Teaching child-computer interaction: Critical reflections on a project-based interaction design course

Abstract

As a response to a recent call for developing teaching materials and sharing examples of good teaching practice in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI), this paper describes previous experiences from incorporating an existing CCI curriculum into an Interaction Design course, that is mandatory for third year Bachelor students enrolled in Communication Design program. This article is an attempt to reflect on the four-year experience constructively and critically in teaching and progressively developing an existing CCI course. The paper describes key elements to teaching how to carry out a theory-oriented and project-based design course formulated around the challenge of interaction design with and for children. As the paper reflects on previous experiences, the contribution of this paper is including formal procedural research ethics into student project proposals as part of core principles and giving students the possibility to manage a group work on several iterations for the same project throughout the semester. I discuss some of the reflections on the teaching experience for interaction design and children have posed to me as a CCI researcher and university teacher and outline a set of lessons learned that I think would shed a light for taking ethical approval for student project works in future CCI teaching practices.