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Activity Network and its Process before the System
can be described.
In this informal analysis, commonalities of several
forms between Activities are identified. Generally
these are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions.
Commonalities we specifically examine include:
People: A Subject in one Activity may be the same
person as the Subject in another.
A Subject of one Activity may be a Community
member of another. It is also important to
understand Roles played by individuals, subsets of
whom have a part-whole relation with the Subjects
of identified Activities.
Motive/Object: if several people express the same
Motivation or Object, then they are likely to be
Subject members of the one Activity. If these are
consistent with a group Agenda and contribute to
some group Process, then membership of the
Activity network may be strongly indicated.
Outcome: The outcome of one Activity may become
a Tool or Rule of another. One Activity may
determine the Subject of another (Vrazalic, 2004).
We conduct elicitation of these informal diagnostic
characteristics using Phase 1 questions shown in
Table 2. Actual interviews are somewhat flexible of
course, and these questions serve more as a
guideline than as any kind of script. Collection and
analysis of these Phase 1 indicators necessarily
generates a list of strong candidate Activities, to be
confirmed in Phase 2.
Our preliminary results include:
Agenda: Students must demonstrate their learning
and skills by completing indicative assessment tasks
to a measurable standard without cheating.
Subjects: S1 Academic; S2 Student(s); and S3
Tutor(s). If Subjects are in a part-whole relationship
(eg: some differences between an Activity
conducted by a single Tutor, or by the Group of
Tutors), there are three likely consequences:
Firstly, if the Doing of the Subject subset can be
conducted in the absence of the rest of the Subject
group, then the Actions within the Activity must be
designed to allow for some or all or the Subject(s) to
conduct the Doings individually as required.
Secondly, If the Doing of the subset must be
conducted in the absence of the rest of the Subject
group, then the Activity needs to be split into two or
more, one in which the Activity is conducted by the
entire Subject group, other(s) conducted by some
subset of the group.
Or finally, it may be necessary to create an entirely
new Subject, consisting of some part-whole subset
of the previous Subject group (and possibly others),
essentially a new Role, for this Activity and/or
related Activities.
Roles: Subject Co-Ordinator, the highest appeal,
records grades etc; Expert Authority, who set
assessment, define questions, define answers; Head
Tutor, a possible liaison between lower grade tutors
and the Academic; Normal Tutor, who distributes,
collects, possibly marks and reports; Low-Grade
Tutor, who only distributes and collects, no marking;
and Student, who must complete assessment on
time, without cheating.
Table 3: Candidate Academic Activities.
Subject 1A (S1A) = Academic A
S1A.01 Create assessment questions
S1A.02 Post assessment questions to FTP site
S1A.03
Post assessment questions and marking
guide to Tutors
S1A.04
Field clarifications from Tutors and
Students
S1A.05
Pre-process combined answers from all
submitting students
S1A.06
Facilitate negotiation of marking scheme
with Tutors
S1A.07
Conflate all marks from Tutor(s) to a
Spreadsheet
S1A.08
Anonymize Spreadsheet to PDF
document
S1A.09 Upload PDF to FTP site
S1A.10 Field student appeals and complaints
S1A.11
Transfer Spreadsheet totals to new
Spreadsheet for personal archiving
S1A.12
End of semester processing of totals to
Campus Administration system.
Subject 1B (S1B) = Academic B
S1B.01 Create assessment questions
S1B.02 Create marking guide
S1B.03
Distribute assessment questions and
marking guide to Tutor(s)
S1B.04
Distribute hardcopies of Assessment
questions to Students in lecture class
S1B.05
Field clarifications from Tutor(s) and
Students
S1B.06
Conflate marks from Tutor(s) to personal
archive Spreadsheet
S1B.07 Upload marks to central Website
S1B.08 Field Student appeals and complaints
S1B.09
End of semester processing of totals to
Campus Administration system.
Identification of people, motives and outcomes
informed the choice of individuals to be interviewed.
Interviews with Academics A and B, and some
Students and Tutors of each produced candidate
Activities. Different individuals expressed different
personal interpretations of the process, which
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