Application of AODM in Addressing Education with Emerging Technologies during the Emerging COVID-19

Creating Learning Apps Repository: Application of Activity-Oriented Design Method 

The growing spread of the COVID-19 virus has resulted in the enforcement of physical distancing and school closures. The school calendar has been disrupted and there is a high level of uncertainty and anxiety. This present parents and community at large with burdens to adopt new roles as teachers, many of whom are unprepared or trained to play this role. “The outbreak of the virus and lockdowns at the national level could be used as a good test for the education technology interventions for distance learning. Unfortunately, few systems arrived at this point fully prepared” (World Bank Blogs, 2020).

In this post AODM (Activity-Oriented Design Method) was employed as a guide for a learning activity of collating a wide variety of teaching tools (apps) that are readily available, easily accessible and user friendly to equip parents as teachers. The activity is described as follows; “As students and learners stay at home during the lockdown, increasingly, parents are becoming 'educators' and 'facilitators' of learning. While there are many apps out there that can assist parents in this new unprecedented role, it is not easy to know where to find useful apps. The purpose of this blog is to assist parents to become effective 'educators' (https://apps4lockdown.blogspot.com) (Ng'ambi, 2020).

In this activity, the teacher asked the students to send emails listing teaching apps to his blog. The AODM analysis has been shown to aid investigators to successfully manage information collated so as to simplify accessibility while maintaining accuracy and context (Greenhow and Belbas, 2007). AODM “is useful for understanding both current and future experiences of learners’ interactions with technology, dealing with the complexity of human practices by providing essential views of the structure of activity with very detailed context specific information showing relationships between one activity and another”. The framework focusses on motives, and, social and cultural issues that occur in the context in which learning activities are taking place (Mwanza-Simwami, 2011, p. 84). In the activity presented here, an activity system was generated (Figure 1) based on Engeström’s (1987) expanded model of human activity. An eight-step model (Table 1) was used to employ basic principles of activity theory with respect to the activity being examined. Research questions (Table 2) were then generated to further scrutinise learner interactions within different subsections in the activity system. See another post in this blog for more details on AODM framework (AODM).
Figure 1: Activity system for Teaching Apps repository creation
Table 1: 8 Steps Model of AODM
Table 2: AODM’s Technique of Generating General Research Questions (Mwanza, 2002)

References

Engeström Y. (1987), Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki, Finland: Orienta-Konsultit Oy.

Greenhow C, Belbas B. (2007), Using activity-oriented design methods to study collaborative knowledge-building in e-learning courses within higher education. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (2) 363- 391.
 
Mwanza D. (2002), Towards an activity-oriented design method for HCI research and practice. Unpublished PhD thesis. The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom.
 
Mwanza-Simwami, D (2011). AODM as a framework and model for characterising learner experiences with technology. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 7(3) pp. 75–85.
 
World Bank Blogs (2020). Managing the impact of COVID-19 on education systems around the world: How countries are preparing, coping, and planning for recovery, by Azzi-Huck, K and Shmis, Retrieved April 28, 2020, from https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/managing-impact-covid-19-education-systems-around-world-how-countries-are-preparing

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