In 2008 Lorna Uden, Pedro Valderas and Oscar Pastor proposed a three-way approach (based various contributions) on how to apply activity theory to the analysis of Web application requirements (see source). This example of applying activity theory into practice is suitable for the task at hand (i.e. comparing PLENK2010 to the New Interactive Environments course and defining the activity systems for both).
The methodology consists of the following steps:
1. Clarify the purpose of the activity system
The purpose of this step is to understand the context within which activities occur and to reach a thorough understanding of the motivations for the activity being modelled and any interpretations of perceived contradictions.
2. Analyse the activity system and produce the activity system
This step involves defining, in depth, the components of the given activity, namely, the subject, object, community, rules and division of labour.
3. Analyse the activity structure
This step involves decomposing each activity into actions and operations.
The given methodology will be used while defining and comparing the activity systems of PLENK2010 and New Interactive Environments courses.
PLENK2010 activity system
1. Clarify the purpose of the activity system
The purpose of PLENK2010 (Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge 2010) is to fascilitate a randomized, but highly personal collaborative learning experience online (a so-called connectivist course). This experience will not be received through a single place or an environment. Users will pick and work with preferred content.
2. Analyse the activity system and produce the activity system
3. Analyse the activity structure
A fellow student (Ilya Šmorgun) has produced a very neat comparison of the two activity systems. Since there's no specific need to reproduce this content, a link is provided instead: http://shmorgun.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Activity-System-Comparison.png
New Interactive Environments activity system
While analysing and constructing an activity system for the NIE course, some inherent conflicts were discovered. Activity systems for the two courses can be absolutely identical. But they can also be very different. What determines this vast variation?
For example, we can take a closer look at the objects of the aforementioned activity systems. The PLENK2010 course sets out to provide a very unique learning experience. A person is expected to choose what he/she reads and how he/she repurposes that content. If we break it down to keywords, we can define the PLENK2010 object as:
- user generated content
- personalized learning experience
- use of various tools
The NIE course activity system object may be defined identically. On the other hand, we can view an alternative level of detail and interpretation by Ilya and discover that the two activity systems are fairly different. But isn't a blog post the same as "user generated content"?
Comparison and conclusion
As it was pointed out earlier, there's more than one way to look at these activity systems. It's my personal opinion that activity theory cannot be applied into practice. Activity theory and related analysis is very dependent on the interpretation. How to choose the suitable level of detail? How to define an activity system objectivly? This topic seems to have too many loose ends and way too much context for one blog post to handle.
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