Virtually connected, practically mobile

This is the post-print version of the Chapter. The official published version can be accessed from the links below - Copyright @ 2006 SpringerThis chapter addresses a central issue in studies of mobile work and mobile technology – what is the work of mobile workers, and how do they use the resources that they have to undertake this work (i.e. the work they have to do in order to do their work)? In contrast to many of the other papers in this collection, the objective of this chapter is to examine individual mobile work, and not teamwork and co-operation other than where it impacts on the work of individuals. We present data from a study of mobile workers, examining a range of mobile workers to produce a rich picture of their work. Our analysis reveals insights into how mobile workers mix their mobility with their work, home and social lives, their use of mobile technology, the problems – technological and otherwise – inherent in being mobile, and the strategies that they use to manage their work, time, other resources and availability. Our findings demonstrate important issues in understanding mobile work, including the maintenance of communities of practice, the role and management of interpersonal awareness and co-ordination, how environmental resources affect activity, the impact of mobility on family/social relationships and the crossover between the mobile workers’ private and working lives, how preplanning is employed prior to travel, and how mobile workers perform activity multitasking, for example through making use of ‘dead time’. Finally, we turn to the implications of this data for the design and deployment of mobile virtual work (MVW) technologies for individuals and a broader organisational context

Social Media and Public Discourse Participation in Restrictive Environments

This dissertation investigates citizens\u27 use of social media to participate in public discourse (i.e., access, share, and comment on socio-political content) in restrictive environments: societies ruled by a hegemonic government where users face economic and infrastructure barriers to using digital technologies. Theoretical propositions are built inductively from an interpretive case study of how Cuban citizens use Twitter to participate in socio-political conversations. The case study resulted in the identification of nine affordances (i.e., action potentials) for participating in public discourse that Cubans perceive on Twitter. The findings also showed that the identified affordances enabled Cubans to achieve citizen goals: positive outcomes that made them more effective to counteract the government\u27s hegemonic ruling. The case study also resulted in the identification of six obstacle-circumvention use strategies that Cubans apply to realize Twitter’s affordances and the conditions informing these strategies. The case findings were abstracted into a conceptual framework to explain social media-enabled participation in public discourse as a mechanism of empowerment in restrictive environments. One research contribution is the proposition that social media empowers citizens in restrictive spaces by allowing them to take, in the virtual world, actions related to participating in socio-political conversations that they cannot take in offline settings. Moreover, this work advances that social media empowers citizens in restrictive environments because it increases their self-efficacy and motivation to counteract the government and the knowledge and access to valuable resources needed to be more effective while pursuing this goal. Another contribution was highlighting that media use in restrictive environments is an involved process requiring users to devise optimization strategies that usually involve the use of supportive technologies in addition to the social media app. The use strategies are informed by limiting societal, individual user-level, and circumstantial conditions. One of this work’s practical contributions is offering pro-democracy advocates in restrictive environments a clearer understanding of the effects of using social media. This dissertation reaffirms that social media-mediated participation in public discourse empowers citizens because it provides the emotional fuel and the knowledge that they need to engage in the tiring battle of pushing back against the government’s domination

Technological Health Clinic: Reframing and Reimagining our Relationships with Technology

It is reasonable to argue that technology is disruptive, psychologically and socially; it can appear to be uncomfortably fast-paced, overbearing, and have unpredictable effects on our day to day behaviours, seemingly linked to anxiety, depression or stress (McFadden, 2019), and more so on socio-cultural values, perception, interdependence, and relational structures (Verbeek, 2005). Still, technology and society continuously co-shape each other. Systematic philosophy professor Hans Achterhuis reasons about the social logic of technology claiming that 'on the one hand, the development of technology is accompanied by a transformation of society, but on the other hand that process is determined by socio-cultural factors' (Achterhuis, 2001, pg. 8). This co-shaping conditions us to passivity due to our disposition to technological optimism while generalizing the aftermath of this shaping as unfavourable, reducing what we believe, think or know about technology to a merely instrumentalist perspective, in which technologies are conceived as a neutral means to help carry out a specific practice, while denying that they frequently transform this practice in radical ways (Smits, 2001). In either case, the spectrum both removes the user from the context and frames them as victims, taking away the agency and responsibility we as individuals have on said outcomes. The project seeks to develop techno-social literacies around our relationships with technology, the ways of being it co-constructs, and the behaviours it affords. Such literacy, as argued for by technology critic James Bridle, is seen as a necessary first step toward addressing a range of contemporary health conditions which are increasingly linked to our use of technology and immersion in media; it connects us to issues such as computational thinking (Bridle, 2019, pg. 4), novelty addiction, convenience culture, sedentary lifestyles, and FOMO, to name a few. By critically looking at how we relate with technology, not as the source but rather the output of fundamental human ethos, the work seeks to reframe issues with technology as social rather than technical. As a result, a generative and ongoing process of restructuring practice and unveiling action turned my interest in empathy, un-wellness*, care, and agency into the concept of technological health as a propositional, exploratory design research approach. To expose the shift in meaning, culture, and value that our current relationship with our devices appears to highlight, my Research looks at intervention structures that could aid in reframing and reimagining our relationship with technology. A Technological Health Clinic is proposed as a means of Research into such relationships, venturing with lifestyle experiments that question the ways we act, resist, and behave, to open up possibilities for restructured agency and self-understanding through the increased perception of our techno-mutualism.Ontological designCritical designDesign as researchMutualismInterdependenceExploratoryCareTechno-social literacyTechnological healthFocal practice

Teacher development multi-year study series: Timor-Leste: Interim report 2

The interim reports present the findings from the first and second years of a multi-year study on Timor-Leste\u27s Apoiu Lideransa liuhosi Mentoria no Aprendizajen (ALMA). The study focuses on understanding the extent to which education stakeholders, including school leaders and teachers, develop teaching knowledge and change teaching practice over time. It also explores the extent to which participation in the program leads to improvements in learning outcomes for students. This study is framed within the context of Timor-Leste\u27s introduction of a new National Basic Education Curriculum