The 2020 convention of the AECT – the Association for Educational Communications and Technology – moved ‘online’, like so many conferences this year. I was asked to make a presentation connected with my AECT/ETR&D Distinguished Development Award. There’s a recorded version of the presentation here on YouTube (takes about 20 minutes). Here’s a copy of the slides and notes (40 Meg.).
There’s an associated paper, mirroring some of the talk, currently under review with ETR&D. Here’s the abstract.
Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD): core purposes, distinctive qualities and current developments
Peter Goodyear, Lucila Carvalho & Pippa Yeoman
Abstract
This paper provides a summary account of Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD). ACAD offers a practical approach to analysing complex learning situations, in a way that can generate knowledge that is reusable in subsequent (re)design work. ACAD has been developed over the last two decades. It has been tested and refined through collaborative analyses of a large number of complex learning situations and through research studies involving experienced and inexperienced design teams. The paper outlines the motivation for ACAD and describes a number of its central features. The paper also provides an overview of two current areas of development in ACAD: the creation of explicit design rationales and the ACAD toolkit for collaborative design meetings. As well as providing some ideas that can help teachers, design teams and others discuss and agree on their working methods, ACAD has implications for some broader issues in educational technology research and development. It questions some deep assumptions about the framing of research and design thinking, in the hope that fresh ideas may be useful to people involved in leadership and advocacy roles in the field.
Peter Goodyear 