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The aim of this paper, based on a study conducted with a 26-student class engaged in an annual "Arctic Kayak" project, is twofold. The first challenge is to present the dynamics of joint construction, going back and forth between observation analysis and theoretical object. The second is to introduce two new concepts that might benefit the course-of-action research program. The first, "story of experience", helps designing and conducting observation research to collect and analyze the experience of large groups of actors over a relatively long period of time. Such stories offer a condensed description of students' individual experiences during the kayak classes, providing multiple angles of analysis. The second concept is "action field", which is a subset of the "course-of-experience" theoretical object. For an actor and a given unit of time, this corresponds to all elements of its environment to which it attributes characteristics. Analysis of the students' action fields allowed us to identify evolutions and transformations which are typical of the students' perceptual judgments during classes. These results clarify the hypothesis of the three processes (in-situation, in-corporation, in-culturation) of appropriation proposed by Theureau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "course of action" empirical and technological research program was developed in the field of ergonomics during the 1980s and 1990s. It was then progressively extended to other fields of research and action beyond the boundaries of ergonomics. This contribution proposes an archeology of knowledge with the aim of gaining an understanding not only of the "course of action" research program (and its effectiveness), but also of the procedures/models that it proposes for both work and activity analysis and design. By scanning both the history and the conceptual universe of the "course of action" research program, this article aims (1) to point out the main empirical and technological contributions of this program and the potential it still holds (for work/activity analysis and for design), and (2) to help to make sense of certain concepts and analytical notions by mentioning the context of their emergence and the reasons for certain evolutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1950s, failures in the development of anthropocentric technologies suggest that general design principles open the way for socio-technical projects. However, the latter do not sufficiently integrate the social, the subjective and the technical aspects underlying any kind of industrial project. This paper shows how the "course of action" theory, which is part of the "activity" ergonomics field, supports this integration. This is achieved by showing how the concepts and methods of the course of action theory, used to design new work situations when automating small hydroelectric power plants (SHPPs), leads to a broader empirical praxeology for addressing H-H (training) and H-M (automation) interfaces, or H-H-M systems. Theoretically, this paper contributes to the technological pole of the Research Program of the Course of Action while, in practical terms, it warns Industry 4.0 professionals not to repeat the old myth (and expression) of the "manless factory". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SMACH (Multi-agent Simulation of Human Activity and Household Consumption) is a simulation platform within EDF's R&D framework. It uses simulation to anticipate and reduce energy consumption at different places of analysis (home, district, town, country). With this paper we aim to explain what the course of action technological research program involves, and to this end we refer to several years of SMACH research. We essentially focus on the importance of the organic relationship between technology and human activity, and we show how this organic relationship evolves over the different stages that this technological research program involves. This paper may be viewed as a basis for generalizing and clarifying the criteria required to validate such a program and as a contribution towards reflection on design in ergonomics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'distributed cognition' research program, initiated by Edwin Hutchins, has contributed to the development of the 'course of action' research program from 1987 until now. Edwin Hutchins has recently recognized the proximity between his last researches, developed in terms of embodied and distributed cognition, and the enaction paradigm, followed by this 'course of action' research program. The question of the definition of an "augmented 'course of action' research program" is now raised. Such "program" should, in relation with this enaction paradigm, deepen and synthetize the past contributions of the 'distributed cognition' research program to the 'course of action' research program and add new contributions from it. Such deepening, synthesis, and renewal of the contributions to the 'course of action' research program are made easy by the mutual contribution and addition of different theoretical and methodological results obtained by the two research programs. We will present here our personal answer to this question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contextualizes the anthropotechnological program within cognitive anthropology, and particularly explicit principles of anthropology that gave rise to the research program on "course of action" which, as anthropotechnology gradually detached from the French speaking ergonomics. Since the late '80s until now, Jacques Theureau shows how the wisnerien program fits, met and still shares the concerns raised by an «activity analysis» deeply influenced by cognitive anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]