ABSTRACT
This book documents an experiment in applying design-based constructs to the analysis of a wide variety of examples of learning networks. To shape this process, we provided the other authors with some guidelines – a first version of the analytic framework – as well as early versions of the Peep and Virtual Choir chapters. When we received their first drafts and their feedback on the issues that they confronted in their analyses, we revised and extended the framework to remove some ambiguities and we re-emphasized the point that it is when set, epistemic and social design elements come together to form distinctive structures that a clearer insight is gained into the relations between form and function. The analytic framework is certainly open to further refinement. In this chapter, we reflect on some lessons learned in the process of developing and testing it. To underline once more the importance of seeing connections between design elements, we take a slightly higher-level view of what the framework helps to expose. Because space is limited, we focus on just two groups of connections. One is between set design and activity. The other is between epistemic design, tasks and activity, though we also show how aspects of the epistemic permeate set and social design too. Relationships between set and activity bring us back to some of the discussion in Chapter 3 about connecting ideas, such as affordance and legibility. We expand on those in the next section of this chapter. In the section after that, we explain some concepts from Legitimation Code Theory, also first mentioned in Chapter 3. We show how these can provide additional tools for analyzing aspects of the epistemic design. The penultimate section presents a thematic treatment of some selected epistemic and set design issues, illustrated by drawing on case studies from Part II of the book. The chapter concludes with some thoughts about future research in this field.
