Task 10: Applying activity theory into practice

Components of “PLENK2010” course

Set up

Like mentioned in their website the course idea is to learn not from theory but from the activities one will complete, which different among individuals. The tasks involve activities around all web by creating one’s own web pages or going through some others.

There is used a daily newsletter “The Daily” which give an overview of activities needed to be done and highlight most important topics other course members have pointed out. This load of information eases participants to make choices among the topics of their interest and focus on exploring these ideas.

The course has facilitators who work as coordinators of the project by sharing content posted by the participants and adding something extra.

Interactions

Weekly activities involve:

- Daily newsletter, which will have reflections of students blogs, twitter tweeds and discussions in moodle.

- Course wiki can be edited by the participants

- Moodle discussion forum with other participants of the course and response by course faciliators

- On Sunday readings and resources will be posted to the wiki

- Wednesdays Elluminate session, usually with a guess speaker

- Fridays Elluminate session, as a week review with course faciliators

“This whole course will be about how to read or watch, understand, and work with the content other people create, and how to create your own new understanding and knowledge out of them.”

The subjects of the course post have been related to different topics:

- Online participation

- Personal learning environments

- Learning theories

- Evaluating learning

- Personal knowledge management

Subjects

Every person is free to join the courses.

Rules

Each of the content has to have source. But the ideas is taking the existing content any trying to add your own “flavours” and thought to it. The content is not important but the idea is to use online tools and learn from practicing with them. The facilitators of the course will give examples of how to use the tools and participants will learn from these posts to make their own.

The participants are suggested to keep documentation about the content they have gone trough. Most probably the best way is to share it online that the other participants could see and learn from it but one could also work without sharing.

Participants can join in or dismiss themselves from the course when every they feel like.

Instruments

There are given few ways to the participants to share their content:

- Make a blog in either blogger, wordpress platform or any other blogging service.

- Create account in del.icio.us for making bookmarks on the things you have read.

- Participate in Moodle discussions and make posts about the accessed content.

- Tweet with Twitter

- Also one can share the content within any other envoronment: Flickr, Second Life, Yahoo Groups, Facebook, YouTube

For sharing there should be used a webtag called: “#PLENK2010”

Components of NIE course

As we all are very familiar with the NIE course I will just make a short review about it according to activity theory.

Instruments

During the course one could have used only the course Flashmeeting tool, course blog to get the assignments and pdf readers to read articles. A blog account is also needed to post the assignments and get feedback.

The other tools depend on the participants. Some they may have used Skype to communicate with course mates, Pirate pad for one not mandatory assignment, RSS to get the assignments to e-mails and UML software to create diagrams.

Rules

Tasks will be published in NIE course blog and participants should check the site in regular basics.

Mostly tasks are carried out each week with a deadline. Each will have 10 points wich means there will be 10 tasks all together. Every 24hours that the task is posted after the deadline will give 2 points less. Early tasks would give the participants a chance to get a personal feedback. The course is a pass or fail. 70% of the points should be collected to pass the course.

Subject

Students of TLU make the most of the course participants.

Interactions

Depends on the assignments but mostly there needs to be written blog posts about the read articles.

Comparison of NIE and PLENK2010 courses

In PLENK2010 there are used more tools to get the participants involved to the course and share each other’s work. Especially the Moodle that has option to have discussions with each other helps to get to know topics more in dept. In NIE we mostly use our blogs to post the assignments and that is it.

With PLENK 2010 the schedule and the assignments are clearly pointed out. NIE program and assignments are not know much in advance which makes it hard to organize our time and get most out of topics.

It seems to me that almost no possibility of the physical contact of lecturer and student makes learning of course much harder. Both of the parties my understand the tasks differently so the outcome may vary a lot.

Task 9: exploring activity theory as a framework for describing activity systems

According to Kari Kuuti article about Activity Theory the historical roots go back to 18^th and 19^th century scientific thoughts of German Philosophy from Kant to Hegel that emphasized on humans evolution ideas and its active and constructive role. Marx and Engels elaborated on the aspect of activity being the transforming of material objects. Vygotsky’is cultural-historical psychology was the base for further research of activity theory by Leont’ev and Rubinstein. The psychological meta-theory theorizes that when individuals interacting with environment, production of tools results. These tools are forms of mental processes and mental processes reveal in tools becoming more accessible and communicable to social interaction.

Three main principles of the Activity theory from Kuuti article state:

- Human actions are the basic of analysis but they are impossible to understand without the context. Individuals take part of many activities at the same time.

- Activities elements are under continuous change and discontinuous development. Activities stay often embedded and have history in themselves, which help to understand the recent situations.

- Activity always contains artifacts which feature is having mediating role. When there is mediation between an actor and the related object, the object is manipulated by the limitations of artifact. Artifacts have created and transformed during the development of the activity itself with addition in culture.

Activities consist of tools to enable communicate between subject and object. This mediates relationship at individual level. For a larger environment there needs to be added community. Activities have motives and they consist of several steps: actions that have goals and operations that have conditions.

Task 8: From mass media to personal media

M. Lüders article "Conceptionalising personal media" describes distinction between mass media and personal media in the matter of digital media technologies and social networks. He tries to answer the questions: “What happens to mass and interpersonal communications when private individuals turn into mass communicators.”

Different Scholars articles say that for personal and mass communication the same technologies are being used. But they are partly because of digitalization and change of network structure. For example emails can be sent for private use or as newsletters in a mass communication way.

John Thompson(1994) divides products and technologies in his concept of media. While interned is the media technology, Instant Messanger, emails, blogs are the products or actually media forms as he later proposes. Yet again the same technology is being used for both mass and personal media. By adding the theory of Andrew Feenberg the concept of media or technology slits into four stages with addition of genre which comes from media form. For example a website could be devided to personal site, corporate promotion etc.

Lüdens article outlines that difference in personal and mass media comes from the involvement made by the users. In personal communication media the users are more or less the producers and receivers of message.

Task 7: In search for my own understanding of interactivity

The articles “Interactivity” by Jensen and “Interactivity: a concept explication by ”Kiousis have argument a lot about the different definitions of interactivity. Even thought there are some similar characteristics the experience and playability each individual get from human-computer communication has change a lot in the last decade.

When we look at Jensen’s paper about communication patterns, we see that the fundamental of information communications have definitely remained as they where, just there has been fluctuation among the stakeholders. The traditional media channel like TV and radio have lost significant amount of their stake to new media. With the growth of online communication tools provided via Internet or widespread of mobile devices, new media has become the source to provide, own and share communication. Also we can see that the environments presented within each communication patterns have move to other patterns. Over ten years ago it was mentioned that WWW belonged to consultation pattern when central provider produced information and consumer controlled the distribution. Nowadays I should say that the within WWW the consumers are the largest group to produce and consume the information. Furthermore they are also interacting with the information by making replies or sharing it in another online environments.

The last decade has introduced and embraced many new media platforms, which have been the base for humans interacting with media in a multi-way communication. Mobile as common everyday gadgets, have become the source for information. Last previous years have introduced thousands of diverse mobile application. It’s has become as a “credit card in the wallet”, “voucher for purchase”, “personal trainer on shoulders”, “pet to feed” or “entertainment center”. On the other hand these application and other digital transaction have made each personal more tractable. A “leaving home” note on twitter tweed or gps map positioning reveal can lead to a crime or “hate my job” note on social network wall can lead to being fired. Hopefully the positive sides like gps surveillance devices of car or image recognition algorithms in street cameras can cover it up. For sure the interactivity and the outcomes to queries have increased.

With the years to come its rather hard to predict how the interactivity would have altered meaning. Definitely the humans are the source to communication. Maybe some material objects will start to communicate and reflect according to human’s desires or mood. Hopefully the humans can interact in such way that depending on their hand movements, eyes blinking or emotional stage the environment around, changes.

Task 6: Operationalising interactivity

Spiros Kiousis argument in his article "Interactivity: a concept explication" about different scholars definitions of "interactivity" and proposes a new concept of interactivity by operationalising interactivity.

Generally interactivity is human thoughts more related to communication technologies, online environment, mobile devises, virtual reality but to judge which medium is more interactive than the other is quite blurry.

Newhangen et al(1995) states that interactivity fluctuates across individuals and media (e.g computers are more interactive than newspapers). In media technologies interactivity can be quite stable in time reactions but varies a lot depending on individuals. Steuer(1992) points out that the interactivity should be dependent on the level where mediated environments are more important than the physical environments. Feedback should be rather multiway that two-way communication.

Based on the intellectual perspective articles the fundamental keywords for interactivity should be:

- Two-way or multi-way communication (usually with a channel between)

- The roles of the message sender and received should be changeable

- Communicators can be humans or computers either senders or receivers of information

- Individuals should be able to modify the content and form of the information with mediated environment between

- Users should be able to perceive differences in levels of interactive media

When these conditions are filled, it can refer to interactive communication.

The author proposes a new definition of interactivity with combination of fundamental components and essential components of different views.

By linking the operational definitions with the three main conceptual defintions the depenence will look like this:

- Structure of technology consist of speed, range, timing flexibility and sensor complexity.

- Communcation context has the components third-order dependecy and social presence.

- User perception depends on proximity, preceived speed, sensory activation and telepresence

References:

Newhagen, J.E., J.W. Cordes, and M.R. Levy (1995) ‘Nightly@nbc.com: Audience

Scope and the Perception of Interactivity in Viewer Mail on the Internet’, Journal of

Communication 45(3): 164–75.

Steuer, J.S. (1992) ‘Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence’,

Journal of Communication 42(4): 73–93.