Integrating Co-design Practices into the Development of Mobile Science Collaboratories

Scientific practices increasingly incorporate sensors for data capture, information visualization for data analysis, and low-cost mobile devices for field-based inquiries incorporating open Web standards. While a broad range of design approaches for developing technology-enhanced learning has been used by researchers and practitioners for the last 15 years, significant challenges for educational use remain as new technologies and user experiences continually evolve outside the classroom. We focus on the specific design challenge of how to initiate the co-design process together with teachers, researchers, scientists, designers, and developers in order to devise and develop mobile science collaboratories that support open inquiry-based learning in ecology education. The outcomes presented in this paper point towards the need for additional methods to support co-design that take into consideration future user experiences needed for developing and implementing these types of learning activities.