My research area

My expertise focuses on sociotechnical design for human centered work and learning processes in CrossActionSpaces. My research covers Educational Technology, Learning Technologies, Digital Design and Sociotechnical Design. My work includes user experience and usability studies.

My study area

When offline and online worlds are merging together, a new phenomenon appears: CrossActionSpaces (my book, Routledge/2015) . Under such new conditions, I study how technology-enhanced designs affect learning and work. Results from my projects show how to design for creativity in education, how to utilize remote labs in engineering education, how to make use of tablets in schools for deep-meaningful learning, and how to use health care technologies for older adults.

Impact

With my work -- analyzing and improving technology from a human-centered view --  I contribute to Quality of Life for all. Results lead to design of the 'classroom of the future' focusing on creative teaching and learning practices, improved work processes, and health care technologies for older adults.  With my socio-technical design approach, I make an impact on technology developers to make their products and processes more user-friendly, usable and useful.

• Studying a new form of work: Together with our Information Experience Lab, we conduct user experience and usability studies in Journalism, School of Nursing, Computer Science, College of Education, https://ielab.missouri.edu The Information Experience Lab adopts a SocioTechnical Design approach to integrate user experience in technical designs and usability testing. The IELab is striving towards new usability methods for new flexible devices, and for VR/AR environments. There is also a need to rethink existing usability methods for new groups of users such as smart city applications, multiple incidents managements with social mixed AR/VR, and Eldercare-as-a-service.

• CrossActionSpaces (Jahnke, 20015) appear when offline and online spaces and processes are merging and providing opportunities for new forms of work and learning.  Under such new conditions, we study new work processes and help stakeholders to envision how to work with new big data sets.

• Digital Designs for Learning: Digitalization of K-12 schools with 1:1 mobile computing (e.g., iPad/tablets). We explores how teachers in schools design for teaching and learning when they use digital technologies. What kind of innovative forms of pedagogies do they create? We study sociotechnical-pedagogical processes, and help teachers to improve their digital teaching/learning practices, and we make an impact on schools during their digital transformation. Are you interested in studying digital technology, teachers' designs for learning  and students outcomes?  Digital Didactical Design (DDD) is an approach that engages teachers in  designing for tablet/technology-mediated learning. The project ask, in what ways teachers use ipads/technology, for what kinds of teaching activities and learning activities, and how are these designs connected to the student learning outcomes.  We use the five-layer DDD-model (Jahnke, 2015) for studying the designs and then, we relate the teacher designs to student outcomes such as products created with different apps.  The project helps teachers to evaluate and reflect on their designs for learning with the aim to promote student learning progress.

• Keywords
  • Human-Centered Sociotechnical Design, Digital Design
  • Innovative use of technology (e.g., tablets, wearables, AR/VR, tele-presence robots)
  • Technology-enhanced Designs for Learning Expeditions
  • Exploring Designs for Learning through Reflective Making

List of research projects and grants

Main research projects (selection)

• LeXMizzou, Students as Digital Game designers for learning; MU IIFund Award (2016-2017)
• "Usability Testing of the Kinect-based Fall Risk Evaluation and Feedback System", MU Research Council, PI Lorraine Phillips (2016-2017)
• Digital Designs for 'Didaktik' -- Tablets/iPads in schools in Denmark, Sweden and Finnland (2012-2015)
• DaVINCI -- Creativity in higher education (2008-2011)
• PeTEX -- Remote-Controlled Labs in Engineering Education (2008-2011)
• InPUD -- Socio-technical, online learning communities in a computer science study programme (2001-2004; follow-up 2006-2009)

Further projects are listed here: http:/isajahnke.webnode.com/research-/research-projects

Research projects with regard to Digital Didactics  - Digital(e) Didaktik - are available in the menu left.

ICT, media and learning (ICTML) --- Designing the Interdependencies

... between

1. teaching and learning approaches ("Didaktik" designs the relations between instruction and construction),
2. use of social technology (e.g., Web 2.0, social software, Social Media) and
3. teaching and learning cultures (in different disciplines, subjects, department,...).

Connecting people and different research fields; sharing ideas and communities – I want to enable opportunites to reflect ideas, concrete prototypes and open research questions regarding ICT, media and learning subtitled with “Creative Learning Cultures – Educational Innovations in a Web 2.0 World”.

Open research questions are

• How to reshape/design (develop & evaluate) Technology-enhanced (creative, collaborative) learning successfully? What does “successful” mean? What elements can be designed (technical applications, didactical approaches, etc.)? What are appropriate methods (e.g., how to apply Design-based research)?
• What can we learn from "others" when to foster creativity in teaching and learning (enhanced by Social Media)?
• How to restructure teaching and learning in a) higher education, and b) computer-supported collaborative learning at the workplace? (see CSCL@Work => go to www.csclatwork.org)

First answers are given in my publications. Read more... publications

 Further research activities including projects and teaching courses can be found online on the "older" website hosted by HDZ, TU Dortmund university, where I was Assistant Professor. See details here... https://www.hdz.tu-dortmund.de/?id=isa-jahnke