Exchange of Experiences: Building an Activity System Through a Technology Mentoring Program

Exchange of Experiences: Building an Activity System through a Technology Mentoring Program

This paper intends to look at a “technology mentoring program” at a major Midwestern University from the standpoint of Activity System and tries to make visible some of the characteristics of the program, which may help to establish an effective activity system, through a specific mentoring case.

Since “mentoring” and “activity system” are the two important concepts of the paper, including brief definitions of them would be helpful to readers. In reference to these definitions, later in the case, I will show how the technology mentoring program at Iowa State University helps to build an activity system within the College of Education.

Mentoring

The term “Mentoring" is now widely used within many professions, which reflects the surge of interest in the potential of a one to one professional relationship which can simultaneously empower and enhance practice. (Fletcher, S. 2000) Fletcher continues to elaborate on her definition and describes Mentoring as “guiding and supporting the trainee to ease through difficult transitions; it is about smoothing the way, enabling, reassuring as well as directing, managing and instructing. It should unblock the ways to change by building self-confidence, self-esteem and a readiness to act as well as to engage in on-going constructive interpersonal relationships.”

Mentoring is, specifically, used at some educational institutions to provide professional development experiences for faculty or teachers. For this purpose, several different mentoring models have been established at different institutions according to their specific needs and/or emphases. (Chuang et al, 2002) Chuang et al (2002) further describes different mentoring models as follows:

- 1 - Some models offer multiple intensive training of guided lessons on particular software packages followed by one-on-one mentoring support. Other models include a graduate or undergraduate course in which the field work assignment involves pairing students with faculty members interested in using technology in their courses. This type of mentoring model has also been extended to the K-12 environment where the focus has been on overcoming barriers to technology use in the classroom.

Activity System

Leont’ev describes activity systems as collective human constructions that are not reducible to discrete individual actions (cited in Jonassen, 2000).

According to Russell (1997); “An activity system is any ongoing, object-directed, historically conditioned, dialectically-structured, tool-mediated human interaction: a family, a religious organization, an advocacy group, a political movement, o course of study, a school, a discipline, a research laboratory, a profession, and so on.”

An activity system created by human has components of the subject, object, outcomes, community, division of labor, tools, (signs, or symbols) and rules that manage actions or activities. Subjects refer to the actor or a group of key players engaged in the activity system. Subjects interact within the activity system and provide perspective, which may be used to analyze the system. Objects are any kind of products that are created as a result of subjects’ interaction with subjects and/or with tools, signs, or symbols within the activity system. This process helps to transform inputs into outcomes. Not only is the object transformed during the production process but subject is also likely to be transformed by its interactions with the object and the tools (Jonassen, 2000). Community is an umbrella concept that embraces all the key players and actors that come together to accomplish a complex task. As the task is too complicated for an individual to tackle the members of the community share responsibilities and distribute the workload among

- 2 - themselves according to their characteristics and capabilities. In doing so, “division of labor” is established referring to distribution of responsibilities within a community as well as status and power differences between actors. Tools are used by subjects during the production process to transform objects into outcomes. Tools, maybe a theory, hardware (knife, scissors, TV, camera, computer, etc.), or software, not only help subjects transform objects but also effect the way they think and act upon the objects. (Jonassen, 2000) Rules govern and regulate actions or activities within the activity system.

Transformation Subject Object Outcome Process

Rules Division of Community Labor

Figure 1: Triangle shows the components of human activity systems and relations among them. (Engeström, 1996)

In light of the brief descriptions of mentoring and activity systems above, I will look at a specific technology mentoring program at ISU and try to help reader visualize the program and how it really creates an activity system in the context of technology mentoring with the help of my mentoring field notes that I took throughout the semester.

The Case: Exchange of Experiences

- 3 - Background of the Mentoring Program at ISU: Established within the College of Education at ISU, this mentoring program has been in action for twelve years. The main purpose of the program is to help faculty members learn to use technology and especially help them improve their understanding of technology use in education and as a result find ways to meaningfully integrate technology into their curriculum and set a role model for their students who are going to be teachers.

Graduate students taking “CI 610 Technology in Teacher Education” course also function as technology mentors. They meet once a week as a core unit of mentors and explore literature related to technology use in education and technology mentoring and discuss their field experiences with their peers, provide feedback regarding each other’s specific situations and try to generate solutions when one encounters with a problem that he/she cannot overcome on his/her own. As a field experience, each mentor is paired with a faculty member according to compatibility of his/her interests. Faculty members voluntarily sign up for the program to be mentored on specific technological needs (i.e. using WebCT to create online version of a course, creating QuickTime VRs, using video editing software to create video cases).

Mentee’s Profile:

Dr. McShay is professor of Multicultural Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. His interests include preservice teachers' perceptions of equity and social justice in education, multicultural pedagogy and its infusion with technology in teacher education.

Prior to our mentoring experience, he had started to find teachers who graduated from ISU and shoot some of their lessons to share with his students who are preservice teachers as exemplary multicultural lessons. However, these video clips needed to be edited and burned on a CD in order to be used in the class. Therefore, he wanted to learn how to edit video clips and burn them on a CD. He was also using WebCT as an online

- 4 - component for his classes and interested in promoting the interactivity of this online environment.

Mentor’s Profile:

I have a B.Sc. degree in Mathematics Education. Upon graduation, I was appointed by Ministry of National Education to teach mathematics at an elementary and a high school in Istanbul, Turkey and I taught mathematics and geometry from 1998 to 1999.Then, I got an acceptance from the School of Information Science & Learning Technology, University of Missouri-Columbia for Spring 2001. I completed my Master’s degree in Educational Technology in Summer 2002. During my graduate study at University of Missouri-Columbia, I mainly focused on designing online constructivist learning environments.

Having completed my Master's degree, I started my doctoral study in Curriculum & Instructional Technology at ISU. My future professional objective is to go back to my country and become a faculty member at a university to teach students who are going to be teachers. Since I am going to teach at the college of education, my main focus will be teacher education and how pre-service teachers could be better prepared to integrate technology into their curriculum effectively and meaningfully. That is why, I thought C&IT program would be a good fit for my future academic goals and chose to pursue my doctoral study at ISU. In my first semester, I decided to take “Technology in Teacher Education” course, which is face-to-face class component of the mentoring program. Although I had some teachnology skills, prior to this course, I never thought that I would be mentoring a faculty member concerning how to use specific technological applications.

- 5 - The Components of the Activity System Built through the Technology Mentoring Program

(Learning Theories, Tools Computers, DV Cameras and other hardware and software)

Subject Transformation (Mentors & Mentees) Object Outcome Online learning environment, (Integration of PPT slide show, Technology and Diffusion of Innovations) Rules Divisionetc. of Mentor and mentee Community Labor should meet once a (College of Education and Mentor and mentee work on week, mentors need to CTLT Personnel) technological applications to meet keep weekly journal mentee’s teaching needs, Instructor and then write a case of CI610 monitors field experiences based on their field and gives feedback to mentors on experience. their progress and guides them through writing their cases

Figure 2: Triangle shows the components of technology mentoring activity system. (Adapted from Engeström, 1996) As I will show in light of my field notes, which includes my own experience and my reflections regarding the mentoring sessions, that each pair of mentor-mentee actually creates an activity system and in the broader look these sub-activity systems generate a bigger one under the umbrella of the technology mentoring program.

Subjects: All of the mentors and mentees engaged in the technology mentoring program are the subjects of this activity system. This mentoring program creates such an environment in which faculty members and graduate students can develop personal and academic relationship that they would not be able to do it otherwise, at this level. As the intention of the program is for faculty members to develop technology skills and to be

- 6 - able integrate those skills into their teaching, mentors are expected to provide some technical support and guidance. However, not only do mentees benefit from this mentor- mentee interaction but mentors also gain great deal of experience that would help them in their future teaching profession and academic career. The following quotation from my weekly journal that I kept throughout the semester may illustrate how I also benefited from this interaction as a mentor:

I usually learn new things from Dr. McShay, for example, today I have learned a great way of enhancing the interactivity of a poster when I examine his poster. Among other things (text, graphs, and images) explaining the project that he will be presenting, he also included a relatively big blank rectangular space at the middle-bottom of the poster and it seemed meaningless to me until he explained how he would use that space. He had a video regarding the project and he was going to edit and then reflect this video clip on this blank space of the poster. I was very surprised when I heard this from him and I think this is a great way of making the poster more appealing. (Wednesday, October 30)

In addition, this activity system also allowed me to go beyond being just a graduate student and help a faculty member while being helped improve my academic and social skills through the interactions with Dr. McShay. As an international student and a newcomer to the university and the program, I appreciate the opportunity to be able to develop a personal and academic relationship with a faculty member. Thanks to this relationship with Dr. McShay, I was able to go to different elementary schools and observe some classes in various subjects, i.e. social studies, music, and also I had a chance to observe some college level undergraduate courses within the framework of multicultural education. This kind of experience helped me not only learn about American education and schools, some important concepts of multicultural education, see some useful pedagogical practices in classroom environment but also overcome the anxiety of a newcomer and go through the transition from being a newcomer to being a more experienced member of the activity system with ease and feel as part of the system.

- 7 - It is important in an activity system that subjects have shared goals and clear intentions regarding the outcome. I think including my very fist e-mail to my mentee would be appropriate here to provide an insight for reader to understand how I first approached my mentee and how our interests matched:

Dear Professor McShay,

My name is Serkan Toy; I am a new Ph. D. student in Curriculum & Instructional Technology taking Curr 610: Technology in Teacher Education course from Dr. Ann Thompson. In the possible mentee list, I found your interests similar to mine in terms of technology use in education. As far as I understand, you are interested in integrating WebCT into your curriculum and also CD development. Although I am not an expert, I am also interested in developing online learning environments and distance learning. That’s why, I would like to work with you in your projects and gain more expertise and improve my skills helping you with your projects. I would like to meet and discuss the goals of the program and set a time for our weekly meetings. I was wondering if you would be available in the following week for our first meeting. I am available at any time except for Wednesday. Could you please let me know when you could meet and where? Thank you in advance for your interests. Sincerely, Serkan Toy (Wednesday, August 28)

In our first meeting, we briefly introduced ourselves and then talked about what projects he had in mind and what his objectives were regarding those projects. We also set up a regular meeting time. (Friday, September 6) Some of the goals we identified during this meeting were to learn video editing software (probably iMovie) together, edit the exemplary lesson, which was videotaped at a preschool setting, and then burn it on a CD, and promote the interactivity of the online component of courses he teaches.

As in any activity system subjects affect each other while working together towards a shared goal. However, it is possible that each subject (mentor or mentee in this case) can improve different skills while striving to accomplish the same task according to the

- 8 - individual strengths, weaknesses, standards and needs. This also is true in technology mentoring program. As I was improving my teaching skills through mentoring sessions, my mentee seemed quite satisfied with learning new technology skills and finding out novel ways of integrating technology in his teaching. My views on technology integration and technology mentoring has changed a lot and I have gained a great deal of confidence and experience regarding how to teach someone technology related skills rather than just knowing how to do them as I interact with my mentee. The following is a part taken from my field notes that provides a self-reflection on one of the mentoring sessions:

After figuring out how to integrate image map and PowerPoint Show into WebCT, I felt I was ready to show how to accomplish them to Dr. McShay. However, when I was explaining the procedures, I realized that teaching something especially tech-related things was very different from knowing how to do them. I think teaching is a great way of learning. While working on some of the features of WebCT, I was able to see different aspects of it that I had not realized learning alone. (Friday, September 13)

Some other parts from my field notes show how my approach to technology integration and mentoring has changed and how I was able to match and combine two different jobs, instructional design and mentoring in the context of technology mentoring by making use of my prior knowledge in instructional design:

As he was explaining how he would like his students to be aware of different perspectives revolved around some of the issues as they relate to multicultural education, I thought “Cognitive Flexibility Theory” might have some possible implications for his aim. When I briefly explained the theory, he became interested in learning it more so asked me to give him some literature on this theory. (Friday, September 6)

Having spent last two years focusing on theoretical frameworks of learning environments that make good use of technology in order to promote student engagement with authentic tasks that help learners make their own meaning out of ill-structured and maybe controversial issues, I find myself in an instructional designer job rather than a technology mentor at the first two meetings with Dr. McShay. Then, I told myself that I should also focus on technology as a mentor, so not knowing much about technology I

- 9 - started learning new things based on my mentee’s needs. For example, although I have never used iMovie, I am planning to learn some of the basics by next week and then start working on the editing of the video clip with Dr. McShay to make it more useful for his purpose. (Friday, September 13)

Through my interactions with my mentee and my experience and observations within this type of activity system I would define mentoring as follows:

Mentoring is a reciprocal relationship in which mentor brings in expertise and confidence and mentee provides an authentic context and specific problems related to his/her needs that may create opportunities for the mentor to be able to use his/her knowledge in different meaningful situations, as a result, expanding his/her expertise and confidence while helping mentee do the same.

Objects: Each pair of mentor-mentee has their own objects according to mentee’s specific needs. In one case, an object is an online learning environment to be designed as a supplement of face-to-face sessions of a course while an interactive PowerPoint presentation can be an object in another case. In our case, a CD, which includes a number of sample lessons, to be created as a teacher role model for pre-service teachers was the main object.

As Jonassen (2000) suggested Just as the object transformed during the production process, the subject may also be transformed by the object. As individuals engage in activity systems, they are changed by those systems.

Although the initial object was to create the “Teacher Role Model CD”, one other object, a cognitive flexibility hypertext environment, has eventually emerged from it. The idea was to embed short video clips taken from teacher role model CD in a hypertext environment and provide students with different perspectives revolved around the themes present in video clips by employing cognitive flexibility theory.

- 10 - As we were working on this project Dr. McShay became more familiar with the theory and hypertext environments and suggested presenting this project at a conference. Since I had never presented at a conference before, I did not know the procedures, but Dr. McShay mentored me on this. This particular object provided me with opportunities to grow academically and technically (caused me to learn two new graphic and web page design programs, learn the procedures in presenting at a conference.), and helped Dr. McShay find innovative ways to integrate technology into his curriculum in a meaningful way.

Outcomes: General outcome of the main activity system is to help faculty members learn to use technology and especially help them improve their understanding of technology use in education and as a result find ways to meaningfully integrate technology into their curriculum and set a role model for their students who are going to be teachers. In doing so, establishing positive relationships among faculty members and graduate students is another outcome of the system. However, each sub-activity systems whose main actors are a pair of mentor-mentee, may have their own specific outcome.

For instance, in our case, my mentee is in multicultural education field and his students are prospective teachers who would be teaching in variety of different settings and deal with students from quite diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, our main purpose in developing this teacher role model CD was to integrate technology into his curriculum in order for his students to understand various situations that they would face with in their future careers and different perspectives related to those circumstances.

Division of Labor: The division of labor is administered both horizontally and vertically in this activity system, while it is mostly horizontal in sub-activity systems whose main actor is a pair of mentor-mentee. Because each pair of mentor and mentee can discuss their goals and set the objectives of their activity systems together in a cooperative and

- 11 - collaborative way, this type of division of labor is considered as horizontal. There is also cooperation and collaboration among mentors. For instance, if a mentor has a technical difficulty or a problem, other mentors can offer help and they try to solve the problem together.

The only vertical division of labor can be found between the instructor of CI 610 (Dr. Thompson) and the mentors who are taking the course. All the student mentors who are taking the course are responsible for keeping the records of their field experiences and those who take the course for three credits have to either write a case in a publishable format using their mentoring experience or mentor one additional mentee.

Community: As the activity system is established within the College of Education and heavily relies on the technological resources and skilled personnel located at CTLT (Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching), all of the people at the College of Education who influence the activity system and, in turn, influenced by it compose the community of this activity system. This community also functions like a learning community where everybody is a learner and a teacher at the same time.

Thanks to this strong community component of the technology mentoring activity system, actors of the system feel comfortable working towards their goals without actually having to worry about technical difficulties and deficiencies. A part from my weekly journal would help reader understand how this community component functions as an assist for the subjects of activity system.

This was the longest meeting we had so far. We worked on finalizing the teacher role model CD but we encountered a lot of problems regarding hardware. First, we had to transfer the project files from Dr. McShay's iBook to one of the computer's at CTLT because the available space was not enough to complete the rest of the project on it. This process took almost 2 hours. We connected his iBook to one of the computers at CTLT via firewire and then tried to transfer the project files to the tower. Dr. McShay had never done something like that before, neither had I. But with the help of CTLT staff, we

- 12 - were finally able to do that. Without their help we would never able to do this and continue to work on our project.

Tools, Signs, or Symbols:

"Neither hand or mind alone suffices; the tools and devices they employ finally shape them". Francis Bacon

This technology mentoring activity system employs some theories like Change Theory, Collaborative learning, Constructivism, and relies on hardware and software located at College of Education (mostly at CTLT), i.e. PC computers, Macs, DV cameras, web page development software, MS Office programs.

The tools we have employed in our activity system include multicultural theory, cognitive flexibility theory, DV cameras, PC, Macintosh, iMovie. Working with Dr. McShay, I had a chance to learn about multicultural theories and some pedagogical approaches related to multicultural education and got acquainted with how technology could be utilized and integrated in a specific field of study. As a result, my experience and understanding has broadened in terms of how technology can help address specific domain knowledge and promote teaching and learning at the same time.

Rules: All the student mentors who are taking the course are responsible for keeping the records of their field experiences and those who take the course for three credits have to either write a case in a publishable format using their mentoring experience or mentor one additional mentee.

Conclusion:

Above I described a specific technology mentoring program at Iowa State University and looked at it through the lens of Activity Systems. Although one single theory or approach

- 13 - is not sufficient to fully depict the whole picture of the technology mentoring program, I found activity theory quite helpful in conceptualizing this specific mentoring program. The field notes from my own mentoring sessions were used to provide the reader with insight about what is happening in this mentoring program and how it really creates an activity system.

Reference:

- 14 - Chuang, H., Thompson, A., and Schmidt, D. (2002) Faculty Technology Mentoring Programs: Major Trends in the Literature (available online at: http://www.public.iastate.edu/%7emstar/mentor/Technology_mentoring0128.htm)

Engeström, Y. (1996). The tensions of judging: Handling cases of driving under the influence of alcohol in Finland and California. In Yrgö Engeström and David Middleton (Eds.), Cognition and Communication at Work (chap. 9). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Fletcher, S. (2000) Mentoring in Schools: A Handbook of Good Practice,London: Kogan Page

Jonassen, D. H. (2000) Revisiting Activity Theory as a Framework for Designing Student-Centered Learning Environments. In D. H. Jonassen & S. M. Land, Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments (pp. 89-121) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Russell, D. R. (1997) Rethinking genre in school and society: An Activity Theory Analysis

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