative research, and a range of technology and program design projects. The various researchers, practitioners and collaborators are coalescing into a loosely knit but robust intellectual network that reaches across a wide range of disciplines and domains of practice. Various meetings, public forums, publication efforts, and events—what we saw at AERA in March, for instance—are forging connections between those doing supported work, new collaborators, and the broader public.
To promote and facilitate this networking and collaboration between the DML initiative’s supported projects, and to extend the reach of this work into new areas, communities, and geographic regions, we are developing a “research collaboratory” on digital media and learning.
Through the remainder of this year, we will be working together to conduct background research with the view to developing a plan for a hub of research and design activity, to be coordinated through the University of California Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine.
The ultimate goal is to develop an infrastructure for research communication and collaborative work that supports the DML initiative in a way that redefines research, paradigm building, and the role of philanthropy in a networked, digital era. How is networked knowledge created, organized both epistemologically and institutionally, and shared in appropriate ways to diverse, networked publics? How do we organize a distributed collaboratory of researchers, scholars, designers, computing experts, engineers, and end users for a rapidly changing field? These collaborative and field-building efforts need to recognize that important innovations are happening at the edges and outside of formal institutional structures. Approaching these issues requires new forms of interdisciplinary conversation and collaborative engagements that bridge academic institutions, industry, learning institutions, and a variety of networked publics.
Our proposed infrastructure-what we are tentatively calling The DML Studio-will offer a networked forum for prompting and purposing, guiding and reflecting upon learning in, through and with digital media.
For the planning period, we will be conducting background research on the state of international research across this field, and on relevant efforts in industry as well as in various learning institutions. We will also be seeding a small series of pilot collaborative research conversations, and gathering input from individuals who are part of the extended DML effort. We look forward with considerable anticipation and excitement to learning what we can do to help catalyze and extend the research and innovation emerging from the DML initiative and consolidate the field.
Next: Anne Balsamo: Networked Learning Sites > >
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