In order to acknowledge and account for the complexity of situations encountered in educational settings, an array of theoretical ideas may be required – a ‘Bricolage’. For this reason, the research described here has drawn on ideas from a number of theoretical frameworks within the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning movement (CSCL) and Networked Learning (NL) to inform research associated with an Internetbased Art and Design project. These ideas can be traced to socially orientated theories of learning, as distinct from more psychological theories that focus on the individual. This chapter draws upon three theoretical perspectives about learning, namely constructivism (especially social constructivism), situated cognition, and sociocultural theory, all of which are employed in Networked Learning research (McConnell, 2000). Inevitably, these frame works are limited in scope, and may not, individually, be capable of providing a full account of, or the context for, the situations encountered in this research. However, together, they helped to shape and focus the research, and provided a basis for understanding and interpreting the findings.

This chapter describes a research case study entitled ‘Researching Networked Collaboration in Art and Design Education’. Our project was designed to provide a creative, educational adjunct to studio-based activity, in the form of a collaborative Internet art project that employed ‘Networked Learning’. The term Networked Learning (NL) refers to the use of Internet-based
communication and Information Communication Technology (ICT) to foster co-operative and collaborative links between learners and their tutors, and between a learning community and its ‘tools’ (Banks, Goodyear and McConnell, 2003).There has been an upsurge in designing networked learning environments to support social interaction involving co-operative and collaborative learning. More recently there has been a shift in outlook from a preoccupation with outcomes and products of collaborative work towards a concern with examining interactions as a way to illuminate and understand the processes of collaborative learning (Littleton and Hakkinen, 1999, p. 20). The research project described in this chapter involved the linkage of two institutional cohorts of printmaking students from Institution ‘A’ and Institution ‘B’. Pairs of participants from each institution joined ‘virtually’ to form two groups, each of which contained 4 participants. Over a ten week period, we focused the research on the way in which creative visual processes were articulated, developed and sustained within an entirely asynchronous (delayed time, e.g., discussion board), text-based learning environment. helped to shape and focus the research, and provided a basis for understanding and interpreting the findings.