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Høgskolen i Oslo
Feeling “at home” with virtual learning environments
Issues of domestication
Laurence HabibCentre for Educational Research and
Development
Høgskolen i Oslo
Høgskolen i Oslo
Domesticate
a) to make or settle as a member of a household; to cause to be at home; to naturalize.b) to make to be or to feel ‘at home’, to familiarize.
Oxford English Dictionary
Høgskolen i Oslo
Model of domestication of technology
Origins: Media and Communication studies
Focus on: - consumption- the domestic and personal
spheres
Høgskolen i Oslo
Overview of the model
Claims &counterclaims
Construction/Imagination
Appropriation ConversionCommodification
Høgskolen i Oslo
The study
Two VLEs at Nordic University College– Agape: 1999 – 2004– Satori: 2004 – ?
An exploratory study– January 2003 – February 2005 – Interviews, conversations, logs
Høgskolen i Oslo
Commodification
Few involved in testing before acquisition:“You can have all the pilot installations in the world but if I don’t even have time to complete my own teaching and R&D assignments, how on earth am I going to have time to sit down and test?”
Pilot installation is an artificial situation– Difficult to evaluate vulnerability to
overloadVLE
Høgskolen i Oslo
VLE
Appropriation
Objectification
Incorporation
Customization Mastery
Høgskolen i Oslo
Objectification
Embeddedness in physical environment– Servers– Personal computers
Compatibility– With other systems– With mental
models/Weltanschauung of the users
Høgskolen i Oslo
“You [the teacher] are asking us to use a system that’s miles away from what we actually are doing [at the College]. This system here is hierarchical while we are [our organisation is] matrix-based. We can’t just take our reality and twist it in order to cram it into your structure here!”
Høgskolen i Oslo
Customization
At the institutional level
At the faculty level At the group level At the individual level
Høgskolen i Oslo
Mastery
Formal training and user support
Issues of visibility:– For the ”support seeker”– For the ”support provider”
Høgskolen i Oslo
Incorporation
Agape system– Diffuse responsibility– Artificial categorization: administrative,
technical & pedagogical duties– Birth of a new hybrid: the “learning
technologist”»No officially acknowledged professional
status»Tend to fall in an organisational vacuum
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Conversion
Power of rumours Status conferred to the
technology and its users– State-of-the-art technology:
innovators, forward thinkers– Second-rate technology: “losers”
VLE
Høgskolen i Oslo
The way forward
More focused studies Comparative studies Teamwork Rich descriptions
Høgskolen i Oslo
