Digital Affordance Critique (Online Activity 8)

Article Critique (Online Activity 8)
Seven Affordances of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning: How to support Collaborative Learning? How Can Technology Help? by Jeong & Hmelo-Silver (2016)

When selecting an article to critique from the module 3 readings I decided to read a few to help me to gain a better understanding of what is meant by digital affordances and decide which reading would best compliment teaching in a blended learning environment. I decided to choose Jeong & Hmelo-Silver's (2016) article because it compared two key areas of interest to me being collaborative learning and how digital affordances can support this. It is also quite a recent article with relevant ideas. 

I feel my critique was objective and fair because I had enough prior knowledge/experience with collaborative learning to make fair judgements. The background reading I had completed in regards to digital affordances also assisted me with understanding certain components of the article better, enabling me to connect the ideas proposed in the article with my own practice to see whether the ideas posed would be realistic in a blended primary school classroom - which they were.

When critiquing an article, I find it helpful to have some prior knowledge about the content in it, otherwise I would be unable to make fair judgements about the ideas posed due to lack of understanding.  I made sure to investigate further into who the author's were and pay special attention to the references used in the article as these helped me to be aware that the author's have referred to a lot of their own previous research which could point to potentially biased ideas or it just reinforces that these authors have done extensive research in the fields of collaborative learning and digital education and therefore the ideas they propose are well researched and trustworthy.

This is my second official article critique and I already felt more confident going into it using both the question prompts provided for the activity and also using the experience of previously critiquing an article where looking at other people's critiques really helped to open my mind to looking more deeply into the ideas and how they realistically apply to a real life context. This article critique has helped me to meet learning outcome two as I have been able to critically evaluate digital affordances and how they can potentially assist me with designing collaborative learning experiences in my own situated practice in a blended primary classroom. I think this experience will also help me with assignment 3s literature review.

References:

Jeong, H., & Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2016). Seven affordances of computer-supported collaborative learning: How to support collaborative learning? How can technologies help? Educational Psychologist, 51(2), 247-265. doi: 10.1080/00461520.2016.1158654

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