Push or pull

Whenever I am trying to explain the concept of affordances, I use the idea of a door handle like the one in this photo. I point out that for a right handed person, the door handle has an affordance for twisting clockwise and pushing (or pulling) - to open the door. The design features of the handle help the user to perceive what action can be made with the object.

Many technologies used for learning have several affordances. Some are more apparent than others, and this is sometimes the problem. Hartson tried to categorise between affordances in the context of interaction, identifying four types: Cognitive (thinking), physical, sensory and functional (Hartson, 2003). One of the overarching affordances of learning technologies though, particularly those that fall into the category of Web 2.0 tools, tends to cut across all of Hartson's categories - the social affordance of the tools.

Wikis for example, have a number of social affordances - users can perceive a co-operative affordance that enables them to create content that may not agree, but which can sit side by side to provide a balanced and measured take on a given subject. There is also a collaborative affordance where users can combine, interweave and mix their content to create a comprehensive account of the topic. I use both these approaches to encourage students to explore thoroughly the topics they need to learn about and published the results of my research in articles in two papers, The Good, the Bad and the Wiki, and Using Wikis to Promote Quality Learning (both full papers for download). By cooperating, and in some cases (more difficult) collaborating on the wiki, students can become more critical in the way they acquire knowledge and synthesise their ideas. The discursive affordance is probably the most powerful affordance of wikis. The perception that no knowledge or opinion is fixed or immutable is a powerful attribute of wikis. Negotiation of meaning and an ongoing dialogue between students yields a number of positive outcomes, not least that learners can all contribute to the ongoing generation of content, and that the wisdom of the crowd will ensure that in most cases, content will be reasonably accurate and can be reused and repurposed to good effect.

Social affordances are obviously important if we are in the business of promoting socially constructed learning in all its forms.

Reference

Hartson, H. R. (2003) Cognitive, physical, sensory and functional affordances in interaction design. Behaviour and Information Technology, 22 (5), 315-338.

Image source

Push or pull by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.