Affordances of online technologies: More than the properties of the technology

This paper argues that concepts derived from affordance theories are highly useful in understanding the role of online technologies in learning. However, it is suggested that the value of this approach is maximised when the focus is moved away from the inherent properties of the technologies to the opportunities for learning provided by the total context in which the technologies are embedded. Recent examples from educational literature are used to illustrate this approach to the interpretation and application of affordance theories. Introduction Online technologies have unique properties (Garrison & Anderson, 2003) raising the question of how these properties might be described in terms of their possible role in supporting learning (Smith & Dillon, 1999). In recent years, the term “affordance” has increasingly appeared in educational literature, especially that related to the use of online technologies in education. The term has been used particularly in the context of attempting to relate the attributes of various technologies to their potential value in the learning process. According to Anderson (2004), “the greatest affordance of the web for educational use is the profound and multifaceted increase in communication and interaction capability” (p. 42). This affordance is evidenced in the contemporary descriptions of Web 2.0, or the read/write web (Price, 2006), a concept that has been increasingly adopted to described a perceived second-generation of the web that “is about the architecture of participation” (Barsky & Purdon, 2006, p. 65), rather than the set of linked information sources that characterised Web 1.0. Examples of Web 2.0 services are wikis, blogs, folksonomies, social networking sites, podcasts, and syndicated content. The position argued in this paper, and illustrated through the scenarios, is that it is too simplistic to view learning outcomes as depending solely on the properties of the technologies. Rather, they result from a complex interaction of factors that contribute to a learning context. Affordance theories are able to accommodate this view of the relationship between online technologies and learning outcomes.