Exploring the Design Space of Genre Pedagogy and Virtual Learning Environments By MONA BLÅSJÖ 1 , OLA KNUTSSON 2 & TERESA CERRATTO PARGMAN 2 1 Dep. of Scandinavian Languages, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden 2 Dep. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Kista, Sweden This paper explores the design space of genre pedagogy and virtual learning environments. This is done by examining the cornerstones of genre pedagogy and the main activities they give raise to, and how the activities are transformed when they are partly or completely moved from the classroom to virtual learning environments, and what implications for interaction design they give raise to. Keywords: Virtual learning environments, genre pedagogy, Systemic Functional Linguistics, academic writing, interaction design INTRODUCTION The current learning landscape with very easy access to information is changing the relationship between teachers and learners. This change impacts teaching and learning in general and writing in particular. Writing has in the last years emerged as a socializing activity that has been diversified into different practices that have developed exponentially through the use of chats, short-messages services, and social media. It is a fact that what we write is nowadays produced, shared and discussed for a variety of purposes and audiences. But for writers expected to compose academic texts it is not always easy to understand what the outcomes of academic texts should be, for which purposes they are writing or what type of tool or communication channel they have to use to share their texts and messages. In fact the use of virtual learning environments, often presented as alternative modern platforms for learning, are actually challenging learners’ relationships with teachers, other peers, their writing and themselves. In this contribution we focus on writing practices associated with academic texts. We argue that genre pedagogy is an interesting candidate to be considered for the design of digital learning environments (VLEs) including writing. Why? Because, this pedagogical method, which has mainly been used in traditional classroom teaching, presents specific features such as the concept of genre which, among others things, raises learners’ awareness of texts and thereby their ability to write according to demands in different contexts and for different audiences. SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS AND GENRE PEDAGOGY The so-called genre pedagogy (Martin & Rose 2005) is a pedagogy mainly focused on writing and development of disciplinary knowledge, but also reading. Its basis is M.A.K. Hallidays groundbreaking work on human language and language development in the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The aim of genre pedagogy is to help students develop meta-linguistic tools for handling genres on different levels, through support or scaffolding (Macken-Horarik, 1996) by the teacher. One of the main concepts in SFL is genre. According to SFL, genre is a goal-directed staged process (Martin, 1993); some examples are observation, description, and argument. These genres are important for writing in school and academic contexts. That is, to succeed as a participant in an academic setting, you have to master genres related to socio-cognitive activities such as observing, describing