Education Tech Research Dev (2013) 61:841–862

DOI 10.1007/s11423-013-9311-8

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Learning from and with museum objects: design

perspectives, environment, and emerging learning
systems

Henriikka Vartiainen • Jorma Enkenberg

Published online: 20 August 2013

 Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2013

Abstract Sociocultural approaches emphasize the systemic, context-bound nature of

learning, which is mediated by other people, physical and conceptual artifacts, and tools.
However, current educational systems tend not to approach learning from the systemic
perspective, and mostly situate learning within classroom environments. This design-based
research aims to seek answers to these challenges by enhancing the use of museum objects
and inquiry tools in learning through developing a new kind of virtual environment. By
using learning objects that represent physical objects, the students can develop their own
research questions, and choose related museum artifacts and inquiry tools with which to
find answers to their questions during forthcoming museum visits. This study aims to
examine what kinds of learning systems emerged when three different student groups
collaboratively designed their visits to the Finnish Forest Museum based on their own
interests and afforded resources in the learning environment. Data analysis indicates that a
tool-driven system typically seems to represent the approach of primary school students,
with an object-driven system for technical college students, and a strategic, research-
question-driven system for teacher-education students. When considering the desired
effects of technology and open environments on emerging learning systems and processes,
the results of the study suggest that self-organization and free choice do not necessarily
lead to research-question-driven learning processes, unless the variation in student
approaches, design-process scaffolding, and paying attention to the social arrangements,
and to the use of tools during the implementation of inquiry activities are all taken into
account.

Keywords Museum object  Learning system  Learning object  Learning

by designing  Design experiment  Design-oriented learning

H. Vartiainen (&)  J. Enkenberg

University of Eastern Finland, Savonlinna Campus, Kuninkaankartanonkatu 5, P.O. Box 86, 57101
Savonlinna, Finland
e-mail: henriikka.vartiainen@uef.fi
J. Enkenberg
e-mail: jeeberg@gmail.com

123
842 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

Introduction

Current education systems tend to anchor learning in formal environments, mostly in

classrooms and with textbooks (National Education Technology Plan 2010). While the
overall goal of schooling is to prepare young people to be able to participate responsibly
and productively in society, the actual practices through which schooling takes place
contradict with the practices that exist beyond the school walls (Wells 2011). Fischer and
Redmiles (2008) proposed that if the world outside school does indeed rely on collabo-
ration, creativity, and problem solving, and require dealing with uncertainty, change, and
intelligence distributed across cultures, disciplines, and tools, then education should foster
trans-disciplinary activities to prepare students for meaningful and productive lives in just
such a world.
Museums and science centers, as non-formal environments, contribute greatly to the
understanding of scientific phenomena (National Research Council 1996), as they contain a
physical environment that is not usual in our daily lives (Falk 2004). Ideally, these envi-
ronments enable students to connect with their own interests, provide interactive spaces for
learning, and encourage in-depth exploration of current or relevant topics on demand (Bell
et al. 2009). Despite recent attention regarding the learning potential of museums, studies
of school-group fieldtrips have shown that school students are not always afforded the
opportunity to exploit all of these possibilities (Griffin 2004; Tal and Morag 2007; Rennie
and Johnston 2004), as different expectations and constraints are placed upon them, and
personal control over their own museum visits is often minimized (Griffin 2004).
Often, very little preparation is carried out prior to museum visits (Griffin and Sy-
mington 1997), choices are made for the students, and during the actual school fieldtrip, the
student’s experience lacks many aspects of ‘‘free choice’’ (Kisiel 2005). The lack of pre-
visit preparation also gives the museum guides hardly any information about the students’
interests, pre-knowledge, or experiences, which could help the guides to prepare, per-
sonalize, and deepen the museum visit experience for students from very different edu-
cational backgrounds. Consequently, a typical museum visit is organized as a structured,
docent-directed, and lecture-oriented tour in which the docents guide the group of students
throughout the exhibit, lecturing on different object-related facts that seldom connect to the
students’ own interests (Cox-Petersen et al. 2003; Tal and Morag 2007). The research on
school-group fieldtrips emphasizes the pressing need to provide teachers and museum staff
with viable alternatives to their current ways of conducting school excursions, and to apply
more student-centered approaches that allow active learning, and a variety of opportunities
to explore and learn in a personalized and contextualized manner (Tal and Morag 2007;
Cox-Petersen et al. 2003; Kisiel 2005; Griffin and Symington 1997; Gutwill and Allen
2012).
Giaccardi and Fitzcarrald (2004) propose that the new technological opportunities
challenge us to reconsider the current function and representation of museums so that they
can become meaningful places for learning. The development of digital technologies has
made it possible to represent a museum and its objects in several ways and from different
perspectives. Consequently, learners have access over the Internet to a vast number of
museum objects with contextual and tailored information (Frost 2002; Hawkey 2004; Paris
and Hapgood 2002). Yet, problems remain, as museums seem to concentrate on building
digital copies of the physical museum, instead of enhancing and deepening learning from
and with museum objects (Prosser and Eddisford 2004).
To meet these challenges, this design-based research aims to promote students’ active
agency in designing and implementing museum visits by co-developing a virtual design

123
Learning from and with museum objects 843

tool for student groups of all ages visiting the Finnish Forest Museum. In the first part of
the paper, the theoretical background and design perspectives will be presented. Then, the
virtual design environment, as well as a description of its expected applications, will be
introduced. Through three empirical design experiments with different kinds of student
groups from the primary to teacher education level, a description of the resulting learning
projects, and an evaluation of the design that informs the next iteration are presented.
Finally, the emerging learning systems and directions for future research will be abstracted
and discussed.

Perspectives and principles of the learning design

Schauble et al. (1997) suggest that sociocultural theory is a promising guiding theoretical
framework for museum learning, because it can focus attention on activities that are
supported in museums, and on the role of mediating tools and artifacts in learning. A
sociocultural approach to learning means participating in cultural practices (Wenger 1998)
in which the learning activities are bound to the context in which the activities take place
(Sfard 1998), and to the people, tools, and artifacts that mediate them (Schoultz et al.
2001). This approach originally derives from the culture-historical framework of Lev
Vygotsky (1978), in which a central idea is that our actions and thinking are mediated by
cultural means (artifacts and tools), and by other people, such as a peers, teachers, and
experts, during specific social activities. Learning researchers who engage their thinking
with the socio-cultural theory aim to construct learning interventions that encourage the
perception of interesting objects for learning and asking questions (theoretical as well as
practical), as well as to create and share knowledge to find answers to those questions
(Wells 1999).
The reason behind visiting any museum is to view collections of physical and con-
ceptual objects and artifacts with high cultural value (Paris and Hapgood 2002). According
to Jacobsson and Davidsson (2012), learners should be supported in recognizing museum
objects as active and integrated tools to advance human thinking and action, and to enable
the understanding of the general application of these objects in different contexts. Objects
in the museum are potential mediators of learning because they can mediate global phe-
nomena from different perspectives, and can offer opportunities to make connections
between one’s own ideas, thoughts, and experiences, and the broader perspectives of the
discipline (Vartiainen et al. 2012). The objects trigger varying associations in the minds of
visitors and offer opportunities to make observations from different domain perspectives
(e.g. technology, biology, history, or economics), or from the viewpoint of a special
interest group (e.g. researcher, hobbyist, or a particular profession) and can be approached
in many different ways and through many different genres.
A sociocultural approach to learning also emphasizes the relevance of the tools that are
available to us as resources to enhance our thoughts and actions (Schoultz et al. 2001).
Säljö (2010) argues that rather than looking for human competences solely in our minds or
bodies, our knowledge is expressed in our abilities to use external tools and to integrate
them into the flow of our doings, whether these are intellectual, physical, or both. To be a
competent participant in many activities involves the mastery of a range of tools and
instruments (Säljö 2010), which can be used in various ways, and embedded in diverse
social practices, often involving multiple tools and tool-mediated actions (Francis 2007).
Typically, museums facilitate learning for school groups by providing tools such as
worksheets, audio-recordings, and different interactive or hands-on exhibits. However,

123
844 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

new technologies can also provide great tools for collaboration and data collection in
museums, and the realization of knowledge can be facilitated by providing learning
activities where learners use the tools on which the expertise of the domain rests (Kim and
Reeves 2006).
Versatile technologies can also enhance a new form of mediation by providing the
possibility for developing learning objects that represent physical objects in nature and in
museum environments. After the popularization of the Internet, the concept of learning
objects has received considerable attention and enthusiasm in educational settings, and for
the way in which educational materials are designed, developed, and delivered to those
who wish to learn (e.g. Churchill 2005; Jonassen and Churchill 2004; Wiley 2000; Wiley
2007). On the other hand, researchers and educators have had difficulties in clearly
defining the learning object (c.f. Wiley 2000; Wiley and Edwards 2002; Cochrane 2005),
and the early enthusiasm has waned, due, at least in part, to a neglect of the pedagogy
(Harden et al. 2011). In this study, the learning objects are defined as, ‘‘designed digital
representations from real objects in context, which are related to the phenomenon in
question, and to tools that mediate the process of the negotiation of meaning.’’ The rep-
resentation of museum objects is not designed to provide a comprehensive description of
certain phenomena, but to facilitate the design process of museum visits by provoking
negotiation and mutual interest in the objects and related phenomena. All objects in the
museum can be studied from various perspectives, and by using the tools that mediate the
practices of expert cultures and professional communities; thus, enhancing the design
process of the museum visit by functioning as cross-disciplinary resources. People, objects,
and tools constitute an interacting system in which the learners use their personal interests
and prior knowledge to design their own learning goals for the museum visit with the
support of digital learning objects. The conceptual representation of the learning object as a
part of an object-oriented learning system is presented in Fig. 1.
Learning by collaborative designing (Seitamaa-Hakkarainen et al. 2010; Hennessy and
Murphy 1999; Enkenberg 2001) is considered a promising instructional perspective with
which to bring the subject, mediating artifacts, and tools into fertile interaction for learning
from and with museum objects. Design activities are typically open-ended and ill struc-
tured in nature, and the process of design emerges through complex and iterative problem

Fig. 1 Conceptual model of the object-oriented learning system

123
Learning from and with museum objects 845

solving (Lahti et al. 2004). In the design-oriented approach, the museum visit or the objects
for learning are not created by the teacher or the museum guide, but are designed by the
students with the help of museum learning objects. The design process is promoted by
open-ended driving questions (Krajcik and Blumenfeld 2006) that encourage the students
to develop their own study questions for the museum visit, to take the responsibility for
selecting study artifacts and the related tools to serve their own and shared purposes, and to
design inquiry activities to find answers to their questions. The learners can then develop
their understanding based on their own interests in different knowledge areas, and at the
same time, they take responsibility for the division of the expertise with other members of
the community (Bielaczyc and Collins 1999), and use personal and negotiated interests and
paths to organize their object-oriented and tool-mediated activities to accomplish the
multifaceted learning task. The goal is to build learning paths that mediate the practices of
professional or scientific communities, and enhance students’ skills to create knowledge
together in a meaningful and transparent way.

From design perspectives to a virtual design environment

In the study, the research trip to the Finnish Forest Museum was planned beforehand with
the help of the virtual design environment. By using this environment, teachers, students,
and experts can collaboratively articulate research questions for the museum visit, and they
can freely choose museum objects and inquiry tools for learning from the museum or the
research forest park around it. Instead of a one-subject or domain-specific approach, the
designed environment challenges learners to approach the forest-related issues from dif-
ferent perspectives and expert cultures (in this case, economics, engineering, anthropology,
or biology). Depending on the research perspective, each object is categorized and linked
to domain-specific tools that could be used to study that object.
The instructional process has been separated into the consequent phases of orientation,
designing an inquiry plan, inquiry, and generalization and sharing. In practice, the design
process is supposed to begin at school, where students, together with their teachers, prepare
the project by formulating their own open challenges and the related driving questions. The
opening page of the virtual environment is designed to support the articulation of the
driving questions and the orientation activities related to the research trip to the museum.
The opening page contains digital stories about the learning processes that other groups
have undergone, short descriptions about expert cultures, articles from newspapers about
the topical phenomena related to forests and their management, a description of the tools
that could be useful in researching museum and forest objects, a glossary (forestry and
learning sciences), and links to the web pages of the museum and the nearby Forest
Research Institute.
After the orientation activities, the students begin to browse in collaborative groups,
design resources, and choose objects to study with related expert perspectives, and cog-
nitive and/or physical tools. To construct an inquiry plan, the learners write their ideas
down in the inquiry plan template. Those plans may be shared in the classroom, and will be
emailed to the museum guide before the visit so that he or she can prepare for the coming
challenges, expectations, and questions. The expected social settings of the subject (S), the
object of the design activity (O), screen captures of the front page, design resources, and
the inquiry plan template provided in the virtual design environment (tool) are presented in
Fig. 2 below.

123
846 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

Fig. 2 Learning objects and other affordances for the collaborative design process

The design phase is followed by its implementation. In this phase, the students travel to
the museum or nature/forest environment to study the chosen objects and collect inquiry
data to develop answers to their research tasks. The final phase involves organizing and
analyzing the collected material, sharing the findings with the whole community, and
reflecting on the project. In the application of the design environment, the following
pedagogical premises are highlighted:
• The learning process is anchored in the learners’ ideas, thoughts, conceptions, and
interpretations about the research questions to be investigated (learning principle).

123
Learning from and with museum objects 847

• The learning process is object-oriented, mediated by physical and cognitive tools, and
is focused on the museum objects that represent the chosen phenomenon (ontological
principle).
• Collaborative designing enhances the ‘‘coming to know’’ and knowledge development
(learning principle).
• For the teachers and museum guides, the agency emphasis is on supporting and
affording the learning resources (principle of agency).
• The ‘‘whole task approach’’ with a driven question engages and orients the learners
(instructional perspective).

Research method

Design-based research

Recently, design-based research (DBR) has been seen as an emerging and promising
methodological approach to developing learning environments as well as their application.
Design research aims to develop educational practices through iterative analysis, design,
development, and implementation (Wang and Hannafin 2005). DBR methods focus on
designing and exploring the designed innovations that embody specific theoretical insights
about learning, and reflect a commitment to understanding the relationships between the
theory, the designed artifacts, and practice (Design-Based Research Collective 2003). By
grounding itself in real-world problems, DBR can provide a lens for understanding how
theoretical claims about learning can be transformed to foster learning in educational settings
(Design-Based Research Collective 2003). According to Schauble et al. (1997), the idea of
conducting theory-driven research on prototypes that will eventually be revised based on
empirical research is a promising approach through which to bring the theory and research
into a sustainable relationship, and to translate them into practice in museum settings.
The development team for the virtual design environment was multidisciplinary,
involving educational researchers, museum staff, forest researchers, and a technological
designer. This study can be seen as a multi-tiered design investigation that, according to
Lesh et al. (2008), involves design, as it investigates the nature of the subjects’ ways of
thinking by engaging them in activities that entail the parallel and interactive development
of the following: (1) complex artifacts or tools needed for a specific purpose that lie outside
of the prejudices imposed by specific theories, and (2) underlying conceptual systems such
as theories and models that are embodied in the artifact or tool.
From the point of view of the development of the learning environment for the use of
the multiple groups from diverse backgrounds arriving at a forest museum, it was neces-
sary to investigate the environment’s functionality with various target groups, and with
varying situational conditions (time, locus of control, modes of supporting, prior knowl-
edge, age of the learners, etc.). The three design experiments took place during 2007 and
2008, involving three different learner study groups that were selected to represent the
schools with which the museum was actively collaborating.

Research question

According to Cobb et al. (2003), DBR aims at understanding the conceived learning
ecology, which is ‘‘a complex, interacting system involving multiple elements of different

123
848 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

types and levels such as the tasks that the children are asked to deal with, the kinds of
discourse that are encouraged, the norms of participation that are established, the tools
available in the learning environment.’’ These elements highlight the complexity of the
educational system by emphasizing that designed contexts are conceptualized as inter-
acting systems rather than as either a collection of activities or a list of separate factors that
influence learning (Cobb et al. 2003). Thus, rather than dealing with technology in iso-
lation, the preset study aims to examine the interrelationship among technologies, the
communities around them, and the learning activities that they support. The empirical part
of the study sought answers to the following research question: What kind of learning
systems emerged when learners from different educational backgrounds worked in the
learning environment and designed their visit to the Finnish Forest Museum and Research
Forest Park?
The subjects in the learning system consist of the teacher, the museum guide, and the
students. The research plan for the museum visit represents the object, mediated by the
driving question, and approached from the direction of the students’ own research ques-
tions. The students use the virtual design environment to construct the research plan and
choose cognitive and/or physical tools to implement their inquiries. Figure 3 represents the
conceptualization of the afforded learning system and the respective study perspectives.

Design experiment 1

Design goals

The first implementation of the designed learning environment examined what kind of
learning system would emerge when the learners had, based on a driven question, free
choice in developing their research questions, choosing their learning objects and tools,
and organizing their learning processes in the design phase. Thus, the following data were
collected and analyzed: (1) the preconceptions of the students about forests and museums;
(2) research questions that the students constructed (the nature of knowledge-seeking
questions); (3) the content of the students’ discussions during the design phase (mediation

Fig. 3 Conceptualization of the afforded learning system and its study perspectives

123
Learning from and with museum objects 849

of the negotiation of meaning); and (4) the learning process that emerged (the modes of
participation).

Method

The first experiment was conducted with a multi-age primary class, with 17 students from
grades 5 and 6, divided into four small groups. In this small village school, ‘‘Forest’’ was
the theme of the year, and it is one of the topics in the Finnish national curriculum to be
studied in grades 5 and 6. The primary school project, in total, took approximately nine
lessons, and in Finland, the duration of one lesson is traditionally about 45 min. The
learning task for the students was to design their questions beforehand, and carry out a
learning project involving the forest museum and research park.

Data sources

The study project began by asking learners to write down their preconceptions about
museums and forests. The lessons, from the point when the students were designing their
own inquiries with the design tool, were selected for more detailed analysis to determine
what kinds of learning tasks and research questions the learners constructed, and the
epistemic nature of the students0 questions. The material for analysis was based on the
individually written preconceptions and the inquiry plans developed in the small groups.
Research questions were classified into one of the following knowledge categories applied
from Hakkarainen (1998): (1) descriptive knowledge (factual questions such as properties
of the object, height, or age); (2) procedural knowledge (questions seeking an explanation;
how, why, how does it work, etc.); and (3) strategic/conditional knowledge (questions
seeking the development of what is already known, questions that are in relation to other
events, phenomena, societies, etc.).
Furthermore, to examine more deeply how the learners actually designed and con-
structed a learning task and their research questions, one small group with five learners
(four girls, one boy) that was supposed to represent the whole-class activity was selected
for a more detailed analysis. The video materials from the design-phase lessons (2 h)
mediated by the design tools were transcribed, and the content of the students’ discussion
was categorized as follows: (1) research perspective, (2) research problem, (3) research
object, (4) cognitive tools, (5) physical tools, (6) implementation, (7) virtual design
environment, and (8) other. When analyzing the content of the learners’ discussions, the
teachers’ and researchers’ comments were left out of the analysis.
The whole project was also videotaped. To clarify the emergence of the learning pro-
cesses, and to assess the modes of the students’, teachers’, and museum guides’ partici-
pation in the inquiry during the project, the project activity was classified into one of the
following categories according to who was the main actor of the activity: class, study
group, or teacher/expert (c.f. Roth 1998, 253–259).

Findings

At the beginning of the project, the teacher asked the students to write down their thoughts
about the forest and museum. Regarding the preconceptions of the primary school students
(N = 17), the concrete, experienced, seen, and heard matters about the forest issues
seemed to be most common: ‘‘Forest brings to the mind brooks, erratic boulders. I have

123
850 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

seen erratic boulders in our own forest and they are quite big.’’ Based on the learners’ prior
knowledge and joint negotiation, the class formulated their driving question, ‘‘What is a
valuable forest like?’’ which was supported by the teacher. After the preparation activities,
the class was divided into four small groups and they began to design their own research
questions. Each small group approached the common theme from the direction of its own
research object, method, and research perspective. The primary school class’s study
questions were mainly factual and procedural in nature, for example: ‘‘The medicines to be
obtained from forest. What medicines can be obtained from the forest? Which wood can
one get medicines from?’’
The selected small group from the primary school began to formulate the research task
by browsing through the design resources, and at the same time, by discussing the objects
and the thoughts and questions awakened by them. The analysis of the discussion content
indicates that the learners had difficulties in identifying the different research perspectives.
On the other hand, the objects of the design environment served as a support when the
learners were trying to figure out how the experts in the questions worked. The group
became especially interested in the physical tools and videos in which the experts in the
field used different physical tools from the forest area, while at the same time thinking
aloud. The interest in the tools is illustrated by the following example from the transcript:
Student 2: This is the increment borer … now; let’s see this to the end … ohoh! Wow!
Student 1: Wow!
Student 2: Neat … I absolutely want to do this.
Student 1: and me.
Student 3: and me.
The physical tools played a significant role in the learners’ discussions (34.79 %), and
were also a premise for the choice of the research perspective and of the research object
(Fig. 4).
The students chose an object that provided plenty of opportunities for utilizing the
different physical tools. Following the choice of the tools and the objects related to them,
the learners began to formulate their research problems. The formulation of a research
question that was related to the tools was difficult for the learners, and the teacher had to
support the learners a great deal. The group formulated the following questions: ‘‘How old
is the pine forest? How high are the pine trees there? How big is the basal area of the pine
forest? How valuable is a specific forest?’’
The articulation of the open challenge was undertaken with the whole class, and the
outcomes were shared with the whole class after the main phases. The teacher was the
main actor at the beginning of the project, as he introduced the project and its goals. During
the project, the teacher gradually faded into the background, and supported the students
only when needed. The class was divided into small groups, which became the main acting
form when designing the inquiries and analyzing the findings. However, when working in
the nature and culture environments, the museum guide became the main actor, as he gave
the introductory talk and instructions. The museum visit began with a short introduction
where the museum staff stated the program of the day, and the learners picked up the study
tools that they had chosen. Two of the small groups became acquainted with the Finnish
woods in the forest near the museum, and through the objects in the museum. The other
two groups went to the research park to investigate an old pine forest, and then to the
museum to investigate the animals of the forest. After the data collection, the learning
project continued at the school. The students worked in a small group and began to
determine the age of the forest from the collected samples, collecting additional infor-
mation from the literature. At the end of the process, the learners constructed research

123
Learning from and with museum objects 851

Fig. 4 Content and focus of the primary school students’ discussions

reports, and shared them with the whole class. Based on the reports, the students con-
structed an answer to the driving question of the community. The coarse level description
of the learning processes and the social settings are shown in Fig. 5.

Discussion: design experiment 1

The primary school students’ study questions were mainly factual and procedural in nature,
and concrete matters were most common during the entire project. The orientation toward
objects emphasized descriptive knowledge, and the students chose objects that provided
opportunities to use different physical tools. Interestingly, to learn how to use these tools
became the premise for the choice of the research perspective and the research object.
When working in nature, the students were engaged in using the selected tools and creating
new inquiry practices, and it seemed that these tools also modeled the thinking and action
models that are typical of a forestry expert. However, during the museum visit, the
learners’ role was more passive; the learners were more interested in the museum objects
and less so in the guide’s talk.

Fig. 5 Primary school: social settings of the subjects in different phases of the learning process

123
852 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

Design experiment 2

Design goals

The second iteration attempted to further enhance the students’ active roles in designing
their museum visits, as well as to improve our understanding of how the students used the
design environment to do this. Since students from very different educational backgrounds
visited the forest museum, the goal of the second experiment was to investigate the
environment’s functionality with different student groups, and with varying situational
conditions. In the second experiment, a common theme or driving question for the whole
class was not proposed; instead, the students built the themes for their inquiries in small
groups with the support of newspaper articles related to topical forest issues. Following on
from these changes in the learning system, the next iteration focused on: (1) the nature of
the preconceptions of the students; (2) research questions the students constructed (the
nature of knowledge-seeking questions); (3) the content of the students’ design discussions
(mediation of the negotiation of meaning); and (4) the learning processes that emerged (the
modes of participation).

Method

The second experiment was conducted with seven technical college students (two female,
five male), from 18 to 50 years old. These students were studying in the training unit for
natural resource studies, specializing in forestry and forest culture. Also, the technical
college students’ learning task was to design beforehand, and to carry the learning project
to the museum environment. For a more detailed analysis one small group was selected
with three male students, 18–50 years old. The project, in total, took *11 lessons.

Data sources

In the second experiment, the same procedure as in the previous one was utilized, including
the preconceptions about museums and forests, the research questions of the small groups,
the content of the students’ discussions mediated by the design tool, and the classification
of the modes of participation in the inquiry during the projects.

Findings

The technical college students’ preconceptions (N = 7) regarding forests represented

different perspectives: ‘‘Typical part of the Finnish nature. It brings to the mind a safe and
steady environment, which has been quite badly handled. However, in a little longer run,
forest offers such basic security to the Finns and ones living in Finland. In economical and
also in cultural perspective. Finland and the Finns cannot be thought of without the forest,
without our home.’’ The technical college students’ questions were merely procedural and
adaptive in nature, for example: ‘‘Curly birch and its significance and use as an economy
tree. How heavy is the curly birch? Does the curly birch affect on growth? How heavy is
the tree and how much curly birch is usually found in one tree? How old do the curly
birches grow into?’’
After the preparation activities, the students worked in small groups and continued to
design their own research questions with the help of the virtual design environment. The

123
Learning from and with museum objects 853

selected small group of technical college students began to formulate the research task in
an uncomfortable atmosphere because the students did not seem to know what they should
be doing. After some guidance, the students entered the initial phase of the project and
started browsing through the design resources. The learning objects provoked plenty of
discussion (18.55 %), and the students proposed a great many different research objects to
each other. The discussion proceeded from the objects and led to external discussions
(32.64 %), such as earlier experiences, opinions and banter, and imaginative stories
(Fig. 6). Often, the members of the second small group participated in the discussions.
The group formulated the following research problem: ‘‘Medicines to be obtained from
tar; Operation of birch bark as a medicine.’’ One member of the group had visited the forest
museum and had met a guide who made quite an impression on him. The students thought
that he was an expert on the questions concerning medicines, and they decided to design an
interview. The design of the interview questions (categorized in cognitive tools, 21.07 %)
took a great deal of time, and was undertaken by the two most active members of the
group. When the research plans were completed, they were shared with the whole class.
The teacher was the main actor only at the start of each phase when he prepared the
class for the project or gave an instruction. The central part of the inquiry activities relied
on group work, but in the implementation of the inquiry plan, the museum guide became
the main actor. The implementation of the technical college students’ inquiry began with
an independent museum tour, after which the groups began, with two guides, to observe the
selected objects. Students were divided into two small groups. One of the groups listened
to the presentation about medicines obtained from the forest, and the other group went with
the experts to the research park to look at curly birches. The tour contained a great deal of
the guide’s speech and the students were not observed to be working collaboratively.
During the guide’s storytelling, the students asked a few questions, but the small group’s
collaboration, emphasized in the previous lessons, disappeared almost completely. After
the students had visited the selected objects, they came back to the museum to study the
literature, and to write their research reports. The learning project was finished at the

Fig. 6 Content of the technical college students’ discussions

123
854 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

school, where the students shared their research results and discussed the learning project
with the whole class. The students were dissatisfied with the visit, and the dissatisfaction
emerged in the reporting discussion: ‘‘In the opinion of the group, the interview study was
not what intended to be … it leaned quite strongly … to get to information from a museum
guide … information was given out, but from the side of matter … which in my opinion, it
just happened … mmm … This project dried nearly completely. The information was
gained from the books, because of the above-mentioned matter … mmm … the time ended.
This study, in such format, could have been implemented in the school.’’ The coarse level
description of the learning processes and the social settings of the learning processes are
shown in Fig. 7.

Discussion: design experiment 2

The technical college students’ preconceptions about forests and the museum represented dif-
ferent perspectives, and the students’ questions were mostly procedural and adaptive in nature.
The discussion focused on the learning objects, and the students proposed a great many different
research objects to each other. After browsing through the design resources, the students first
negotiated the study object, and then chose the research perspective and inquiry method.
The second design experiment revealed the need for revisions in the designed envi-
ronment. From the point of view of the task environment, a meaningful driving question
for the whole class was needed to tie the students’ different inquiries together. In the social
environment, there was a clear need to modify the interaction between the students and the
experts, and new tools were needed to facilitate the interaction between the learners and the
museum objects. The tool environment also required a new section for arranging the
collected data and writing research reports.

Design experiment 3

Design goals

The third iteration attempted to build more flexible technological solutions, and to pay
special attention to the learning tasks and interactions in the museum. The previous two cases
had shown how the driving question of the whole class could enhance the collaborative
pursuit of a common theme, and thus, in the third experiment, the students were offered the
same open question as the primary school children (‘‘What is a valuable forest like?’’).
Based on the experiences in the two previous design experiments, the museum guide’s
role was changed. The aim was to support the students’ own active roles, so the guide’s

Fig. 7 Technical college: social settings of the subjects in different phases of the learning process

123
Learning from and with museum objects 855

role was not to chair a group, but to support a collaborative approach to examining the
objects. To facilitate the examination of the museum objects, the students were encouraged
to borrow or use their own digital cameras, which served as the main tool for collecting
data in the museum. Also, a wiki environment was added to the learning environment for
arranging the collected data. After these changes to the learning system, the third exper-
iment explored: (1) the nature of the preconceptions of the students; (2) research questions
that the students constructed (the nature of knowledge-seeking questions); (3) the content
of the students’ design discussions; (4) the photographic data that the students collected to
answer their own research questions (mediation of the negotiation of meaning); and (5) the
learning processes that emerged (the modes of participation).

Method

To further explore emerging learning systems with the different visitor groups to the
museum, the third experiment was conducted with 14 teacher-education students (11
female, 3 male), who were presumed to have some theoretical and practical experience on
self-regulated learning. During their studies, the forests are considered to be one of the
integrating topics, which can be approached from various perspectives in terms of teaching
and learning. The students divided themselves into five small groups and formulated their
own detailed research questions related to the common theme. The small group selected for
the detailed analysis consisted of five young female students, aged 19–30 years old.

Data sources

Data collection for this iteration was similar to that of the previous two iterations, including
preconceptions about museums and forests, the research questions of the small groups, the
content of the students’ discussions mediated by the design tool, and the classification of
the modes of participation for the inquiry during the projects. During the projects, the
students also produced written and visual materials, for example, the inquiry plans, reports,
and diaries that were used as supplementary material in the data analysis.
The students returned 368 photographs that were used as research data to provide a
picture of how they utilized the inquiry tool, and what kinds of photographic data the
students collected to answer their own research questions. To get an overall view of the
subject matter of the students’ photographs, the researcher classified and later quantified
them based on their content. The development of the classification scheme for the content
of photographs was based on data-driven analysis, and the classification structure consisted
of four categories: (1) museum objects; (2) texts (e.g. the information board of the museum
objects, literature); (3) student; and (4) teacher and/or expert.

Findings

The teacher-education students (N = 14) only visited the forest museum, so the students
were asked to write down their thoughts about it. Only a few of the students had previously
visited the forest museum. The answers emphasized the students’ images of what kind of a
museum it could be and what could be learned from it: ‘‘From the children’s point of view
the forest museum would bring out, concretely, the matters that were studied in school.
From the point of view of the visit in the museum, demonstration would be important. The
children would also get a picture of (human) life in past days, how the forest has perhaps

123
856 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

affected our grandparents’ life. First and foremost, the children would get experiences of
the surrounding nature which surely would enrich their life.’’ The teacher-education stu-
dents’ questions mainly represented strategic and conditional knowledge. The questions
connected the history of the forests’ usage to its economic value, and with productive use,
for example: ‘‘Productive usage of forest and its change. How has the productive usage of
forests changed in the course of the years? How has it influenced on the people’s everyday
life? How did it affect the economy during different times? How has the technological
development changed and intensified the productive use of forests?’’ The formulation of
the research theme began with a whole-class discussion of the question, ‘‘What is a
valuable forest like?’’ with the help of De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats technique (De Bono
1985).
In the next two lessons, the students continued the project by designing their own
research questions with the support of the virtual design tool. At the start of the lessons,
one member of the selected small group said she was interested in investigating the
financial value of the forest, and the other members of the group also became interested.
The alternative ideas remained quite minor, and having found the topic of the inquiry, the
group read about the economist’s perspective and browsed through the economist’s
research objects. However, the students did not find an object that was appropriate for their
ideas, and the discussions about the objects remained quite limited (0.42 %). The students
decided to conduct an interview and formulated the following research problem: ‘‘What
trees are worth choosing for one’s own forest and how should they be taken care of, so that
the benefits are as big as possible and should the trees be homogeneous so that the forest is
more productive?’’ The students used a great deal of time in planning the interview,
developing different interview questions together (categorized in cognitive tools,
28.35 %), and, at the same time, they defined their research problems (21.39 %). Every
now and then, the students also discussed matters outside the task (25.18 %), such as men,
schoolmates, and leisure activities (Fig. 8).
The museum visit began with a short general introduction, after which the students were
directed to the auditorium to become acquainted with the literature in the field (at a time
when the guide was working with other small groups). Then the students conducted the
expert interview, which the guide had prepared for them, but he did not give an actual
speech. The expert only answered and discussed the questions and issues that the students
presented to him, and encouraged the students to think for themselves. After the interview,
the students went to the museum to explore independently and photograph different
objects. To answer their research questions, the students took several photos of different
museum objects, and also used the cameras to take photocopies of the textual information
related to their research questions. The numerous photos, including those of their peers,
emphasized the importance of social interaction during the exploration of the museum
objects. Table 1 shows the content of the students’ photographs.
After the visit, they started to organize the materials using the wiki environment, where
the research reports were also written, and finally shared with the whole student com-
munity. In their diaries, the students brought out the positive atmosphere of the museum:
‘‘We regarded Lusto (forest museum) as a positive surprise. It was comfortable, that in the
museum we were allowed to circle and work with the group mainly independently (there
was no traditional guided circuit).’’
The teacher gave some instruction at the start of each phase, but the central part of the
inquiry activities relied on the group work in the museum. The coarse level description of
the learning processes and the participating modes are shown in Fig. 9.

123
Learning from and with museum objects 857

Fig. 8 Content and focus of the teacher-education students’ discussions

Discussion: design experiment 3

The third iteration of the study supported the idea that all parts of the inquiry activities
should rely on the participants’ collaboration, including the museum visit. The previous
attempts at such activities conflicted with the social settings in the museum, as the guide
conveyed information on a topic selected by the students, but the interaction in this kind of
tour was quite one-way. Instead of taking the traditional role, the museum guide’s new role
with teacher-education students was to support the learners’ own active and collaborative
roles in the museum. It clearly constructed new kinds of interactions between the experts
and the students, for formulating questions, the negotiation of meaning, and the division of
experiences inspired by the objects in the museum. The museum experts also regarded this
kind of approach as rewarding because, in this way, in contrast to a traditional tour in the
museum, they received more information about the visitors’ genuine interests, and the
thoughts that the museum awoke in them. Adding the wiki environment facilitated
arranging the collected data.
Asking the students to use their own devices to record their museum visit provided us
with a picture of how they utilized the tool in their own learning processes. The deliberate
efforts around encouraging students to use their own digital cameras for data collection
seemed to offer new possibilities for approaching objects that were behind the glass, and
that could not be physically manipulated. The surprisingly high number of photographs
returned indicates that the students were engaged in using the cameras as their own
learning tools, and this encouraged us to make more use of the technology that students
already possess and know.

Table 1 Variation of the content in the students’ photographs

Museum object f (%) Text f (%) Group members f (%) Expert/teacher f (%) f (%)

217 (59.0) 69 (18.8) 74 (20.1) 8 (2.2) 368 (100)

123
858 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

Fig. 9 Teacher education: social settings of the subjects in different phases of the learning process

Conclusion

The present DBR aimed to enhance collaborative and technology-rich learning activities
by co-developing a virtual design tool for student groups of all ages visiting the forest
museum. In the multi-tiered design experiment, the underlying theories embodied in the
designed learning environment can be tested in an assessment of the designed tools (Lesh
et al. 2008). The design principles of the learning environment, emphasizing students’ own
ideas, thoughts, and interpretations, supported students from different backgrounds in their
efforts to negotiate interesting objects for learning, and to develop questions, as well as to
search for answers to those questions (Wells 1999).
The conceptual model of the object-oriented learning system, with its broadened defi-
nition of learning objects, seems to be vital, because it recognizes the significance of
different individual perspectives, and the mediation of the negotiation of meaning. How-
ever, the analysis of the design process of the museum visit revealed that the process of
collaborative design varied widely in the studied groups, and when the open-ended process
was anchored to the learners’ ideas and thoughts, the learners invented alternative
approaches to the expected application of the design environment. The primary school
students’ design process emphasized descriptive knowledge, and was significantly medi-
ated by the tools that became the premise for the choice of the research perspective and the
research object. The technical college students’ questions were mostly procedural and
adaptive in nature, and the process of design was more object-oriented. The discussion
focused on the learning objects, and the students first negotiated the study object, and then
chose the research perspective and inquiry method. The teacher-education students
approached the design environment from the point of view of their own research interests,
representing mainly strategic and conditional knowledge. The discussion focused on for-
mulating the research problem that was the premise for the choice of the research per-
spective and inquiry method. While some of these findings seem partly to reflect the typical
thinking strategies that the learners in a certain developmental phase spontaneously apply,
they also challenge the teachers and museum staff to abandon the universalistic presup-
position that students and learners are the same. Yet, the teacher and guide interventions
are important in scaffolding the students to develop their own personal interests and areas
of expertise to be shared with others. Additionally, a meaningful driving question for the
whole class is needed to bring the students’ different inquiries together, toward a more
collective ownership of the learning process.
In the social environment, for the teachers and museum guides, the agency emphasis was
on creating a collaborative working culture, and on making available different resources to
support the activities of the students. Approached in this way, the teacher is no longer
transmitting the established knowledge already completed by distant experts, but is

123
Learning from and with museum objects 859

broadening students’ interests by bringing the students into a relationship with expert com-
munities beyond the classroom (Wells 2002). The analysis of the social settings of the
subjects in different phases of the learning process revealed that in all groups, the orientation
activities, and designing the museum visit emphasized collaborative activities. However, the
implementation of the designed activities was assimilated into ongoing practice in the
museum, and revealed a clear need to facilitate the students and the experts in pursuing a
constructive dialogue and negotiating meaning, rather than having arrangements that pas-
sively transmit knowledge about the selected museum objects (Hawkey 2004). One can argue
that most of the museum staff have no experience of this kind of pedagogical approach, and it
poses demands on supporting them to create new roles for themselves.
The insights gained from the three experiments showed that the tools and the ways in
which they were used have a strong effect on the museum visit. The results of the first
experiment with primary school children also indicated that by providing tools that (for-
estry) the expertise rests on, one could give the students a picture of the range of tools that
were available to them, and thus, this could enhance their abilities to use such tools, and to
integrate them into their own inquiries. On the other hand, the second case indicated that
not enough tools were provided to enhance learning in museum settings, and, partly due to
that, the designed inquiry of the students actualized as a lecture-oriented museum visit.
With the teacher-education students, their own technologies were adopted into the design
and showed the importance of using the students’ tools as mediators of learning.
In the abstraction below, one can perceive the vast variation in the activities of the
students when they worked with the same design task in the same environment with self-
constructed, but similar, learning goals (Fig. 10).
In the situation where the three factors of subject, object, and tool structure the learning
process, an ideal implementation of collaborative learning would be such that the balance

Fig. 10 Learning systems that emerged in design-oriented instruction (S subject, T tool, O object)

123
860 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

could be achieved, and the learning environment could allow the students to self-regulate
their learning processes, and use the available tools and resources in a self-organizing
manner. Non-balanced situations pose challenges to the support offered by an instructional
model, a teacher, an expert, or technology, and require systemic changes in the entire
activity environment.
The results of the study confirm concerns raised by Lehtinen (2003) and Salomon
(1994) that the effects of new technology depend not only on the resources and tools
available, but, above all, on the pedagogical implementation, and that always means
systemic changes in the entire activity environment. When considering the desired effects
of new technology and open environments on emerging learning systems and processes,
the results of the study suggest that self-organization and free choice do not necessarily
lead to research-question-driven learning processes, unless the variation in students’
approaches, scaffolding the design process if needed, and paying attention to the imple-
mentation of the designed activities are taken into account. As Plomp (2009) argues,
changing the traditional pedagogical practices toward those that are considered as
important in a knowledge-creative society requires not only utilizing what is known from
research, but a systematic study of designing, co-developing, and evaluating these inter-
ventions. It is worth considering a future direction that emphasizes participatory learning,
where students are invited to participate and work with the expert community on co-
developing learning objects that may serve as objects of learning for others (Vartiainen
et al. 2012).

Acknowledgments This study has been supported by the doctoral program for Multidisciplinary Research
on Learning Environments (OPMON), Academy of Finland (Project No. 1217068) and partly by Blended
learning-Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning Environments-Project (UEF, Project No. S11822).

References

Bell, P., Lewenstein, B., Shouse, A., & Feder, M. (2009). Learning science in informal environments.
People, places, and pursuits. Washington: National Academies Press.
Bielaczyc, K., & Collins, A. (1999). Learning communities in classrooms: A reconceptualization of edu-
cational practice. In C. M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models: A new paradigm
of instructional theory (pp. 269–292). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Churchill, D. (2005). Learning object: An interactive representation and a mediating tool in a learning
activity. Educational Media International, 42(4), 333–349.
Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003). Design experiments in educational
research. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 9–13.
Cochrane, T. (2005). Interactive quicktime. Developing and evaluating multimedia learning objects to
enhance both face-to-face and distance e-learning environments. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowl-
edge and Learning Objects, 1(1), 33–54.
Cox-Petersen, A., Marsh, D., Kisiel, J., & Melber, L. (2003). Investigation of guided school tours, student
learning, and science reform recommendations at a museum of natural history. Journal of Research in
Science Teaching, 40(2), 200–218.
De Bono, E. (1985). Six thinking hats. Boston: Little Brown and Company.
Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-based research: An emerging paradigm for educational
inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5–8.
Enkenberg, J. (2001). Instructional design and emerging teaching models in higher education. Computers in
Human Behavior, 17(5–6), 495–506.
Falk, J. (2004). The director’s cut: Toward an improved understanding of learning from museums. Science
Education, 88(1), 83–96.
Fischer, G., & Redmiles, D. (2008). Transdisciplinary education and collaboration: Contribution to the
Human Computer Interaction Consortium (HCIC) Workshop 2008. Retrieved Aug 07, 2013, from
http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/*gerhard/papers/hcic2008.pdf.

123
Learning from and with museum objects 861

Francis, R. (2007). The predicament of the learner in the new media age: An investigation into the
implications of media change for learning. (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation). Oxford University,
Oxford.
Frost, C. (2002). When the object is digital: Properties of digital surrogate objects and implications for
learning. In S. Paris (Ed.), Perspectives on object-centred learning in museums (pp. 37–54). Mahwah
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Giaccardi, E., & Fitzcarrald, F. (2004). Memory and territory: New forms of virtuality for the museum.
Museums and the Web 2004. Retrieved Aug 07, 2013 from, http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/
mw2004/papers/giaccardi/giaccardi.html.
Griffin, J. (2004). Research on students and museums: Looking more closely at the students in school
groups. Science Education, 88(11), 59–70.
Griffin, J., & Symington, D. (1997). Moving from task-oriented to learning-oriented strategies on school
excursions to museums. Science Education, 81(6), 763–779.
Gutwill, J., & Allen, S. (2012). Deepening students’ scientific inquiry skills during a science museum field
trip. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 21(1), 130–181.
Hakkarainen, K. (1998). Epistemology of inquiry and computer-supported collaborative learning. Unpub-
lished Ph.D. thesis. University of Toronto.
Harden, R., Gessner, I., Gunn, M., Issenberg, S., Pringle, S., & Stewart, A. (2011). Creating an e-learning
module from learning objects using a commentary or ‘personal learning assistant’. Medical Teacher,
33(4), 286–290.
Hawkey, R. (2004). Learning with digital technologies in museums, science centres and galleries. Futurelab
SERIES. Future Lab. Retrieved Aug 05, 2013, from http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/
documents/lit_reviews/Museums_Galleries_Review.pdf.
Hennessy, S., & Murphy, P. (1999). The potential for collaborative problem solving in design and tech-
nology. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 9(1), 1–36.
Jacobsson, A., & Davidsson, E. (2012). Using sociocultural frameworks to understand the significance of
interactions at science and technology centers and museums. In E. Davidsson & A. Jakobsson (Eds.),
Understanding interactions at science centers and museums—Approaching sociocultural perspectives
(pp. 3–22). The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Jonassen, D., & Churchill, D. (2004). Is there learning orientation in learning objects. International Journal
of E-Learning, 3(2), 32–42.
Kim, B., & Reeves, T. C. (2006). Reframing research on learning with technology: In search of the meaning
of cognitive tools. Instructional Science, 35(3), 207–256.
Kisiel, J. (2005). An examination of fieldtrip strategies and their implementation within a natural history
museum. Science Education, 90(3), 434–452.
Krajcik, J., & Blumenfeld, P. (2006). Project-based learning. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook
of the learning sciences (pp. 317–333). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lahti, H., Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P., & Hakkarainen, K. (2004). Collaboration patterns in computer sup-
ported collaborative designing. Design Studies, 25(4), 351–371.
Lehtinen, E. (2003). Computer supported collaborative learning: An approach to powerful learning envi-
ronments. In E. De Corte, L. Verschaffel, N. Entwistle, & J. Van Merriënboer (Eds.), Unraveling basic
components and dimensions of powerful learning environments (pp. 35–53). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Lesh, R., Kelly, A., & Yoon, C. (2008). Multitiered design experiments in mathematics, science and
technology education. In A. Kelly, R. Lesh, & J. Baek (Eds.), Handbook of design research methods in
education: Innovations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning and teaching
(pp. 131–148). New York: Routledge.
National Education Technology Plan. (2010). Transforming American education: Learning powered by
technology.Retrieved Aug 05, 2013, from www.ed.cov/technology/netp-2010.
National Research Council. (1996). National science education standards. Washington D.C.: National
Academy Press.
Paris, S., & Hapgood, S. (2002). Children learning with objects in informal learning environments. In S.
Paris (Ed.), Perspectives on object-centered learning in museums (pp. 37–54). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Plomp, T. (2009). Educational design research: An introduction. In T. Plomp & N. Nieveen (Eds.), An
introduction to educational design research (pp. 9–36). Enschede: SLO.
Prosser, D., & Eddisford, S. (2004). Virtual museum learning. Information Technology in Childhood
Education Annual, 1, 281–297.
Rennie, L., & Johnston, D. (2004). The nature of learning and its implications for research on learning from
museums. Science Education, 88(1), 4–16.
Roth, W.-M. (1998). Designing communities. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

123
862 H. Vartiainen, J. Enkenberg

Salomon, G. (1994). Differences in patterns: Studying computer enhanced learning environments. In S.

Vosniadou, E. De Corte, & H. Mandl (Eds.), Technology- based learning environments: Psychological
and educational foundations (Vol. 137, pp. 79–85)., NATO ASI Series F: Computer and System
Science Berlin: Springer.
Säljö, R. (2010). Digital tools and challenges to institutional traditions of learning: Technologies, social
memory and the performative nature of learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1),
53–64.
Schauble, L., Leinhardt, G., & Martin, L. (1997). A framework for organizing a cumulative research agenda
in informal learning contexts. Journal of Museum Education, 22(2), 3–8.
Schoultz, J., Saljö, R., & Wyndhamn, J. (2001). Heavenly talk: Discourse, artifacts, and children’s under-
standing of elementary astronomy. Human Development, 44(2–3), 103–118.
Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P., Viilo, M., & Hakkarainen, K. (2010). Learning by collaborative design: Tech-
nology-enhanced knowledge practices. International Journal of Technology and Design Education,
20(2), 109–136.
Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the danger of choosing just one. Educational
Researcher, 27, 4–13.
Tal, T., & Morag, O. (2007). School visits to natural history museums: Teaching or enriching? Journal of
Research in Science Education, 44(5), 747–769.
Vartiainen, H., Liljeström, A., & Enkenberg, J. (2012). Design-oriented pedagogy for technology-enhanced
learning to cross over the borders between formal and informal environments. Journal of Universal
Computer Science, 18(15), 2097–2119.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Thought and language. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Wang, F., & Hannafin, M. (2005). Design-based research and technology: Enhanced learning environments.
Educational Technology Research and Development, 53(4), 5–23.
Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wells, G. (2002). Learning and teaching for understanding: The key role of collaborative knowledge
building. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Social constructivist teaching: Affordances and constraints (pp. 1–41).
Oxford: Elsevier/JAL.
Wells, G. (2011). Motive and motivation in learning to teach. In D. McInerney, R. Walker, & G. Liem
(Eds.), Sociocultural theories of learning and motivation: Looking back, looking forward (pp. 87–107).
Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing Inc.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Wiley, D. (2000). Connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: A definition, a metaphor, and a
taxonomy. In D. Wiley, (Ed.), The instructional use of learning objects: Online version. Retrieved Aug
07, 2013, from http://www.reusability.org/read/.
Wiley, D. (2007). The learning objects literature. In M. Spector, D. Merril, J. Van Merriënboer, & M.
Driscoll (Eds.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology (pp. 345–354).
New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Wiley, D., & Edwards, E. (2002). Online self-organizing social systems: The decentralized future of online
learning. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 3(1), 33–46.

Henriikka Vartiainen is a doctoral student at Doctoral Programme for Multidisciplinary Research on

Learning Environments funded by Finnish Academy. Her research interest centers on design-oriented
pedagogy and learning by collaborative designing of learning objects.

Jorma Enkenberg is Emeritus Professor of Education at University of Eastern Finland. His recent research
interests are object- and design-oriented pedagogy and situated and authentic learning environments.

123