International Forum of Educational Technology & Society

e-Learning is a cross discipline artefact that spans e.g., philosophy, psychology, pedagogy, anthropology, artificial intelligence (e.g., Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED)), and human computer interaction (HCI) (cf. Issroff & Scanalon, 2002). e-Learning artefacts should be more than just a technical solution; for example, a web-based e-Learning site (however sophisticated it may be) containing stylish multimedia assets, Java applets, and dynamic database bindings that engage users in multiple ways including prompting interaction at cognitive, behavioural, and physiological levels. e-Learning artefacts are probably compared most appropriately with information artefacts as known by the cognitive dimensions framework (cf. Green, 1996; Green & Petre, 1996) which describes the “system under investigation” as “something that has been built for the processing, storage and communication of information. Every information artefact provides one or more notations in which the information being manipulated is encoded … The environment used to manipulate the notation is equally important” (Blackwell, 2001; also, cf. Green & Benyon, 1996).