Click! Urban Adventure Game was a mixed-reality role-playing game where girls worked in teams to solve a fictional mystery based on a real-world issue, using technology and science to conduct their investigation. In this article we describe the design of the experience and present evidence that the game increased girls’ confidence, interest, and knowledge of science and technology and helped to build a community of support and conversation-centred learning for girls. This example has implications for the design of informal learning experiences that bridge interest and identity with science and technology content.

Keywords: girls, technology, role-playing games, environmental education

This article investigates the development of conceptual understanding in adolescents as a trajectory that spans physical and institutional boundaries. The study follows a group of secondary school students as they engage in a series of museum-led workshop activities related to architecture. A sociocultural approach frames our analysis of the structuring resources that are central to the students’ emergent understanding of a key architectural design concept over a two-day period.

This article reflects on theories of interaction design as they relate to science discovery learning. Media analysis, inquiry structure and relations between the generation of hypothesis and experimentation in theories of science discovery learning are considered in relation to approaches in interaction design. Two examples from use of interactive models for inquiry learning illustrate the discussion. The studies show that students require time to experiment with models to use them as resources, and that experimentation needs some structure elements to be productive. The interactive models need to invite action and allow for different kinds of use.

The MIRACLE project aims to design and develop learning activities in science that will be used across schools and museum settings. A combination of digital technologies plays a vital role in bridging these institutional contexts. Cultural Historical Activity Theory will be used to analyse how the multi-professional project group orients to designing for science learning. In the analysis, we identify three contradicting orientations: experience, emotional involvement, and conceptual understanding. We discuss the implication this has for the further design work.

Parts of the classroom of the future may be built online allowing for computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). A central challenge in CSCL is a lack of transactivity, i.e., learners have problems building on the reasoning of their peers. A means of fostering CSCL are scripts that specify, sequence, and distribute roles and activities among a group of (online) learners. This article identifies five instructional design principles that explain script effects and inform script design: 1) regulation of learning activities; 2) complementary procedural knowledge; 3) process-oriented instruction; 4) substitution of coordination efforts; and 5) awareness induction.

Keywords: Computer-supported collaboration scripts, CSCL, transactivity