Interrelationship in the clouds: Designing a home-school mesosystem in a cloud-based portfolio space for primary school students

The effective relationship between home and school increases the involvement of parents in the learning process of their children and thus improves their learning and personal growth. In recent years, the spread of new communication technologies has changed the field of communication between home and school. However, the use of these communication technologies does not mean establishing an effective relationship between home and school. Actually, what plays a decisive role in their effectiveness is the user interactions and human relations, designed in the context of technology. The aim of the current research was to design the relationship between home and school based on Bronfenbrenner's theory in the context of a cloud-based Portfolio to examine how parents are involved in the learning process of their children from their own and teachers' point of view. In a qualitative research of the case study type, five parents and two teachers were selected purposefully and participated in a semi-structured interview. Qualitative data analysis has been done, using the steps proposed by Creswell (2012). The categories were identified through the three-step coding technique of Corbin and Strauss (2015) and according to the Epstein et al.’s six types of involvement framework (2019). Findings showed that the design of the mesosystem between home and school in a cloud-based Portfolio involves parents in the dimensions of communication between home and school, learning at home and parenting in their child's learning processes. Also, findings showed that this design creates opportunities for the personal growth of students and some communication barriers in the context of new technologies for users. The results explain how to design communication technology platforms based on the appropriate theory for effective interaction between parents, students and teachers.