Learning Across Sites: New tools, infrastructures and practices - Earli

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38 Y. Engeström and H. Toiviainen
The company
The piloting organization for the new Change Laboratory learning instrumentality
is here called Forest Group. It is a globally operating consulting and engineering
firm. There is a constant need for powerful learning instrumentalities that may
enhance the employees’ capabilities for co- configuration work in the globally
distributed operations of Forest Group.
Analytical framework
Our analysis embraces several layers of the collaborative design work, which we
depict in Figure 3.3. At the core there is the object of design that we call new
learning instrumentality embedded in the context of the Change Laboratory (CL)
method, to be reconceptualized for virtual and global corporate use.
In order to create a new kind of learning instrumentality we need, as the
second layer, intermediate conceptual tools or boundary objects that facilitate
co- configuration by bringing together the various perspectives and social languages.
The matrix tool for designing the CL environment was such an intermediate device
in the design team’s work.
We expect the third potential layer in the collaborative design to be made up of
project talk, which, at its best, may foster common ground and trust between the
participants and link design work to the rest of the project. At its worst, project
talk is formal discourse that functions as a “blanket” that obscures the object of
design or as a “muffler” that silences discussion on contradictions and contested
perspectives.
Finally, the different social languages brought in by the professionals are expected
Social language of Research
– CHAT, Chat Laboratory
PROJECT TALK
BOUNDARY OBJECT
CL matrix
OBJECT
New Learning
Instrumentality
Social language of Technology
– existing tools
Social language of Development
– Business, Forest Group
Figure 3.3 Analytical framework