Designing for Authorship: Students as Content Creators Using Mobile Devices in Educational Settings

Abstract

The use of mobile devices in education brings up new possibilities of promoting the students as content producers since there are many interesting and free applications for producing images, videos, and texts, among others. The idea that students need to be creators is aligned with the studies about Personal Learning Environments (PLE). In this study, we articulated two different approaches: (a) PLE as an emergent pedagogical approach, which benefits from the affordances of digital technologies; (b) PLE as self-regulated learning. This paper presents the research path involving the use of tablets with K-12 students in formal and non-formal educational settings and also presents guidelines for the designing of learning activities with technologies based on students’ authorship. The research, based on a qualitative approach, shows the results of two case studies in Brazil. The research path was divided into 3 phases: (a) the design of the learning activities; (b) the application of the proposed learning design with students; (c) the analysis of the learning activity using mobile devices based on a PLE approach and focusing on the students’ authorship. In conclusion, we realized that the activities with technologies developed in the analyzed cases, emphasized the students’ authorship focusing in the content production itself both in the pedagogical approach and in the self-regulated learning perspective. However, we emphasize that designing for students’ authorship should involve more than content creation but experiences which can articulate reading and sharing perspectives to promote the student as a decision maker and socializer as well.