A big reason for the ethnographic/sensemaking approach to my research topic has been observations of the wildly varying degrees of take-up of - and associated comfort with - technology. The aversion to using online tools and publishing online is a real fear and anxiety for some. There are personal, individual and situational factors that produce feelings for technology and its use. And the emotional, affective side of technology use has a great influence on success in using technology in learning.
I've been a web designer and producer, now learning technologist, and hence an interested user of online technologies for around 12 years. Over that time, my relationship with technology has changed and developed. From the first tremulous ftp uploads with fast-beating heart to my many devices and numerous accounts, it has always been an emotional relationship. The change in going from a dial up to broadband access was a watershed, not only in speed but in the pleasure I had in going online. No longer did I have to sit through the sound of my modem connecting, which formed an audible barrier between me and the wide web.
I think that everyone has their own versions of the modem, experiences that colour their approach to online tools, as well as the physicality of touching keyboards and mice; the curves of an iPad, the matte face and round keys of a Kindle.
A book I'm reading at the moment is Technology as Experience by McCarthy and Wright (2004), that promotes thinking and research around the emotional and sensual experience of using technology. In their term, the introduction of a new technology is a 'perturbation', the response to which we can't predict - either our own or others' (McCarthy & Wright, 2004). Action is not based on plans, but is much more immediate and situated (McCarthy & Wright, 2004, referring to L.A. Suchman, 1987).
In pondering my research project, what I want to know comes down to this difference in reaction to the perturbation of new technologies. How one person will happily upload galleries of photos and add videos to a site, answering discussion questions, while another will not. Much of the explanation, I think, is in the individual's history of technology use - which mediates the shock of the new - but even given similar histories, there is still a difference in how people participate online. The concept of sense-making is very much a situated view, where the individual's circumstances and the immediacy of action form practice that is more intuitive than planned. This leaves the problem of gaining an understanding of this unconscious, immediate sense-making through the left artefacts and reflective backward looks of research subjects. If I can get a handle on their perceived obstacles and confusions, plus how they approach them and why they give up, I hope that I can gain some understanding of the whys of individuals' types and level of participation. The feelings people bring to online interactions and towards technologies will be a large part of this explanation
On the particulars of the research project: with a low response from two of my three target groups permitting me to use their posted artefacts, I will have to spread a wider net for artefact and interview subjects. As stated before, I would like to interview both active and less active participants, with a view to comparing their approaches to the site and its tools.
McCarthy, J. & Wright, P. (2004). Technology as Experience. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human Computer Interaction. Cambridge University Press.
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