Welcome Students Near & Far

Instructors

Catalina Laserna, DPhil Patricia Craig, PhD

toEDUC E-104 Theory and

Practice of Web Pedagogies

Agenda

Introduction of teaching team

The Four Elements

BREAK

Course Overview

Assignments

Readings Preview

Sam Halpert

• How to post your Bios • Distance students

First Element:A sociological lens on Technology

• Structure and Agency• Technology-in-practice

Socio-historical perspective

• Theory of Structuration– Social scientists love the concept of ‘structure’,

a powerful but somewhat elusive term– Problem with over reliance on structures is the

lack of focus on human agency and lack of account of how structure can change or be modified

Structuration Theory

• “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted by history”

• This is the essential duality of structure that Giddens attempts to illuminate in his theory of structuration

• Structures shape people’s actions and practices but those in turn make up and replicate the structures themselves.

Structure and agency

Structure

Human action

This means that structures are mutable and that human actions can reshape the very structures that gave them the ability to act in the first place.

Technology in Practice

• Within the field of technology, insights from organizational theory and social theory being brought to bear to understand how innovation and improvisation occur.

• Structuration models see technology as embodying structures that users interact with when using the technology

Technology in practice

• However, some criticism of this approach as insufficient, particularly as technology is made to be reconfigured

• http://sagan.fas.harvard.edu/dl/try_not_to_be_overwhelmed_by_all_this_technology_shorter.mov

Orlikowski’s view of the Practice Lens• Rejects idea that technologies embody specific

and stable structures– Clearly not stable

– Implies that structures exist within the artifact itself

• Instead, she sees the structure as the set of rules and resources in recurrent social practice

• Only as people interact with the technology over and over and thereby shape the rules and resources around its use which in turn shapes future interactions do we get structure.

cont.

• Don’t focus on embodied structures but rather the emergent ones thereby framing the activity of users as enactment

• This affords a practice lens through which we can analyze specific technologies and their uses.

Learning Communties

• Culture of learning• Model is collective understanding• Diversity is valued and utilized• Learning belongs to a community of practice• In education, learning communities is the

culmination of community of practice concept

Second Element:Theory of Affordances

WHAT IS THIS?

Theory of Affordances

We perceive the typewriter as:

Write-able with?

Sit-able?

Throw-able?

Paint-able?

According to Gibson,Affordances are…

• Not in the object

• Not in the subject

• “Affordances” conceptualizes the relationship between the two

What’s the Key?

• It en-ables • The verb “afford” existed• Gibson made it a noun:

–“Affordance”

Affordances in this Course

• Learn to analyze technological tools terms of affordances

• Use the analysis to deepen transformative designs

MODES AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

Primary OralityLearning by doing, talking

LiteracyUse of different kinds of “literacy” media

“Cybercy”We made it up! Use of digital media

Permanency of message O L C

Talk vanishes

Words on Paper= immutable mobiles

Dynamic environmentsDigital encoding

Transactional Distance O L C

Face-to-face Type-face Inter-face

Storage of InformationDistributed system

O L CBurden on Human Memory

Collective memory

“frees” human memory (Paradox of Rote Memorization)

Simulates RL (Real life)Affords mixing of Symbolic Representations

Grand Social Theories O L C

The Advent of Language makes Culture Possible

-> Humans as Cultural Creatures

Writing affords the beginnings of -> Human History then Printing press

-> The Gutenberg Revolution

Digital Media and Computers“Artificial Intelligence”

-> The Cybercy Revolution…

What is going on?

About the O/L/C Matrix

• O/L/C vs o -l-c• Technology needs to be situated in

individual & collective practices • O/L/C is a very broad analytic construct• O/L/C should “afford” good thinking• Add value and impact to each other

How Does O/L/C Relate to This Course?

• The Web? Collaboration practices • Private/Public spaces and modes of

communication (e-mail, blogs, facebook, uTube) • Tools such as “I’m confused” “I have a questions”

button O-> C• Reflect back on the course’s process as an

example of the practice of Web-Pedagogies.

Third Element: Teaching for Understanding

• Snapshots from the past• Rote Memorization: the paradox of literacy

in school• Memorable Teachers • What is understanding? • Aim of the Project: practice and theory

together

What is understanding?

• Two quotes from Piaget:

“To Understand is to Invent”

and

“Thinking is internalized action”

How can we make these insights shape educational reform?

Teaching for Understanding with New Technologies

• In what ways does the Web afford new ways of teaching for understanding?

• … the Generative Topic for this course

The Teaching for Understanding Framework

• Throughlines• Generative Topic• Understanding Goals• Understanding Performances• Ongoing Assessment

Fourth Element:A Systems View

• A Systems Perspective– Big picture

– Interrelated aspects of the environment

– Unintended consequences

– The policy view

A systems approach:Distance education

DesignSources Delivery InteractionLearningEnvironment

Studentneeds

Organization

History

Philosophy

Instructionaldesign

Media

Program

Evaluation

PrintAudio/videoRadio/TVSoftwareVideo conferenceComp. networks

From Moore and Kearsley, Distance Education: A Systems View, Wadsworth Publishing Co, 1996, p.9.

InstructorsTutorsCounselorsAdmin staffOther students

WorkplaceHome ClassroomLearning Cntr

10 Minute BREAK!

Course Overview

Go to the syllabus section of the Course Website

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~ext21979/

Assignments

Go to the Assignments section of the Course Website

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~ext21979/Assignments/

Readings Preview for “A Practice Lens” and “Through the Supermarket”

• Orlikowski draws on Lave’s insights about the difference between cognition in practice and cognition in the head to think about technology in a similar way. (Read Lave 1st)

• Questions:– Can you think of some technologies where people use them

in different ways than the designers may have envisioned?

– Think of some places where you’ve seen the introduction (or attempt to introduce) technology: How would you fit that into the Types of Enactment table? (p.422 of Orlikowski)

Sam