How Collaborations Advance Joint Media Engagement By Design
Digital books and e-reading have emerged as focal points of extensive research within children's media. This focus is understandable, as traditional paper-based reading sessions with children are widely regarded as a pinnacle activity, fostering family bonds during bedtime while simultaneously enhancing academic skills such as literacy and language development. Digital reading and how to optimize digital book design for young readers, is a key focus for WiKIT too.
Michael H. Levine, WiKIT's senior strategic advisor, is well-versed in the optimal design of children’s digital media. He has led innovative and transformational educational initiatives at Sesame Workshop, Paramount, Asia Society and Carnegie Foundation, to name a few. In 2014, Levine, together with the journalist Lisa Guernsey, developed a suite of resources tailored for parents and educators, focusing on how screens can bolster early reading skills. Drawing from extensive research and collaboration with their teams from the Cooney Center and New America, Levine and Guernsey emphasized the importance of "joint media engagement," which captures the experiences of families using media together in the form of co-viewing, playing, reading, and creating, that bring multiple generations together to learn. In their book Tap, Click and Read, Levine and Guernsey describe how apps and platforms that embed the joint media principles promote more collaborative engagement through features facilitating conversations and sense of togetherness.
Levine and WiKIT’s Co-founder, Natalia Kucirkova, first crossed paths at the RSA conference in 2016. The conference focused specifically on children’s digital reading and ways to enhance the design of e-books on the market. The speakers delved into the significance of community approaches in crafting high-quality children’s digital books and called for greater collaboration among parents, teachers, researchers, and developers in shaping media for children - with the child always at the forefront of these endeavors.
This concept of triple collaboration, uniting professionals, researchers, and developers, lies at the heart of The International Collective of Children’s Digital Books. The think-tank brings together experts with an interest in collaborative research promoting children’s reading on and with screens. The Collective network has evolved into further networks, including our WiKIT, which extends its focus beyond digital reading to encompass a wide range of skills and subject areas. WiKIT emphasizes collaborations not only with developers and designers of educational technologies but also with their investors, who often shape the trajectory of these technologies. Similarly to the International Collective, WiKIT is co-owned by the University of Stavanger in Norway and is dedicated to knowledge brokering through thought leadership and network meetings, as well as research capacity building.
As a network comprising early childhood experts and researchers in children’s digital media, WiKIT draws on the collective expertise of UXD and LXD designers and subject matter experts, to ensure that children’s digital books and other media not only captivate children's interest but also facilitate joint engagement and learning among family members . With a vision to directly engaging children in design testing and building upon more than a decade of rigorous research on joint media engagement, the children’s media field is propelling towards a future where screen activities for young children are collaboratively developed, fostering collective engagement. As Michael said back in 2014, “it is essential to get away from focusing on how much time students spend with media, and instead figure out how to improve the quality and effectiveness of that media engagement”.