This special collection features articles from participants at the 8th International Designs for Learning Conference, “Conceptualizing Design in Research and Developmental Work”. The focus of the conference and the special collection is the versatility of the design concept, which extends from the theoretical and analytical level to the more practical level, where it can be used to shape concrete activities and tools for multimodal communication, teaching, and learning. The conference was held in August 2024 at Stockholm University’s Department of Education. A total of 43 abstracts, workshops, and symposia were presented, and delegates were invited to submit a full paper to the Designs for Learning Journal. Eight articles were finally included in the special collection and are presented below.
This study explores how digital assessment designs in higher education influence students’ ability to demonstrate their knowledge and realize their agency, which is a significant gap in the research literature. The increasing integration of digital tools, as well as heightened concerns about academic integrity, have led to a shift towards more controlled and monitored assessment methods. However, this shift raises concerns about potential restrictions on students’ academic freedom and their ability to influence how they present their knowledge. Assessment design plays a crucial role in determining the types of knowledge students are expected to demonstrate in various assessment tasks and how design elements influence students’ agency and their ability to engage and actively participate in producing knowledge. This study uses designs for learning and a textual analysis approach to examine the assessment designs of three professional programs at two Swedish universities. The analysis focuses on digital examination formats in order to identify the types of knowledge that are prioritized and to assess how these designs promote student agency. The results show that assessment designs can simultaneously enable and constrain students’ ability to act independently and creatively in their academic work. The findings highlight the importance of thoughtful assessment design in promoting student agency and knowledge engagement in digital educational environments. This research contributes a deeper understanding of how digital assessment designs can promote or hinder different types of knowledge and student agency in higher education.
School-leaving and higher education admission assessments in South Africa are typically summative and normative, comparing students for admission into university. However, we argue that these assessments need to be transformative, impacting the curriculum and empowering students to explore their own agency. This study is a reflective contribution based on over a decade of development and administration of school-leaving and higher education assessments. It adopts a literacies perspective, distinguishing between the ‘autonomous’ view of literacy (focused on competencies) and the ‘ideological model’ (viewing literacy as social practices). The ideological model values diverse literacy practices and challenges normative approaches that assume homogeneous student populations and stable disciplines. While normative approaches focus on identifying academic conventions and teaching proficiency within these norms, transformative approaches a) situate these conventions within contested knowledge traditions; b) elicit writers’ perspectives on these conventions; and c) explore alternative academic meaning-making that considers students’ diverse resources. At present, school-leaving and admission assessments rely on candidates’ cultural capital and socioeconomic status. As such, these assessments may disadvantage poorer students and perpetuate inequities. To transform higher education, assessments must shift from normative, summative practices to transformative, inclusive, and empowering approaches, integrating feedback that fosters student agency and acknowledges diverse literacies. Such transformative assessments, we conclude, should not merely rank students but provide input for development of curricula and provide for feedback to and from students to understand and improve their learning, thus enabling self-reflection and growth.
Understanding subject-specific texts requires interpreting representations—words, symbols, and images—in their intended senses. Many such representations are ambiguous, with meanings that shift depending on context and disciplinary conventions. This applies not only to words, for example, ‘paper’ in everyday versus academic usage, but also to symbols and images, like ‘–’, that must be interpreted in different senses depending on context. This article introduces the IRIS model (Interpreting Representations in their Intended Senses), a theoretical framework designed to capture the interpretative processes readers engage in when navigating subject language. Unlike existing models that focus primarily on vocabulary, IRIS encompasses all semiotic resources and foregrounds the discernments needed to resolve ambiguity. Analytically, it supports text studies by making explicit the interpretative demands posed by subject-specific representations. Pedagogically, it offers a tool for fostering metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness, helping learners and educators reflect on the challenges involved in interpreting subject languages.
Learning Design (LD) is gaining global traction in higher education driven by its systematic approach to supporting educators in designing teaching practices for students’ learning based on pedagogical theory and supported by design tools. While extensive research has been conducted, limited practice is shared across the Nordic and Baltic universities, contradicting the core ambition of LD to promote sharing of effective learning designs. Thus, to support sharing of practice and knowledge, this article investigates LD practices through a systematic literature review, systematic web searches, and study visits. The research aim is to uncover what LD practices exist at the Nordic and Baltic universities. In total, the research identified 26 LD practices at 16 Nordic and Baltic universities as of August 2024 and a total of 22 different design tools. It also revealed diverse LD practices ranging from open-ended, do-it-yourself (DIY) approaches to comprehensive and often orchestrated practices facilitated by educational developers or peers. In addition, the article discusses that important phases of the learning design process are missing out both when it comes to institutional support for educators as well as available learning design tools.
