This section of my thesis started to elaborate some of the issues of working online via a computer. I have deleted a section, indicated below, because I’m not convinced it was completely right. Nevertheless, the conceptualisation of interaction with a computer is here. I should stress at this point, that I view interaction as a term to be between people, unless otherwise noted. Later in the thesis, I elaborate this.
{Begin extract}
According to Education Network Australia (EdNA, 2004) research into ‘e-learning’ (online learning) in higher education is a ‘hot topic’. Online learning environments are constituted by two very different aspects of learning management or support (Ruth, 2002b, Inglis, 1999). The first is concerned with the presentation of information for access by students – the electronic equivalent of the didactic form of the traditional lecture. The second is concerned with the provision of forums for students to interact and form collaborative and peer-based learning nodes – the electronic equivalent of the tutorial, workshop or laboratory session. The primary focus of the present research study is on the provision of forums for students to interact, that is the tutorial, peer-based part of a learning program within an online learning environment, implemented in the form of email discussion lists. Because the technologies, which facilitate these forums, potentially impact on the ways individuals act within a learning environment, they have become a focus for inquiry. The value of the interactive part of any learning environment is generally premised upon constructivist notions in which students actively construct knowledge through interacting with both the material and their peers (Laurillard, 2002). The need to explore the processes that comprise these interactions is paramount, as the mediated environment becomes a central part of learning processes.
{Digression}
Back in the day, there was two main ways of interacting – forums and emails. Now we have such a plethora of processes, it’s hard to keep up. Wikis, while developed around 1995, so hardly ‘new’, provide a more constructive environment where knowledge is actively being constructed. Google Wave looks to be even more constructive in this sense as we can now see the construction as it happens (and in playback mode). It will be interesting to hear learners’ views on this. Even so, text based interaction is still seemingly the norm.
{End Digression}
It is held here that the online learning environment mediates learning through a complex relationship among the act of interacting, the persons interacting, the purpose for the interaction, and the context in which the interaction takes place. This complex relationship has at least three forms: (i) presenting information or requesting information, which is associated, in an interactive environment, with the posting of a message – displaying knowledge or requesting information, and (ii) the reading of the message – processing information, actively constructing meaning and transferring existing meaning. A third form, which in effect is consonant with the first, is in replying to a message that has previously been posted and read, that is, the kinds of interactions that initial engagement promotes or constrains.
Thus in an online electronic forum these interactions are often intended to enable students to:
- generate and formulate a proposition or question (i.e. send a message to the class);
- formulate an understanding (i.e. read a message sent to a class list); and
- formulate a response or further question (i.e. respond to a message sent to a class list).
In simplified terms, a student interacts with a message (via an application) sent to a class in order to learn. In this way, the means of interaction (the computer/application) shape the action in essential ways. Learning becomes mediated through textual interaction at a time and in a space of their choice.
{Digression}
I’ve deleted a sentence and a diagram here because they do not add much. If you really want to see it, look at around page 7 of my thesis.
The description I outlined here works not only in the online environment but is possibly a reasonable facsimile of most learning. In a face-to-face interaction, we hope that students are generating their own understanding of the topic and formulating questions/propositions and from there discussion about topics. I’ve not had this happen very often with my first year class, but my postgrad class has been a never-ending series of interactions. The biggest difference between F2F and online is the time for reflection online, although I have seen some very reflective F2F students.
{End digression}
The mediation of interacting in an online environment is via the ‘screenface’, alternatively called the computer desktop, or the ‘glass screen’ (Arnold, 2002), although this is not the complete basis for interaction. This screenface encompasses the desktop (i.e. the interface to the operating system, such as Microsoft Windows or Mac OS) and the glass screen, as well as more virtual layers in between, that is, the interfaces to computer programs. At times, the work done by a researcher, as a user of a computer, calls for an engagement at the screen and the desktop. The location of working is at the screenface, which includes the screen and the desktop as well as any other applications in use, for instance word processor, spreadsheet, statistical package and bibliographic software in particular, each of which can be customised. Each of these appears on the desktop but overlays it; appears between the desktop and the screen; appears at the screenface.
{Digression}
I’ve deleted a long rambling section on explaining the interface. I’m not sure all my assumptions were right as I have only ever used university windows machines. All my computers have been Macs. If you really want to read it, it’s in the thesis. But my central idea is below – our interactions with our computers is highly individualised.
{End digression}
An individual’s relationship to a computer as an artefact is therefore variable, due to the ways in which each person individually works. For instance, whilst learning to word process, it may occur that one space becomes the default number of spaces at the end of a sentence, simply because a user learnt to word process rather than to type. However, for a typist who moves to a computer, the default has always been two, and to change that disrupts the natural flow of their process of typing. In appropriating the computer, the typist (an expert) may find the setting which allows the default of one to be changed to two, thus making the computer work for them rather than them working with a tool that requires that they modify their specific way of working. While one space may be a requirement for typesetting of documents as opposed to typewriting, the common practice still being taught in schools is two spaces.
However, in the sharing of electronic documents made possible with computers, the default may be set differently on some computers. For the individual whose default is set to one, and whose computer checks grammar, they end up with ‘green squiggles’ all over the text, which may disrupt their reading of the text. For the typist, whose work is being read by another, the request to change to a default of one space means that their way of working must be appropriated by the computer’s default, rather than their own way of working in which they have appropriated the computer. This kind of appropriation by a computer leads to postulating the computer, and indeed any ‘non-human’ artefact as an ‘actor’ in the network through “encoding more and more of the cognitive abilities attributed to humans into them” (Suchman, 1997, np). However, while a computer can influence actions, agents are able to advocate, accept or reject the use of any agency, particularly the computer.
This influence relates to Lave and Wenger’s (1991, p102) conception of the “transparency of mediating technologies”. Transparency refers to the way in which the mediating technology permits or disrupts the activity for which it is used. So for an individual using a computer, the screenface represents a boundary between the user and the use. In appropriating the computer, the screenface is becoming transparent.
The teleology of computer use is the screenface. A user is in a specific relationship with the screenface. {Deleted a waffle about editing and this research.}. In effect, what this means is that for some individuals, their relationship to the screen is more important than other aspects of the learning/working environment. They are appropriating the computer as an essential part of their activities, that is, it is ‘transparent’ to the work they do. For other users, the screenface may represent a barrier to their use of a computer with all layers behind it being beyond their ability to access. The screenface, in essence, is opaque. The transparency of use of mediating technologies and their impact upon individuals’ mediated learning is a central conceptual contribution within this dissertation. Thus, the screenface becomes a boundary between the real environment and the virtual (online) environment, sometimes transparent, sometimes opaque. Potentially, the differences in the ways individuals exploit or reject mediating technologies influence the outcomes that are possible.
{End extract}
I still have to find ways of demonstrating that highly proficient users approach technology in this way. Mostly, this is my experience and what I have observed in highly proficient users. For instance, many of us no longer have to consider the commands, we use ?+C or CTRL+C for copy. We perhaps even think ‘copy’ as we press that key combination. Similarly when typing we think the words and they appear on the screen – very little hunting and pecking of keys. All of this points to a way of working with a computer that is only slightly more complicated than working with pen and paper. We have appropriated it and it is part of our way of working. The real question is: how do we get here. Rejecting technology, because it supplants the human actor, is not really the issue. The technology extends the human actor. Ahh, but I get ahead of myself.