“IT IS REALLY HARD TO UNDERSTAND PEOPLE THAT ARE THAT DIFFERENT FROM ME“- EVALUATING AN IDC CURRICULUM

Paper in proceeding, 2015

In this paper, we present an evaluation of a curriculum in Interaction Design and Children (IDC), based on a case study of developing and teaching a master level IDC course. The course embodies a series of issues that arise when teaching IDC. At the same time, it highlights the issues that challenge the initiation of such a course, namely topics, learning outcomes, content, forms of teaching, competence of the instructors, etc. By extension, the case offers examples of how these challenges can be explored and addressed. We shortly present a range of such activities carried out in related work and in the course, and present the main lessons from the course on the basis of evaluation and final results. These lessons focus on language barriers, establish contacts with schools, children with special needs, pedagogic perspectives, novelty and quality, adaptation, materials and technology, and forced encounters with children. The contribution of this paper is to support anyone who intends to start teaching in this area, and contribute to an emerging curriculum for Interaction Design and Children.