Facilitating guided participation through mobile technologies: designing creative learning environments for self and others

We appropriate Rogoff’s (Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context, 1991; in: Wertsch et al. (eds.) Sociocultural studies of mind, 1993) notion of guided participation to demonstrate, through abbreviated case studies, our strategy for integrating mobile technology-based learning experiences in higher education. Guided participation implies facilitating access to shared community-valued practices by supporting new members in legitimate participation. We illustrate how mobile technologies and social software can be used to (a) facilitate guided participation among undergraduate engineering students within classes and (b) teach graduate students in instructional technology to design for guided participation. Thus, students are not only transitioned into respective learning communities but also gain experience in designing for others. Given the recent advances in computing and trends in the adoption, diffusion, and use of mobile technologies, we argue that mobile technologies provide a substantive, fertile, and invigorating area for teaching and research in higher education for the foreseeable future.