The digital economy: a case study of designing for classrooms

We present the results of an empirical study of elementary school classrooms and show how these results informed the design of a mobile web application for teachers to manage "digital economies" in their classrooms. A Classroom Economy is a program that aims to teach financial literacy while encouraging focus and on task behavior. The Digital Economy captures transaction data as students participate in a Classroom Economy, replacing paper-based transactions and record keeping. The design of the Digital Economy application builds on our own prior work in which we partnered with teachers to collaboratively design ubiquitous computing technologies for classrooms. Our design is based on our analysis of classroom observations, interviews with teachers, design workshops and a usability study of a prototype application. We consider three major guidelines for designing for classrooms: classroom flow, individual assessments, and peer groups. We describe the negotiation of these guidelines when designing for the management and curriculum goals of teachers. This case study demonstrates how guidelines that emerged from the design research process were negotiated in the development of this financial literacy tool for classrooms.