Business as Usual or Digital Mechanisms for Change?: What Student DLOs Reveal About Doing Mathematics

Mathematics classrooms have a long history of what has been termed ‘unidimensional' character: a proclivity for student practice routines and teachers as experts and keepers of knowledge. This study investigates affordances of student-created digital learning objects (SC-DLOs) as transformative, design-for-learning practices in the hands of students. Historical distinctions are drawn between digital learning objects (DLOs) and digital learning artefacts (DLAs) primarily for teacher assessment of student learning. SC-DLOs are conceived as students' design for learning for the peer learning community. Hence, SC-DLOs have additional and different learning potential that aligns with 21st century skill development. A corpus of mathematics SC-DLOs (n=155) were analysed from learner blogs (Year 7-8) in a 1:1 digital initiative in New Zealand. A mixed-methods approach was used to investigate features of students' multimodal design for learning. A framework of implications informs and problematises understandings of transformative digital creation by students in mathematics.