Models and Theories in Human-Computer Interaction/Analysis of Wikibook based on activity theory

According to activity theory, all activities need Subject, Object, Tool, and Rules.

The subjects of Wikibook in our case are students, instructors, and anyone who is interested in the topic. All activities are triggered by students and finished by students. We can say the student is the key point of this activity.

There are three objects for students on the Wilibook: 1) Finish posts within deadline, 2) Show quality of the work, 3) Learn form each other. Object one and two are actually conflict with each other as object two doesn’t care much about time. This strained relations could cause contradiction in the activity.

Wikibook could provide plenty of tools meeting the needs of communication, including texts, images, tables and links. The types tools are more than face to face interaction and Wikibook provides more comprehensive information than face to face does.

Students need to follow some rules on Wikibook. For example, in our case, the content should be published under corresponding sub-categories. And it is a mimic of human face to face interaction.

Those elements in activities are not stable. They interact with each in the Wikibook activities.

Face to face interaction could get much quicker feedback compare with Wikibooks. But different from face to face interaction which rely on human memory as data carriers, the information on Wikibook could last longer.