Week 5 | 2026 Fall

tl;dr

• Read, watch, and learn
• Learning Pod 3rd meeting
• Complete Blog Post #4 – by Fri, Oct 9
• Engage substantively with at least 4 peers – by Mon, Oct 12
  (To ensure all students receive feedback, please leave your first four comments on posts that have fewer than five replies)

So far in this course, we have learned the basics of personal learning networks and explored digital identities, diversity and inclusion. We are now going to step into the digital environments that support PLNs. In doing this, we will focus upon a term called affordances, or the possible (or most likely) action an individual perceives from a given environment or context.

The affordances of a teapot. A teapot has a clear handle for grabbing, suggesting a user should pick it up by the handle. An important distinction here is that it is not impossible to pick up the teapot from anywhere else but the handle, though due to design of the teapot, a users perceived affordances make picking it up by the handle the obvious choice.

This concept of affordances may seem straightforward yet there’s a lot to unpack. It can be used to understand what technology makes possible, what technology encourages users to do, and how people perceive what technology can enable.

Read, Watch, & Learn

A couple of quick notes: Save snippets from the content as you read, and keep track of where they came from. Do review the blog prompts before or as you read, but don’t read only to answer the prompt questions. You might miss something interesting that way.

• What are Affordances? (Interaction Design Foundation, 2016) [15 min read + watch]
  IxDF is a popular online design education platform, and therefore, affordances are introduced and elaborated through a design lens.
  
• The Affordances of Social Media Platforms in The SAGE Handbook of Social Media (Bucher & Helmond, 2018) [25 min read]
  A scholarly book chapter that directly connects the topic of affordances to social media platforms.
  
• Cognitive Offloading (Risko & Gilbert, 2016) [15 min read]
  Cognitive offloading is a very important term right now due to genAI. Cognitive offloading occurs when people delegate their thinking to a tool. This scholarly article explores when and why people delegate their thinking to a tool. Notice how a tool’s affordances make offloading easy or even the obvious choice.
  
• The first secret of design is … noticing (Fadell, 2015) [16 min watch]
  This is a TED talk that explores how tools become habitual and we tend to ignore them. The first step to understanding is to truly notice the tools around us. This leads us to consider, what design is invisible yet influencing our actions.
  
• Some Observations on Mental Model in Mental Models (Norman, 1983) [12 min read]
  Norman is a designer that has led a lot of the theory on human-centred design. He outlines general observations about mental models that outline, among other things, that humans are imperfect and not always logical, yet they tend to be predictable. It’s very important to centre technology around people and our mental models shape the affordances we perceive.
  
• Extra Recommended Reading:
  • Thinking Traps (Anxiety Canada, 2019) [5 min read]
  • How Users Read on the Web (Nielsen, 1997) [ 8 min read]
  • Affordance, conventions, and design (Norman,1999) [12 min read]

Learning Pod

This week, I want you to self-organize a meeting and discuss an online social media tool that you’re all familiar with (ex. LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram). First discuss the platform, consider:

• What does this technology make easy?
• What does it make difficult?
• What does it encourage people to do?

Then explore the platform together, individually or via screenshare, and consider:

• What information is made most prominent or visible?
• What information is difficult to find?
• What actions does the interface seem to encourage?
• What decisions does the platform make for you?
• How does your experience differ from someone else’s?

Please share one example screenshot you discussed and why to the Community Contributions channel (this is in addition to your individual post). Only one person from your learning pod needs to post but they must include everyone’s name on the post.

Community Contribution #4 – Affordances of Platforms that Support PLNs

Post by Fri, Oct 9

Full assignment details, including a rubric can be found here.

For this week’s blog post (approx. 300 words), choose just one of the following prompts. Your post should draw connections to our course themes and bring in your own perspectives or experiences.

This week we’ve been thinking about affordances, meaning what a technology makes possible, likely, or difficult. Consider your PLN and the ways technology enables connectivity:

1. What decisions, judgments, or mental tasks does technology perform for us in a PLN? What do we gain when it does this work, and what might we lose?
2. What does technology bring to our attention, and what does it keep out of view? How might that shape what we learn from our PLN?
3. How does technology influence who we are connected to? Compare the affordances across digital PLNs and/or with those of a face-to-face one.
4. Technology is designed by people with particular goals. How might a design choice, such as a default setting, a recommendation, or a notification, shape how a PLN works, and who benefits? Whose experience might it not serve well?

Community Contribution – Being an Active Member

Engage substantively with at least 4 peers by Mon, Oct 12
To ensure all students receive feedback, please leave your first four comments on posts that have fewer than five replies.

Being part of a learning community doesn’t stop at sharing a blog post. It also involves engaging with one another’s ideas. You can learn a lot from each other by taking the time to listen, respond, and exchange perspectives.

Be sure to visit the Community Contribution page to learn more about providing feedback.

As always, you can reach me by email, Teams, or by booking a meeting.

Take care,
Adrian