Workshop at DML: The New Coviewing: Supporting Learning through Joint Media Engagement

Attending the DML 2011 Conference this week in Long Beach? Don’t miss our workshop, The New Coviewing: Supporting Learning through Joint Media Engagement, Thursday, March 3, at 2:30 pm in International Ballroom II.

The Cooney Center, together with the LIFE Center, has been working throughout the 2010-2011 academic year to better understand the new coviewing (aka joint media engagement) with digital media. In this effort, we’ve been trying to identify modes of participation with media (including mobile, interactive, and online) that leverage co-participation, either in person or across distance.

Sesame Workshop has advocated coviewing throughout its 40-year history, noting that children gain more from watching Sesame Street when a parent or other adult is also actively engaged in viewing. Similarly, early investigations by the LIFE Center and other researchers have indicated the value of co-participation with a more capable partner (teacher, parent, sibling, friend, etc.) as a support for learning with digital media. From parents and children using online sites together, to siblings playing Wii, to grandparents reading to grandchildren via webcams and e-books, the new coviewing appears to be frequent, particularly in families with young children.

Additional information is needed, however, about the contexts in which coviewing is most valuable as well as impediments to shared media use. How do assumptions about television coviewing hold up in relation to digital media? How do modern family structures and new technologies work with or against coviewing strategies? How might media and technology products be designed to better support and encourage joint media engagement?

Come join the conversation! Our interactive workshop aims to generate design principles, research questions, and product ideas, all of which support the goal of encouraging the new coviewing in homes, classrooms, and expanded learning spaces.

Conference information and schedule can be found here: http://dmlcentral.net/conference2011

See you there,

Lori Takeuchi & Becky Herr-Stephenson