Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed April 27, 2007). PDF text: ix, 160 p. : ill. UMI publication number: AAT 3232072. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (M.S.)--Tennessee Temple University, 1983. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-78).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 141 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-80).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of West Florida, 2003. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 127 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-112).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 293-318).

"The physical environment in which teaching and learning occurs is being replaced with an electronic classroom, but the process of teaching is very much the same. In the second phase, however, we will begin to use technology in new ways, to advance beyond what was possible in the classroom. "Downes. (2004). This overview supports an application for a PhD by publication at the University of Glamorgan. It identifies the tensions, barriers and facilities within the field which is broadly called eLeaming, but which I prefer to term Technology Supported Leaming. Successful uses of appropriate innovative technologies by staff and students in education is not a mystical or ethereal goal. Real innovation is often driven by the passionate few, frequently developed in their own time and enthused by a real desire to make a difference to the learning of their students. This motivation is not unique, unusual or perhaps unexpected. However the real problem is in 'mainstreaming' this innovatory practice or activity, (O'Donoghue, 2006, p. vii). As contemporary society becomes increasingly diverse and complex, so does the process of preparing young people for life as independent thinkers, productive citizens, and future leaders. The changing nature of students, the collegiate experience, learning, teaching, and outcomes assessment all have substantive implications for altering educational practice. The information age has encouraged the ubiquity of a seemingly endless supply of information that is there just waiting to be internalised by students who have the ability and the inclination to interrogate the vast range of information systems available. There is a need to consider the relationship between pedagogy and technology in driving the changes to the education process and what outcomes will determine the efficacy of these new learning environments. Pedagogic determinism needs to be focused within the 'real' world of increasing financial pressures on students and educational establishments. The development of Higher Education Institutions into 'customer' focused establishments competing for students who are, in some cases, reluctant or unable to attend formal educational institutions but who want to acquire qualifications and skills creates problems for both the establishments and staff. There are associated issues which my overview addresses, such as how technology might service this cohort of people who are looking to less formal mechanisms of education, technology versus pedagogy, issues of social learning whilst being remote and yet online, issues and necessary change required if the concept of 'virtual' educational institutions are to be realised. Higher education is best seen as a process, focused on learning, in which content is combined in some way with some forms of technology, whether they be "chalk and talk," television broadcast, or an IT-based delivery platform. My conclusion is that the development of technology-based learning support structures, that is, technology based enhancements to formal teaching and learning strategies embedded in the pedagogy, will assist the education and training sector. In some ways, many of the changes currently going, economic, technological, political, are compelling us to examine issues about how we support student learning, an issue which many of us might prefer to ignore, (Bernardes and O'Donoghue, 2003). I have endeavoured to consider this within a variety of different learning contexts - nursing to engineering, (Drozd and O'Donoghue, 2007; O'Donoghue and Laoui, 2008).

This thesis discusses some applications of activity theory to the analysis and design of collaborative work and learning processes either partially or wholly enabled by the use of information and communication technology (ICT). Activity theory (AT) is a monistic, materialistic psychological meta-theory comprising several distinct strands of historical and theoretical development. Founded in the former USSR in the early 1930s, it became a fundamental approach in Soviet psychology. In the West, AT was first adopted as a conceptual framework for human-computer interaction (HCI) and information systems design (ISD) in the late 1980s by researchers associated with the Participatory Design (PD) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) movements. Mainly drawing on Scandinavian interpretations of AT, this work established a distinctive, predominantly cultural-historical approach to context-aware information technology design now known as ATIT. ATIT is widely recognised as having made significant contributions to the theory and vocabulary of HCI and ISD; the principal aim of this thesis is to further develop its usefulness for ICT design. The research discussed explored the theory, history and development of ATIT while also applying and evaluating various established and new practical ATIT methods. These included the breakdown and focus-shifts analysis approach developed by Bødker and her associates and some novel techniques based on systemic-structural activity theory (SSAT), a modern, explicitly design-oriented synthesis of the cultural-historical and systemscybernetic strands within Soviet activity theory. The empirical investigation involved participatory action research into the uses of ICT at an adult basic education (ABE) Open Learning Centre in south Wales, UK. A longitudinal study of an intensive ICT-enabled ABE course, Computer Creative, was carried out between September 2000 and May 2001 using ethnographic techniques. This was followed-up by a short video-based study in May 2002. In both cases the aim was to use activity-theoretical techniques to identify ways of improving the use of ICT to support the Centre’s learnercentred, empowerment-oriented ABE practice. Using the key ATIT notion of breakdown as a starting-point, a number of factors influencing participants’ effective and creative learning-inuse of and with the available technologies were identified. Among the most significant of these was learners’ motivation during the ICT-enabled work-process. Conditions observed to encourage positive motivation included physical co-location in a material and sociocultural environment favouring self-regulation and mutual coordination through communicative and instrumental means and the structuring of ICT-enabled tasks so as to facilitate the formation and alignment of personally meaningful task-goals. Although user-interface (UI) design emerged as only one among many task-conditions impacting on motivation, some applications were persistently associated with recurrent and/or catastrophic breakdown. The principal UI characteristics identified as likely contributors to such breakdowns were inadequate provision of task-relevant information and under- or over-representation of task complexity. Based on these findings, the thesis presents a number of recommendations and guidelines for researchers and designers on the use of activity-theoretical techniques to create and evaluate interactive information and communication systems, ICT-enabled workprocesses and tasks, and ICT use-settings. In doing so it provides further evidence of the potential applicability of AT to a range of IT-design challenges, while concluding that in order to more fully realise this potential researchers should consider revising and expanding the conceptual framework of ATIT to include ideas from SSAT.