Using Activity Theory to Guide E-Learning Initiatives

Abstract

This case documents how activity theory can be used as a tool to help educators understand the issues behind deploying online learning programs. Faculty members in higher education are accustomed to teaching online, but are new to the development of online academic programs. This case chapter provides a background to the academic setting and a discussion of activity theory. The specific context of an academic department is described, followed by how activity theory was used to represent the overlapping goals of faculty, students, and administrators, and to understand the contextual issues of roles, community of practice, and division of labor to reach the desired goal, which was to implement their academic programs online. Guidelines for using activity theory are provided.

Mainstreaming ecosystem services: The hard work of realigning biodiversity conservation

“…Brockington et al (2008: 9) use the term mainstream conservation to describe “a particular historical and institutional strain of western conservation” which now “dominates the field […] in terms of ideology, practice, and resources” (Brockington and Duffy, 2010; Büscher and Fletcher, 2019; Cavanagh and Benjaminsen, 2017). In this sense, the organizations constituting the Natural Capital Project (e.g., WWF, TNC, Stanford) represent unambiguous embodiments of “mainstream conservation” and its operations take shape within, and must be understood through, this central positioning within the elite conservation establishment (Holmes, 2011). The empirical and analytical focus of this article is limited primarily to the institutional dynamics of this narrower (albeit powerful) variant of conservation.…”

“…While researchers have contributed rich empirical analyses exploring some of the particular sites and policies where ecosystem services approaches have started to manifest, especially with respect to PES (Büscher, 2012; Corbera et al, 2007; Fletcher and Breitling, 2012; Kolinjivadi et al, 2020; McAfee and Shapiro, 2010; McElwee, 2012; Milne and Adams, 2012; Shapiro-Garza et al, 2020; Van Hecken et al, 2015), the focus of this article is on conceptualizing that movement's agents: the mobile experts who circulate and recur across these sites and work to operationalize those policies (Büscher, 2014; Holmes, 2011; Peck and Theodore, 2012). From this vantage, I join other scholars in advancing a more intimate portrait of institutional change (Berk and Galvan, 2009) through the perspectives and experiences of those working at the forefront of dispersed efforts to disseminate ecosystem services approaches widely across the vast networked assemblages of contemporary global environmental governance (Corson et al, 2014, 2019; Thaler, 2021).…”

High School Students’ Performance Indicators in Distance Learning in Chemistry during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…These three elements are further interconnected to the community where the action takes place with some rules or norms based on the division of responsibilities and the potential outcomes to be shared by the members [64]. The online teaching-learning of chemistry can be interpreted with this framework in terms of role of teachers and students (subjects), the process of teaching-learning (actions), the methods and tools, such as technological devices and means of communication (artifacts) within the school community with a set of guidelines by the school and the government by dividing their roles and responsibilities for a better learning outcome [65].…”