Unpacking Tasks: The Fusion of New Technology with Instructional Work

Abstract

Abstract. This paper discusses how a new technology (designed to help pupils with learning about Shakespeare's Macbeth) is introduced and integrated into existing classroom practices. It reports on the ways through which teachers and pupils figure out how to use the software as part of their classroom work. Since teaching and learning in classrooms are achieved in and through educational tasks (what teachers instruct pupils to do) the analysis explicates some notable features of a particular task (storyboarding one scene from the play). It is shown that both 'setting the task' and 'following the task' have to be locally and practically accomplished and that tasks can operate as a sense-making device for pupils' activities. Furthermore, what the task 'is', is not entirely established through the teacher's initial formulation, but progressively clarified through pupils' subsequent work, and in turn ratified by the teacher. IntroductionThis paper discusses the embedding of a new technology into existing teaching and learning practices. This theme is illustrated through a detailed analysis of how a new storyboarding software (designed to help pupils learn about Shakespeare's Macbeth) was introduced and integrated into classroom exercises and the ways in which teachers and pupils figured out how to organise its application as part of their educational work.The data is in many respects unremarkable, but is used here to illustrate the way in which educational purposes and tasks do not necessarily exist in advance of the work to be done, but are construed and produced by participants reflexively in and through their engagement with the new technology and their evolving assumptions about what it is that the task might consist in. Learning the task and learning the technology are mutually constitutive for both teacher and students. The data serves to unpack what 'setting a task' and 'following a task' consist of as practical accomplishments. The organisation of teaching and learning are things done by teachers and pupils as they encounter the technology together for the first time.The analytic approach to tasks presented here is not to be understood as 'task analysis' (see, e.g., Diaper, 1989; Annett and Stanton, 2000). For the latter, tasks consist of a hierarchy of goals and means, in which any given technology would be seen as the means to achieve the task, quite separate from the goals which constitute it:Task analysis means the breakdown of overall tasks, as given, into their elements, and the specification of how these elements relate to one another in space and time and functional relation.( Sheridan, 1997, p.87) In such studies, the delineation of tasks is the outcome of analysis, i.e., a product of the analyst's methods. This study takes a different approach 1 . Tasks are conceived of as oriented-to and achieved phenomena, i.e., as defined in and through participants' activities (and it is a contingent matter as to whether parties attempt to construct a plan of things to be done in advance of undertaking them...

Making rounds: The routine work of the teacher during collaborative learning with computers

“…Nevertheless, it is necessary to provide a brief summary of how the teacher introduced both the software and the task in the first lesson (for a detailed analysis see Greiffenhagen, 2008). The storyboarding tool was introduced thus:…”

“…While it is clearly important how a teacher introduces a particular task (cf., Greiffenhagen, 2008), it is perhaps even more significant how the teacher subsequently follows the trajectory of that task, especially in situations in which pupils work on a task over several lessons. By 'making rounds' the teacher is able to monitor and assess how the pupils are working on the task and can then choose to ratify work that is proceeding along the right lines (e.g., Fragment 3), remind pupils of aspects of the task that they have neglected (e.g., Fragment 5), as well as make expansions, clarifications, and corrections in light of what the pupils are doing (e.g., Fragment 8).…”

“…The teacher here elaborates on her original instruction, which points to the recursive nature of tasks: once the pupils have begun to carry out the instructed actions, each of the original instructions might be further expanded, clarified, corrected, etc. as needed (cf., Greiffenhagen, 2008 (line 9), and have the characters moving from frame to frame (line 12).…”

Learning to navigate: the centrality of instructions and assessments for developing students’ professional competencies in simulator-based training

“…In particular, research in this tradition highlights tight relationships between tasks, instruction, and technology (cf. Greiffenhagen 2008;Hontvedt 2015a, b). In maritime educational research, few studies prior to this study take a situated perspective on simulator-based training.…”

CONSIDER: A Novel Approach to Conflict-Driven Collaborative Learning in Engineering Courses

“…Some recent works that are on the cusp of CSCW/L include the work by Greiffenhagen 18 which discusses how learning can change due to introduction of technology, using a study where students learn about Macbeth by producing their own storyboards in a CSCW software. Another example is the study by Martinez-Maldonado et al 19 that analyzes the effects of deploying and visualizing the teacher's script for small group idea generation, using interactive tabletops, etc.…”