Understanding Collaborative Digital Media Design in the 3D CVE As an integral part of the student's develop- ment, in its use and study, digital media design can be seen as linked to other forms of cultural activity and social interaction. Hence, a systematic method for studying the effects of this on student learning is critical to understanding contemporary learning in general. More particularly, online col- laborative design provides a vehicle for the study of the cultural contexts and artefacts `thrown up' (in Heidegger's (1977) terms) by increasingly popular everyday digital design activities. STUDYING DESIGN PRACTICE The word `design' originates from the Latin designare (1540) ­ de `out' + signare `to mark' from signum `a mark or sign' ­ which means to `mark out' or make a `sign'. Traditionally, this is achieved with pencil, ink, brush, stone, steel, suggesting the solution comes from what the team and its individuals bring to bear on the problem rather than any clearly definable logical path to a solution. This suggests designing comprises a number of different mental activities. A common method for making sense of this process is using Protocol Analysis (Cross et al, 1996). Protocol Analysis relies on verbal descriptions from videotaped conversations and conversations about drawings and sketches as aids to the con- versations and reflections on the videotapes by the participants in design exercises. In protocol analysis activities are broken down into temporal (or time slices ­ useful in large-scale analysis of activities) and relational (separating out of events ­ useful in the small-scale analysis of activities). To make sense of the two, one needs to project a framework onto the data (Gero et al., 1998). The framework includes identifying events such as: Drawing, physical actions, modelling, gestur-