A Case Study of Cooperative Inquiry
Techniques in a Classroom of
Children with Special Learning
Needs
Elizabeth Foss, Mona Leigh Guha,
and Panagis Papadatos
efoss@umd.edu
5/22/12
What is Cooperative Inquiry?
Druin, A. (2002). The role of children in the design of new technology.
Behavior and Information Technology, 21(1), 1-25.
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Why Children with Special Learning
Needs?
Core belief of Participatory Design….
Expanding Cooperative Inquiry to a broader
population
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Can Cooperative Inquiry be
successfully implemented in a
classroom of children with special
learning needs?
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Maple School
Private school for children ages 5-14 (grades K-8)
Disorders represented include mild to moderate
autism spectrum, learning disabilities, and
attention deficits
Two teachers and approximately 10 students per
class
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Project
“Design a sports game using technology”
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Design Sessions
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Design Sessions
Table 1: Techniques, Rationale, and Activity
Technique
Big Paper
Mixing Ideas
Bags of Stuff
Storyboarding
Sticky Noting
KidReporting
Session Purpose
Activity
Generate initial design Drawing and writing design ideas on large
directions
sheets of paper
Combine multiple design Physically recombining artifacts from Big
directions
Paper
Using arts and crafts supplies to plan for
Allow a break from project
age-mates’ design project
Refine ideas, visual design
Annotating paneled drawings of the
feedback
game’s story
Generate feedback on
Writing feedback on post-it notes, which
prototype
are then clustered by theme
Generate data, gather final Students interviewing each other about the
feedback
game using video cameras
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Design Sessions
Table 1: Techniques, Rationale, and Activity
Technique
Big Paper
Mixing Ideas
Bags of Stuff
Storyboarding
Sticky Noting
KidReporting
Walsh et al., 2009
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Design Sessions
Table 1: Techniques, Rationale, and Activity
Technique
Big Paper
Mixing Ideas
Bags of Stuff
Storyboarding
Sticky Noting
KidReporting
Guha et al., 2004
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Design Sessions
Table 1: Techniques, Rationale, and Activity
Technique
Big Paper
Mixing Ideas
Bags of Stuff
Storyboarding
Sticky Noting
KidReporting
Druin, 2002
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Design Sessions
Table 1: Techniques, Rationale, and Activity
Technique
Big Paper
Mixing Ideas
Bags of Stuff
Storyboarding
Sticky Noting
KidReporting
Orr et al., 1994
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Design Sessions
Table 1: Techniques, Rationale, and Activity
Technique
Big Paper
Mixing Ideas
Bags of Stuff
Storyboarding
Sticky Noting
KidReporting
Walsh et al., 2009
13
Design Sessions
Table 1: Techniques, Rationale, and Activity
Technique
Big Paper
Mixing Ideas
Bags of Stuff
Storyboarding
Sticky Noting
KidReporting
Bekker et al., 2003
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Data Collection
Design Artifacts
Video and Photos
Researcher Journal
Interview Transcripts
Adult Debriefing Notes
Participant-observation Notes
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Analysis
Qualitative coding of all data collected using
grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin, 2008)
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Findings
Cooperative Inquiry techniques were able to be
used with a classroom of children with special
learning needs with only minor modifications.
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Cooperative Inquiry in a Classroom of
Children with Special Learning Needs
Informal Time
High Adult-to-Child Ratio
Written and Auditory Directions
Plan for High Engagement
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Ongoing Work
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to the students, teachers, and administration at
the Maple School for their open-minded assistance
with this project. Researchers contributing to the
session planning and execution were Greg Walsh,
Jason Yip, and Tamara Clegg, and we could not have
had successful sessions without their expertise.
http://www.heypano.com/thegame/
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