User Participation and Participatory Design: Topics in Computing Education

User participation and participatory design (PD) have not yet been topics of central interest in the context of formal education for computing professionals. This article addresses this subject. It takes its starting point in the ongoing curriculum debate and discusses how mathematical-and engineering-based approaches and traditional system-development training contribute to education in computer science and informatics. All these approaches have shortcomings as they each relate mainly to a technical-oriented paradigm, which pays little attention to other vital aspects of computing, namely organizational, social, and political ones. Therefore, the curriculum debate is widened and it is argued why user participation and PD (as approaches that deal with these issues) should be part of a comprehensive computing education. An example of an actual course program and the description of one particular course demonstrate how these subjects can be integrated in computer science and system development education.

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