Tuesday 26 October 2010
Using Activity Theory for E-Portfolio Research
Yesterday evening I gave a presentation to my co-supervisor Professor Johannes Cronje's Education and Technology MA and PhD students on how I'm using Activity Theory to study aspects of sustained curricular adoption of e-portfolios in Secondary Schools:
As this environment is very complex, it is important to relate understandings at a micro-level (such as the individual learner's use of e-portfolio software operations in class...) to the macro-level (... and how learners' goal-directed activities meet or subvert the educator's curricular goals). Describing and relating these levels is useful for writing a rich description to cover the most salient issues related to learner and educator use of new curricula.
As this environment is very complex, it is important to relate understandings at a micro-level (such as the individual learner's use of e-portfolio software operations in class...) to the macro-level (... and how learners' goal-directed activities meet or subvert the educator's curricular goals). Describing and relating these levels is useful for writing a rich description to cover the most salient issues related to learner and educator use of new curricula.
Activity Theory also affords an opportunity to study the tensions and obstacles of sustained curricular adoption from multiple perspectives; such as pedagogical, IT and school management. By describing how these perspectives affect a subject's activities through each community's rules and division of labour, the researcher can identify sources of tension and conflicting goals (for example, an IT perspective might want to control bandwidth costs, while the educator's pedagogical perspective would want no bandwidth cap for extensive e-portfolio use). By listing all the potential challenges, the researcher can assist Visual Arts educators and other key decision makers with identifying any "showstoppers" and defining steps to avoid them.
Feedback to the presentation was very positive and my co-supervisor felt that it showcases the value of closely following a theoretical model. Good suggestions were also made on improving in it: in particular, I need to add two slides; one that gives a theoretical justification for Activity Theory's use, the other an overview of its limitations. These will be added to this presentation's next version.
Labels:
affordances
,
education
,
eportfolio
,
online_portfolio
,
research
,
web2.0
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orcid.org/0000-0001-9566-8983
Interesting... I am the Lead Integrator in our Apple One2One project at Parklands College, as well as a Visual Arts educator. I use technology extensively in my teaching (and have been doing so for at least 10 years), including PowerPoint, Keynote, iWeb and our Intranet. I am also involved in training our educators and running the Apple Regional Training Centre iLife courses at our school. If you are interested my e-mail: jhoskyn@parklands.co.za, www.parklands.co.za, http://web.me.com/jane.hoskyn1/Jane_Hoskyn/Apple_One2One.html.
ReplyDeleteWe are also starting e-portfolio trials in 2012 after our research conclusions are finalised in 2011. Our learners are highly IT literate.
Regards
Jane Hoskyn