Evaluate infrastructures continually using process-tracking methods such as ethnography and embedded sensors¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

This sixth IMPROV action area addresses evaluating infrastructuring processes and outcomes. The article states such research "requires methods that are able to track processes, cope with complexity, and examine changes over time." The infrastructure literature heavily relies on ethnographic methods, including nexus analysis; because ethnography is labor-intensive, the article proposes rapid ethnographic techniques, stakeholder-as-ethnographer supports, and embedded sensors generating digital trace data.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Research must be deeply integrated into infrastructuring processes and compatible with infrastructuring perspectives, treating failure as generative for recognizing new points of infrastructuring

Constraints¶

• Ethnographic methods are labor-intensive and time-consuming, and cannot always be implemented in educational settings to their full potential

Target Learners¶

• learning scientists
• teachers and students as ethnographers of their own practices

Target Learning Goals¶

• documenting failures and complex design dynamics to produce new knowledge about sustaining innovations

Related Strategies¶

• Rally for coherence-making and infrastructure remaking activities between innovation and practice
• Identify key social actors and expand design areas to include design in-use by practitioners
• Orchestrate meta-design and capacity building so practitioners can engage in design in-use
• Plan for possible points of infrastructuring, including breakdowns and anticipation work
• Make visible the installed base of existing infrastructures and discern its relationship with the innovation

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Chen, B. (2024). A framework for infrastructuring sustainable innovations in education. Journal of the Learning Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2024.2320159