Eco-structure data forms : classification of data analysis using perceived design affordances for musical outcomes

This paper explores a method of comparative analysis and classification of data through perceived design affordances. Included is discussion about the musical potential of data forms that are derived through eco-structural analysis of musical features inherent in audio recordings of natural sounds. A system of classification of these forms is proposed based on their structural contours. The classifications include four primitive types; steady, iterative, unstable and impulse. The classification extends previous taxonomies used to describe the gestural morphology of sound. The methods presented are used to provide compositional support for eco-structuralism.

The educational affordances of generative media in arts education

Network Jamming systems provide real-time collaborative media performance experiences for novice or inexperienced users. In this paper we will outline the theoretical and developmental drivers for our Network Jamming software, called jam2jam. jam2jam employs generative algorithmic techniques with particular implications for accessibility and learning. We will describe how theories of engagement have directed the design and development of jam2jam and show how iterative testing cycles in numerous international sites have informed the evolution of the system and its educational potential. Generative media systems present an opportunity for users to leverage computational systems to make sense of complex media forms through interactive and collaborative experiences. Generative music and art are a relatively new phenomenon that use procedural invention as a creative technique to produce music and visual media. These kinds of systems present a range of affordances that can facilitate new kinds of relationships with music and media performance and production. Early systems have demonstrated the potential to provide access to collaborative ensemble experiences to users with little formal musical or artistic expertise.This presentation examines the educational affordances of these systems evidenced by field data drawn from the Network Jamming Project. These generative performance systems enable access to a unique kind of music/media’ ensemble performance with very little musical/ media knowledge or skill and they further offer the possibility of unique interactive relationships with artists and creative knowledge through collaborative performance. Through the process of observing, documenting and analysing young people interacting with the generative media software jam2jam a theory of meaningful engagement has emerged from the need to describe and codify how users experience creative engagement with music/media performance and the locations of meaning. In this research we observed that the musical metaphors and practices of ‘ensemble’ or collaborative performance and improvisation as a creative process for experienced musicians can be made available to novice users. The relational meanings of these musical practices afford access to high level personal, social and cultural experiences. Within the creative process of collaborative improvisation lie a series of modes of creative engagement that move from appreciation through exploration, selection, direction toward embodiment. The expressive sounds and visions made in real-time by improvisers collaborating are immediate and compelling. Generative media systems let novices access these experiences with simple interfaces that allow them to make highly professional and expressive sonic and visual content simply by using gestures and being attentive and perceptive to their collaborators. These kinds of experiences present the potential for highly complex expressive interactions with sound and media as a performance. Evidence that has emerged from this research suggest that collaborative performance with generative media is transformative and meaningful. In this presentation we draw out these ideas around an emerging theory of meaningful engagement that has evolved from the development of network jamming software. Primarily we focus on demonstrating how these experiences might lead to understandings that may be of educational and social benefit.

Perception of affordances in multi-scale dynamics as an alternative explanation for equivalence of analogical and inferential reasoning in animals and humans

Recent claims of equivalence of animal and human reasoning are evaluated and a study of avian cognition serves as an exemplar of weaknesses in these arguments. It is argued that current research into neurobiological cognition lacks theoretical breadth to substantiate comparative analyses of cognitive function. Evaluation of a greater range of theoretical explanations is needed to verify claims of equivalence in animal and human cognition. We conclude by exemplifying how the notion of affordances in multi-scale dynamics can capture behavior attributed to processes of analogical and inferential reasoning in animals and humans.

Thinking Critically in the Land of Princesses and Giants : The Affordances and Challenges of Critical Approaches in the Early Years

During the last four decades, educators have created a range of critical literacy approaches for different contexts, including compulsory schooling (Luke & Woods, 2009) and second language education (Luke & Dooley, 2011). Despite inspirational examples of critical work with young students (e.g., O’Brien, 1994; Vasquez, 1994), Comber (2012) laments the persistent myth that critical literacy is not viable in the early years. Assumptions about childhood innocence and the priorities of the back-to-basics movement seem to limit the possibilities for early years literacy teaching and learning. Yet, teachers of young students need not face an either/or choice between the basic and critical dimensions of literacy. Systematic ways of treating literacy in all its complexity exist. We argue that the integrative imperative is especially important in schools that are under pressure to improve technical literacy outcomes. In this chapter, we document how critical literacy was addressed in a fairytales unit taught to 4.5 - 5.5 year olds in a high diversity, high poverty Australian school. We analyze the affordances and challenges of different approaches to critical literacy, concluding they are complementary rather than competing sources of possibility. Furthermore, we make the case for turning familiar classroom activities to critical ends.

Urban renewal, migration and memories : the affordances of place-based pedagogies for developing immigrant students’ literate repertoires

This paper reports on the new literacy demands in the middle years of schooling project in which the affordances of placed-based pedagogy are being explored through teacher inquiries and classroom-based design experiments. The school is located within a large-scale urban renewal project in which houses are being demolished and families relocated. The original school buildings have recently been demolished and replaced by a large ‘superschool’ which serves a bigger student population from a wider area. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data, the teachers reported that the language literacy learning of students (including a majority of students learning English as a second language) involved in the project exceeded their expectations. The project provided the motivation for them to develop their oral language repertoires, by involving them in processes such as conducting interviews with adults for their oral histories, through questioning the project manager in regular meetings, and through reporting to their peers and the wider community at school assemblies. At the same time students’ written and multimodal documentation of changes in the neighbourhood and the school grounds extended their literate and semiotic repertoires as they produced books, reports, films, powerpoints, visual designs and models of structures.

Collaborative research into the affordances of place for primary school children’s literacy learning

In the context of culturally diverse high poverty areas of Australia, we have conducted collaborative research with teachers and students in a primary school for more than a decade. Teachers have been exploring the affordances of place‐based pedagogies (Gruenewald & Smith, 2008) for the development of students’ spatial literacies and their understandings of the politics of places and built environments (Comber, Nixon, Ashmore, Loo & Cook, 2006; Comber, Thomson and Wells, 2001). This paper reports on a project in which the affordances of placedbased pedagogy are being explored through teacher inquiries and classroom‐based design experiments (Cobb, Confrey, di Sessa, Lehrer & Schauble, 2003). Located within a large‐scale urban renewal project in which houses are being demolished and families relocated, the original school has been replaced by a larger school that serves a population from a wider area. In this paper we draw on the study to consider the challenges of working with teachers and primary school students to study innovative ideas and practices in educational research. Specifically we consider issues raised by collaborative studies of the affordances of cross curricular projects focusing on social and environmental change to engage students in academic learning and expand their literate repertoires in a changing policy climate.

Sociocultural affordances of online peer engagement

University learning increasingly includes online learning experiences embedded within teaching with the dual policy intentions of increasing flexibility and learner engagement. In this research project, three university lecturers from different teaching contexts selected technologies for online learning to enhance learner engagement by encouraging peer learning. A sociocultural view of learning was used to conceptualise the technological and social affordances that might enable student peer participation and engagement. The research explored the question: “What are the benefits and barriers experienced by students engaging in online peer collaboration?” Students reported benefits including a sense of belonging that enhanced motivation, and professional identity. This article also reports on some of the challenges for students and University academics when engaging in online learning communities.

Implementing green business processes : the importance of functional affordances of information systems

An environmentally sustainable and thus green business process is one that delivers organizational value whilst also exerting a minimal impact on the natural environment. Recent works from the field of Information Systems (IS) have argued that information systems can contribute to the design and implementation of sustainable business processes. While prior research has investigated how information systems can be used in order to support sustainable business practices, there is still a void as to the actual changes that business processes have to undergo in order to become environmentally sustainable, and the specific role that information systems play in enabling this change. In this paper, we provide a conceptualization of environmentally sustainable business processes, and discuss the role of functional affordances of information systems in enabling both incremental and radical changes in order to make processes environmentally sustainable. Our conceptualization is based on (a) a fundamental definition of the concept of environmental sustainability, grounded in two basic components:the environmental source and sink functions of any project or activity, and (b) the concept of functional affordances, which describe the potential uses originating in the material properties of information systems in relation to their use context. In order to illustrate the application of our framework and provide a first evaluation, we analyse two examples from prior research where information systems impacted on the sustainability of business processes.

Understanding the actualization of affordances: A study in the process modeling context

The affordances concept describes the possibilities for goal-oriented action that technical objects offer to specified users. This notion has received growing attention from IS researchers. However, few studies have gone beyond contextualizing parts of the concept to a specific setting – the tip of the iceberg. In this research-in-progress paper, we report on our efforts to further develop the IS discipline’s understanding of affordances from informational objects. Specifically, we seek to extend extant theory on the origin and actualization of affordances. We develop a model that describes the process by which affordances are perceived and actualized and their dependence on information and actualization effort. We illustrate our emergent theory in the context of conceptual process models used by analysts for purposes of information systems analysis and design. We offer suggestions for operationalizing and testing this model empirically, and provide details about our design of a mixed-methods study currently in progress.

Sensemaking and sustainable practicing: Functional affordances of information systems in green transformations

This paper explores how a world-wide operating software solutions provider implemented environmentally sustainable business practices in response to emerging environmental concerns. Through an interpretive case study, we develop a theoretical framework that identifies four important functional affordances originating in information systems, which are required in environmental sustainability transformations as they create an actionable context in which (1) organizations can engage in a sensemaking process related to understanding emerging environmental requirements, and (2) individuals can implement environmentally sustainable work practices. Through our work, we provide several contributions, including a better understanding of IS-enabled organizational change and the types of functional affordances of information systems that are required in sustainability transformations. We describe implications relating to (1) how information systems can contribute to the creation of environmentally sustainable organizations, (2) the design of information systems to create required functional affordances, (3) the management of sustainability transformations, and (4) the further development of the concept of functional affordances in IS research.

The ABCs of teaching alphabet knowledge : affordances and challenges of ‘weaving’ visible and invisible pedagogies

As researchers interested in the pursuit of high quality/high equity literacy learning outcomes, we focus on the learning experiences of five early years French students, with a special regard for those who are already considered as being at-risk of educational failure. We narrow the empirical focus to a single lesson on a mechanical concept of print, that is matching lower and upper case alphabet letters. In doing so, we examine a deeply philosophical question: Which pedagogical practices dis/enable what sorts of early years students as literacy learners? We extend Cazden’s (2006) notion of ‘weaving’ knowledge across dimensions of knowing to describe how the case study teacher ‘weaves’ visible and invisible pedagogies over the four movements of a lesson. The findings reveal different pedagogical framings (Bernstein, 1996) have potentially different cognitive and social effects that constitute different kinds of literacy knowledge and oppressive subject positions for at-risk students (Young, 1990).

The affordances of social technology : a BPM perspective

Increasingly, organizations are looking to employ Social Technology (ST) to enhance their capability with Business Process Improvement (BPI). However, little is known about how the characteristics or qualities of ST actually influence an organizations' capability at Business Process Improvement (BPI). This paper discusses the potential role of ST in process improvement by presenting an a-priory model derived by an investigation of extant research. First, the qualities of social technology that potentially support high level action possibilities related to BPI are presented (we refer to these as affordances), next these affordances are mapped to the De Bruin (2009) BPM Maturity model as a first step to understanding how ST influences BPI. This work is expected to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the relationship between ST and BPI, and will extend existing theory on Business Process Management capability and maturity.

Dynamics of affordances and implications for design

Affordance is an important concept in HCI. There are various interpretations of affordances but it has been difficult to use this concept for design purposes. Often the treatment of affordances in the current HCI literature has been as a one-to-one relationship between a user and an artefact. According to our views, affordance is a dynamic, always emerging relationship between a human and his environment. We believe that the social and cultural contexts within which an artefact is situated affect the way in which the artefact is used. Using a Structuration Theory approach, we argue that affordances need also be treated at a much broader level, encompassing social and cultural aspects. We suggest that affordances should be seen at three levels: single user, organizational (or work group) and societal. Focusing on the organizational level affordances, we provide details of several important factors that affect the emergence of affordances.