ABSTRACT

From research at all levels on user-centred approaches to designing learning experiences, we know that digital technology offers great potential for dialogue, communication and collaboration. Digital technology makes it possible to design learning experiences across time and space, which allow learning to unfold as a lively, social and shared mutual endeavour. However, a fruitful social learning process does not evolve all by itself. It needs deep insight on behalf of the designer into digital learning processes and concepts, as well as knowledge of how the ontology of digital environments may influence collaborative learning processes taking place across time and context. For a modern democratic society it is essential to learn about – and to be able to engage in – digital processes of dialogue and negotiation. And what better ways to learn about democratic negotiation processes and democratic attitudes, than to practice them as part of the learning process (learning-by-doing). In other words, educational designs must integrate democratic negotiation as an integrated part of the learning process.

The author presents a generic theoretical framework with features and theoretical assumptions, which – when employed in teaching and learning – are likely to possess a potential for furthering a democratic society. The chapter concludes with some future visions for pedagogic design, including a generic model, which summarises the author’s vision of virtues of digital dialogic democratic collaborative learning.