Design: Technology affordances

Online activities and learning outcomes

Technologies available to you and your students may include: asynchronous discussion, synchronous chat, virtual classrooms, quizzes, ePortfolios, blogs, wikis, video, animation, virtual worlds, etc. Each of these may be incorporated into a Learning Management System and be web-based or a mobile application.

Some ways in which the affordances of technologies relate to learning experiences and outcomes are shown in the table below.

 

Table 1. Relating technologies to learning experiences

Learning experience

Method/technologies examples

 Media forms

Attending, apprehending

Text, TV, podcast, iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo

 Narrative

Investigating, exploring, curating

Library (catalogue), internet search, social bookmarking

 Interactive

Discussing, debating

Discussion board, online conferencing, social networking

 Communicative

Experimenting, practising

Laboratory, field trip, simulation, virtual worlds, ‘game’

 Adaptive

Articulating, expressing

Blog, wiki, Google Doc, animation, model

 Productive

 Source: Table modified from Benson and Brack (2010) 

Technology in learning and teaching can enable (or has features that may include) the following.

  • Enhanced communication that is flexible (e.g. asynchronous) and facilitates social constructivist learning. This may particularly benefit students that cannot be co-located or those learning in a second language.
  • Blended learning can encourage deeper learning as learning activities which began in one learning environment can be further developed in another. For example, the flipped classroom approach can encourage students to share independent learning in the digital environment, which is then followed up with active learning (also deeper conversation and social learning) in the face-to-face environment.
  • Increased connectivity between separate learning activities. For example, the use of an electronic portfolio can help bring together practical experiences (e.g. work-based learning) and theoretical learning through the inclusion of artefacts, multimedia and reflection.

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