Teresa Cerratto Pargman

Academic blog

Teresa Cerratto Pargman

Book Review

The Journal Postdigital Science and Education invited me to read the fabulous book “Student Engagement in the Digital University: Sociomaterial Assemblages,” published by Lesley Gourlay and Martin Oliver in 2018. The review I wrote starts with the following introduction:

Lesley Gourlay and Martin Oliver’s Student Engagement in the Digital University: Sociomaterial Assemblages (2018) is a welcome and critical contribution to the study of how students actually engage with the digital university in everyday practice. Inspired by scholars in New Literacy Studies (NLS), Science and Technology Studies (STS), and by Actor-Network Theory (ANT), Gourlay and Oliver argue for a socio-material understand- ing of students’ digital engagement by adopting assemblages (Latour 2005; Fenwick et al. 2015; Bennett 2010) as a conceptual lens. The authors make their case through the study of ‘students’ day-to-day practices of studying’ (62) in the digital university and develop their argument in 12 compelling chapters that read as a liberating narrative from the non- stop messianic ‘tech-talk’ in education (Selwyn 2016: ix). In this context, Gourlay and Oliver (2018) unpack complex issues like How do current discourses and ideologies position students, teachers, scholarship, and the university in relation to the digital in higher education? How does research in education approach students’ agency in the digital university? What kind of revolution follows the use of digital technology in universities―if any? What can (or cannot) we as researchers perceive when applying models and frameworks on empirical student data?

Reading about these issues offers a breath of fresh air that entices the curious reader to learn more about ‘student engagement as a set of socio-material practices’ (Gourlay and Oliver 2018: 9) and to engage with the ‘messy, imperfect, contingent and improvised’ (11) nature of student practices in digital-analog entanglements. By doing so, one embarks on an intellectually stimulating journey that starts with offering a critique to abstract discourses of the digital in higher education; continues with empirical studies of the students’ day-to-day practices in the digital university; and ends by suggesting assemblages as a lens for the study of socio-material practices in higher education.

Cerratto Pargman, T. Review of Lesley Gourlay and Martin Oliver (2018). Student Engagement in the Digital University: Sociomaterial AssemblagesPostdigit Sci Educ (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00178-5

 

 

 

PhD position in HCI with a focus on Digital Humanities

PhD position in HCI with a focus on Digital Humanities at Stockholm University, Sweden
** Application Deadline** April 15 2018.

The Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University is looking for a PhD student to join our team. The PhD position is linked to the research project Ground Truth 2.0 which is a three-year project funded by the EU – http://gt20.eu/ The project aims at designing, setting up and evaluating six citizen observatories under real conditions in six different countries in the world (two in Africa and four in Europe including one of them in Sweden). The project uses mobile apps and social media analytics to citizen-collected data. As such, citizens can share data about the environment and take on new, crucial roles in environmental monitoring, decision making, cooperative planning and environmental stewardship. Within this research context, the PhD candidate will investigate the following questions: What is the designer’s agency in configuring and infrastructuring civic participation and engagement in society? What kinds of dilemmas (technical as well as those associated with the designer’s own values, beliefs and ideologies) emerge when they develop practices that contribute to citizens’ participation and political action? What exactly are designers who are committed to contributing to civic participation sensitive to?
The work will produce knowledge regarding the role of design competence in the digital age, factors that are critical for infrastructuring civic participation, emergent (new) civic practices as well as a critical understanding of entanglements between design and citizens’ participatory practices in sociotechnical infrastructures.

For more information about required qualifications, the selection process, terms of employment etc., please consult the following links:
https://www.su.se/english/about/working-at-su/phd…

https://www.su.se/english/about/working-at-su/phd

if you have any questions please get in touch with me tessy@dsv.su.se or the Director of PhD studies, Sirkku Männikkö-Barbutiu, sirkku@dsv.su.se

Thank you for your help in disseminating this information widely,

Participating in the International Workshop on Computational Thinking and Coding Skills in Schools

Linnaeus University is organising with the support of  VideumRegion Kronoberg and Swedsoft  this international workshop that aims to gain insights and perspectives from international scholars and professionals on how to promote computational thinking development. The event brings together researchers and teachers from Finland, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Greece, Israel and Hong Kong who are working on topics related to Computational Thinking and Coding Skills in Schools. Presentations and hands on discussions will be part of the workshop.

For more information see  here

The programme is  here

 

Call for chapters (Springer). “Emergent practices and Material Conditions in Teaching and Learning with Technology”.

Dear colleagues and friends,

You are kindly invited to contribute to the book that I together with my colleague Isa Jahnke from Missouri University are preparing on the topic of “Emergent practices and Material Conditions in Teaching and Learning with Technology”. 

If this invitation is of your interest, please submit an abstract by September 2nd. For detailed information about the call please go to the following link:

https://materialconditionsblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/call-for-book-chapters-springer/ 

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me at tessy@dsv.su.se

CSCL 2017 – Workshop on Emergent Practices and Material Conditions in Learning and Teaching

I am proud to announce that our worksop on “Emergent Practices and Material Conditions in Tablet-mediated Collaborative Learning and Teaching” has been accepted at CSCL 2017.

The call for papers is available here

We plant to publish an Special Issue on the workshop after the workshop.

Last time we organized “#TMCL15 – Changing Teaching and Learning Practices in Schools with Tablet-Mediated Collaborative Learning: Nordic, European and International Views” at CSCL 2015.

Workshop organizers are:

Teresa Cerratto-Pargman, Stockholm University, Sweden, tessy@dsv.su.se

Isa Jahnke, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA, jahnkei@missouri.edu

Crina Damsa, University of Oslo, Norway, crina.damsa@ils.uio.no

Miguel Nussbaum, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile, mn@ing.puc.cl

Roger Säljö, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, roger.saljo@ped.gu.se

Our Programme Committee 

Jun Oshima, Japan

Yishay Mor, Israel

Marcelo Milrad, Sweden

Chee-Kit-Looi, Singapore

Eva Mårell-Ohlsson, Sweden

Stefan Aufenanger, Germany

Swapna Kumar, USA

Sten Ludvigsen, Norway

Beatrice Ligorio, Italy

Olga Viberg, Sweden

Reconfiguring civic participation: open source software in the political space, presented at PDC 2016- Position Paper

This is ongoing work on Democracy OS Argentina I am conducting together with Somya Joshi at DSV. It is a project driven by a passionate group of people who started Democracia en Red (Net Democracy), Partido de la Red The Net Party in Argentina and Democracy Earth foundation.

In August, I presented our work in the TING workshop at the Participatory Design Conference. Read about our first approach of democracy OS. here: PDF.

Organizing provocation, conflict and appropriation: The role of the designer in making publics

Second Call for Papers to a Special Issue of Design Issues:
Organizing provocation, conflict and appropriation: The role of the designer in making publics

Because of the importance of the role and embodiment of the designer/artist in making publics, this special issue draws attention to reflexive practices in Art & Design, and questions how these practices can be embedded in the formations and operations of publics and design practices. More specifically, the special issue aims to explore the following questions: How do the designer/artist create and maintain publics? How do we accommodate differences in these agonistic spaces? What is the role of the designer/artist in these contexts? How can we understand the tension between artistic control in speculative design and empowerment in participatory design?

This issue will contain the best papers received and presented in the corresponding workshop in the Participatory Design Conference in Aarhus in August 2016 (PDC2016) entitled “Ting: Making publics through provocation, conflict and appropriation”, as well as other invited contributions.

We invite researchers, designers, activists, artists, who in their work are exploring utopian, speculative, and critical design projects as well as designing for and with social movements, alternative societies and relational economies, to contribute to the theme of ‘Organizing provocation, conflict and appropriation: The role of the designer in making publics’. Authors are invited to consider (but are not limited to) the following issues and questions for this special issue:
Design as world making and as a way to create a public space
Agonistic public spaces versus consensual decision-making;
The role of the author/designer/creator/artist in speculative and critical design in relation to participatory design;
Politics of Participation
Exclusion and inclusion in the design practice;
Norms in speculative participatory design practices
The tension between artistic control in speculative design and empowerment in participatory design
The tension between empowerment and exploitation, between participation and precarious labor.

GUEST EDITORS
Shaowen Bardzell, Indiana University
Tessy Cerratto Pargman, Stockholm University
Carl DiSalvo, Georgia Institute of Technology
Laura Forlano, Illinois Institute of Technology
Karin Hansson, Stockholm University (Managing Guest Editor, khansson@dsv.su.se <mailto:khansson@dsv.su.se>)
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi, Queensland University of Technology
Somya Joshi, Stockholm University
Silvia Lindtner, School of Information, University of Michigan

TIMELINE
01.9.2016: Submission deadline for intentions to contribute (1500-2000 words)
01.10.2016: Notification of relevance sent to authors / selected contributions invited to continue
01.12.2016: Full papers submission deadline for those selected to continue (5000 + references)
01.02.2017: Notification of accept / reject / revisions to authors
01.06.2017: Final manuscript submission deadline
15.09.2017: Final selected manuscripts to production

BACKGROUND
http://performingthecommon.se/ting/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/DesignIssues.pdf <http://performingthecommon.se/ting/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/DesignIssues.pdf>

For more information, and submissions e-mail: ting@performingthecommon.se <mailto:ting@performingthecommon.se>