Affordances of online technologies: More than the properties of the technology (original) (raw)
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What is an affordance and can it help us understand the use of ICT in education?
Education and Information Technologies, 2010
This paper revisits the concept of affordance and explores its contribution to an understanding of the use of ICT for teaching and learning. It looks at Gibson"s original idea of affordance and at some of the difficulties long associated with the use of the word. It goes on to describe the translation of the concept of affordance into the field of design through the work, in particular, of Norman. The concept has since been translated into research concerning ICT and further opportunities and difficulties emerge. The paper locates key points of divergence within the usage of "affordance", as involving direct perception, invariant properties and complementarity. It concludes by arguing that affordance offers a distinctive perspective on the use of ICT in education because of its focus on possibilities for action.
Digital Education Review, 2011
This paper reports on an empirical and descriptive investigation into how teachers and learners use technology in three prototypical learning activities in a higher educational online learning environment. Additionally, the relationship between the educational uses of technology and the overall educational patterns of interaction between teachers and learners, and among learners themselves was analysed. Detailed teacher and learner self-reports about their teaching and learning activity; the asynchronous written messages teachers and learners sent as educational interaction in the online learning environment; and documents produced by students were all obtained. The results from the three learning activities indicated six overall educational uses of technology in an online learning environment. Moreover, the results also indicated differences in technology usage in some different patterns of educational interaction in each learning activity. In conclusion, we argue that the notion of technology educational affordance is useful as an effective bridge between the real use of technology and instructional aims. Therefore the distribution of educational uses of technology is not only related to some attributes of both technology and instruction but also to its interaction.
The Concept of Affordances in Digital Media
This chapter outlines the origins and meaning of the concept of affordances, presents some examples, and discusses its relevance to studies of digital media. It suggests that the uniquely socially malleable nature of digital media, the variety of uses they engender, and the simultaneous awareness of the limitations of the mediated interaction that they allow explain the increased use of affordances in analyses of digital media.
Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (CriSTaL), 2016
Affordance theory provides a useful lens to explore the action opportunities that arise between users and technology, especially in education. However developments in the theory have resulted both in confusion and misapplication, due partly to issues related to affordance theory's ontology. This paper outlines two competing perspectives on affordances by Gibson and Norman, before arguing that Latour's theory of 'actants' provides a useful middle way between these competing positions. This 'actant affordance' provides new opportunities for undertaking educational technology research that focuses on the network of negotiations taking place between actants (student, teacher, technology, pedagogy, etc.) rather than studying causality or simple binaries.
Technology affordances: the 'real story' in research with K-12 and undergraduate learners
British Journal of Educational Technology, 2006
Computer technologies for learning environments have been introduced with great expectations for improved learning outcomes. However, the great improvements have not materialised; some of these extant studies are examined. Of all the explanations for these disappointing results, the least examined are the affordances of the computer tools. This paper provides a rationale for studying affordances and presents two studies in K-12 and undergraduate settings showing how powerful affordances are in affecting outcomes. Finally, the paper presents guidelines on how to gradually move students from a game affordance of a computer to a learning mode.
Learning, Design, and Technology, 2019
Technology by itself affords little in learning. Advanced digital, communication technologies have brought fundamental changes in education and the social context. These changes and calls for theoretical discourses have motivated the authors to explore technology affordances in online learning environments, opening a conversation where the potential for a technology for learning is presented as an interconnected, systemic, and careful consideration of learning environment design, infrastructure, and users. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the construct of technology affordance through a systems thinking and system dynamics lens and propose a theoretical framework for technology affordance. We argue that technology affordance should be considered holistically and examined as a multidimensional system with interacting variables, using distance or online learning examples. A number of implications for research are revealed from this work, and we recommend that much more research needs to be done at the theoretical level to examine this technology affordance theoretical framework by system dynamics modeling and by testing different models.
The Learning Affordances of a Facebook Environment
Alternation: Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of the Arts and Humanities in Southern Africa
Facebook is the most widely used website in the world and its impact on social connections, information dissemination, and now education, is being keenly felt. This research seeks to explore how students learn in a Facebook environment using an affordance based theoretical lens. An ethnographic case study approach was used to explore how 4 th year university students, doing a module on Computer Mediated Communication, used Facebook. The research identified 11 affordances that are arranged around an Actant-Activity Affordance framing. This framing allows for the affordances to be both explored across two dimensions and also the interactions between the affordances. These interactions between affordances reveal the importance of a new approach to affordance-based research into learning, where affordances are not considered in stasis but rather in relation to competing attractions and resistances.
Affordances of a Technology-Rich Teaching and Learning Environment
Building connections: theory, research and practice, 2005
A case study of how affordances are perceived and enacted by a teacher in a technologyrich teaching and learning environment (TRTLE) to maximise learning of functions by senior secondary students is reported. Three conditions were set up by the teacher to optimise ...
Practicality of using visual analysis in researching e -learning affordances
2009
One of the struggles in researching e-learning is to capture the setting. This paper aims to illuminate the complexity of conducting research that is meant to understand learning settings, particularly those with eLearning integrations. In an ICT setting, affordances can be defined as the facts about an e-learning environment (Wells, 2002) and how those facts are interpreted by the user interacting with that environment (Norman, 1988; 1990). It is important to study affordances in e-learning in order to identify the environmental conduciveness that affects the utilization of ICT tools. Affordances of ICT facilities provided to students in one Malaysian public higher education institution is the main concern of this paper. Visual analysis was conducted to analyze pictorial data of the e-learning environment. This methodology is typically used to capture settings that are difficult to do so using narrative textual forms by making use of photography to record particular subjects at a p...