Knowledge management (KM) is an important activity in corporations and organizations and is well suited as a learning activity in higher education. However, integrating such activities for learning requires alignment between required activities and information technology (IT) system affordances. Using KM-based assignments requiring individual and collaborative (group) Internet-based research, t...

Affordance theory has promise for studying technology’s role in organizational change. By distinguishing properties of technology and their affordances in relation to its users, it facilitates the examination of technological consequences whilst avoiding technological determinism. This paper argues that it is useful to explore affordances and consequences of their actualization (or the lack of)...

We studied perception of affordances for the actions of other persons (actors) from kinematic displays. Observers judged the maximum and preferred sitting heights of tall and short actors. Judgments were scaled in centimeters, as a proportion of the observer’s leg length, and as a proportion of each actor’s leg length. Only when judgments were scaled by actor leg length did they reflect the act...

Situated Action claims that action is guided by an environment featuring objects, including technologies, whose use is transparent to us. Work on affordances perceived properties of objects which, in the context of a given course of action, tell us directly what those objects are for helps explain this. It is argued that an affordance helps make a technology transparent because it is a function...

Recently several authors have suggested that affordances are not mere possibilities for action but can also invite behavior. This reconceptualization of affordances asks for a reconsideration of the ecological approach to agency. After a portrayal of the role of agency in ecological psychology, we draw upon phenomenology to reveal what it means for an agent to be invited by affordances. We sket...

This paper outlines a framework for understanding gameplay from the perspective of ecological psychology. According to this perspective, gameplay can be described in terms of perceiving, acting on and transforming the affordances that are related to a game system or to other players in a game. Challenges in games have an emphasis on perceiving suitable actions and/or performing suitable actions...

Consider which of the following sentences is sensible, and which is less so: la. After wading barefoot in the lake, Erik used his shirt to dry his feet. lb. After wading barefoot in the lake, Erik used his glasses to dry his feet. Sentence la is sensible, whereas sentence lb does not make much sense. But why? Both sentences are grammatical. Both meet obvious semantic constraints (e.g., shirts a...

How we categorize certain objects depends on the processes they afford: something is a vehicle because it affords transportation, a house because it offers shelter or a watercourse because water can flow in it. The hypothesis explored here is that image schemas (such as LINK, CONTAINER, SUPPORT, and PATH) capture the necessary abstractions to model affordances for spatio-temporal processes. To ...

The affordance perspective to technology research aims to offer a definition of technology that bridges between previous positivist and constructivist perspectives. To study technology from an affordance angle, it needs to be defined and extracted. This study aims to develop a better understanding of technology by conceptualizing and dimensionalizing technology affordances. To demonstrate the p...

Designs for CSCL applications usually presume a desktop/laptop computer. Yet future classrooms are likely to be organized around Wireless Internet Learning Devices (WILD) that resemble graphing calculators or Palm handhelds, connected by short-range wireless networking. WILD learning will have physical affordances that are different from today’s computer lab, and different from classrooms with ...