ABSTRACT
Despite available theory-based and participatory design approaches, there are persistent problems in the design and implementation of technology-mediated learning settings. How to integrate (a) demanding theoretical principles of productive learning, (b) user requirements of the local institutions, communities and practices, and (c) the technological solutions into one and the same process and a meaningful product? From the perspective of cultural-historical activity theory, combination and coordination of knowledge from multiple sources is not enough. What is needed is long-standing collaboration and co-configuration in which each partner will learn from others and move towards a collectively created new object. Activity theory also points to the importance of creating and using intermediate tools to make co-configuration design possible. Such intermediate tools, or boundary objects (Bowker & Star, 1999) need to be collaboratively created, contested and reconstructed in use.
