ABSTRACT
When I first started teaching technical communication courses online in 2004
at my university, I was primarily concerned with the software, hardware, and
ways to “convert” course content to online delivery (Tesdell, 2004). I approached
online teaching from a technology-driven perspective rather than a pedagogy-
driven perspective (Cargile Cook, 2005). As I look back on that time now,
however, I see that in my online courses, I had in place the components for
an activity system: students; an instructor; tools that included texts, computer
technology, and the Internet; and a shared purpose with my students-creating
technical documents. According to Russell (2003), activity theory
Although I did not think of them that way initially, the actors in our system
are my students and me; our shared tools are the technologies we use to connect
across time and distance.
