Contradictions and Technology in Higher Education

This chapter is about how new forms of activity emerge in higher education and the role that contradictions in general and tools specifically play in that emergence. Activity system components such as norms, division of labour, and tools develop but at different rates and in different ways over long periods of time. Likewise, different activities may share a component but the component may be more developed in one activity than in the other. The development at different stages means that there are always disconnects within and between activity systems. Activity Theory calls these disconnects by the term contradictions. The chapter begins with an overview of contradictions. It follows with hypothetical examples to illustrate contradictions in a context of technology-mediated higher education. The second part of this chapter provides an overview of how contradictions have been used to analyze technology and learning.