What do we learn by observing collaborative design among cross-domain, cross-role educators?

Designing with cross-domain, cross-role educators leads to innovations more likely to be adopted and sustained. Yet, there are few opportunities and little guidance to do so. We contrast the challenges and successes faced by two teams of members with diverse roles in education (pre/in-teacher, administrator, graduate student) during a summer institute on designing classroom-based games for learning. Descriptive cases based on video of teams’ collaboration and design artifacts illustrate how members’ differing views on learning impacted their collaborative experiences and the games they produced. Findings contribute to understanding the value and challenges of similar collaborations, particularly given the increasing need for learners and educators to integrate multiple perspectives.