Design Principles of Collaborative Learning Space Connecting Teachers and Refugee Children : A Design Science Research Study

Abstract

Learning the German language is one of the most critical challenges for refugee children in Germany. It is a prerequisite to allow communication and integration into the educational system. To solve the underlying problem, we conceptualized a set of principles for the design of language learning systems to support collaboration between teachers and refugee children, using a Design Science Research approach. The proposed design principles offer functional and non-functional requirements of systems, including the integration of open educational resources, different media types to develop visual and audio narratives that can be linked to the cultural and social background. This study also illustrates the use of the proposed design principles by providing a working prototype of a learning system. In this, refugee children can learn the language collaboratively and with freely accessible learning resources. Furthermore, we discuss the proposed design principles with various sociotechnical aspects of the well-being determinants to promote a positive system design for different cultural and generational settings. Overall, despite some limitations, the implemented design principles can optimize the potential of open educational resources for the research context and derive further recommendations for further research.