School's out for redesign: Involving stakeholders in the creation of a teleclassroom environment and experience

In Teleclassing, a multidisciplinary research project, our partners set out to design and connect classrooms in such a way that those present at both locations would have the immersive, realistic experience of participating in a class together. To support the development of such an environment and the associated technology, which we called the teleclassroom, we held co-design sessions in which we asked students, teachers and other stakeholders to create their vision of the ideal teleclassroom. Conducting co-design to inform the design of actual environments is an innovative procedure and in this paper we will describe how we implemented it. We created a new toolkit to facilitate participants' thinking about the emotions and sensations that a teleclassroom should create, and how these experiences should be reflected in how the room is set up. Furthermore, we will describe what we learned from our sessions both with regard to conducting co-design for this purpose, and with regard to the development of the teleclassroom itself.