ELearning/Course building/Media characteristics
For our purposes here, we are going to use the term “media” to mean digitized speech, text, images, graphs, music, movies, animations and the like, anything we use in the online world. We distinguish media from the tools used to create them, which we address in another article.
Media properties
Let’s review some important properties of the various media, both as fixed in the physical world and as flexible digital media. As mentioned previously, a “big idea” here is that selecting media you’ve used in the past is no guide for the online world, where we need to think carefully about which medium to use for a given situation (Rose & Meyer, 2002). The trend is clear – text is fading as the dominate form of education, just as it has for advertising, entertainment, and communication.
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Although one might argue that the literal content of Martin Luther King’s famous speech remains the same whether it is presented as text, speech, or video, it is clear that each medium produces a qualitatively different effect. The textual version contains the words, powerful and evocative. The audio offers vocal cues – intonation, pauses, volume, and pitch – tools the eloquent orator used very skillfully to convey the meaning of his message, with the crowd responding resoundingly. The video version adds a variety of visual clues. There are Dr. King’s gestures and facial expressions, and the large audience on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (p. 43) |
Speech and audio
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| 1. Speech quickly fades |
Natural speech possesses enormous expressive power. It offers rich vocal orchestration that enables us to express meaning clearly and energetically, beyond what words alone can convey. Our voices can vary intonation, pace, volume, and pitch to emphasize, clarify, sharpen, and add emotion and irony. However, speech is transitory, fading as quickly as it came. It lives on imperfectly in the memories of our listeners. Good speakers use techniques to overcome some of the limitations of speech, using repetition, rhythm, brevity, and appeal to people’s interests, fears, hopes and senses of humor. Some orators insist we take only six minutes to communicate anything, while others will give us as long as 20 minutes.
Understanding speech places a high demand on the listener’s brain, requiring concentration, rapid processing, and the ability to “hold on” to the words long enough to integrate and understand their meaning. Barriers to understanding speech include hearing impairments, difficulty segmenting sounds, and translating them into meaningful words and phrases. Grammar and syntax can interfere, especially for second-language listeners. Stripped of visual context, speech is more easily misinterpreted.
Audio enhances listeners’ appreciation for dialogue and for figurative and expressive language. Audio formats also seem to nurture students’ imaginations. In a classic study by Patricia Greenfield and two co-authors, children who listened to a story that was stopped just before its conclusion wrote more imaginative endings than children who saw and heard the same story as an animated cartoon (Paul, 2014).
Text
Because text is so central to our culture, powerful and ubiquitous, we rarely pause to consider its characteristics and how they affect learners. Text overcomes the transience of speech, providing a permanent record that can be revisited, thus accurately preserving history, allowing mass communication, and promoting linear thinking. Not only can text record past events, it can help us in the present by communicating more exactly and about more complex ideas, and providing a mirror into our thoughts for contemplation and modification. Text reduces the load on working memory compared to speech, and visual organization cues such as white space and headings help readers decode and understand the message.
Text has its limitations too. Speech transformed into text diminishes its expressiveness, emotion, and impact. It is bound up in many conventions that writers must follow and readers must understand. Who doesn’t get tripped up with grammar, spelling, and formatting? Is it germane or germain? Should I place a header or sub header here? Do I use APA or MLA format to cite my sources? There are conventions for different forms of writing – news stories, novels, poems, writing for the web, each with its own subset of rules.
Writing and reading text are also more effortful than speaking and listening. This is because both are a compilation of many tasks for the brain. Text requires the reader to recognize and comprehend several layers of complex patterns, beginning with letters and the sounds they represent, words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs – and the complex ideas they represent. Writing requires us to organize our thoughts, express them creatively, clearly and briefly – all the while conforming to established conventions. Unlike conversing with another person where misunderstandings and confusion can be dealt with immediately, writing obliges us to weed out fuzziness before connecting with the reader.
Images
Rather than communicate linearly and sequentially, images communicate everything at once. They provide immediacy and capture the entire scene in a single instant. “Images’ directness and ability to present all their information simultaneously makes them an excellent choice for portraying mood, capturing relationships, making comparisons, and understanding parts versus wholes” (p. 59). Images enjoy the advantages of both speech and text – they have emotive power and they provide a permanent record. Best of all, they don’t require interpretation like words do. The impact is immediate and intuitive. Viewers don’t have to follow the creator’s logic; they can choose their own order of attention.
On the other hand, images can carry their own conventions that must be learned. Graphs and illustrations need to follow certain rules to communicate clearly. Images rarely convey conceptual, philosophical, and abstract information on their own – though there are certain powerful exceptions, like the soldiers hoisting the American flag at Iwo Jima after defeating the Japanese army.
Understanding images does make demands on the brain – requiring visual acuity, the analysis of parts versus the whole, and comprehending their gestalt. Without words, images may be misinterpreted; viewers may focus on parts not intended by the creator, or on unimportant details. Photographers, painters, and illustrators are also bound by composition conventions such as placing the most important elements near the center and organizing the various elements so the viewer’s eyes are drawn in and encouraged to linger.
Video and animation
Video and animation take us into the fourth dimension, portraying movement, process, and unfolding. They take us a step closer to our lived experience of moving through time and the change it brings. Like audio, video is fleeting; like images video captures everything at once, thus encompassing many of the same advantages and disadvantages of these media. Video excels at depicting action, and young people’s immersion in video has sharpened their visual capacities and their ability to divide their attention among many things happening at once on their screens (Paul, 2014).
In the hands of skilled editors, video and animation can also deconstruct action, dividing the whole into segments for studied consumption and analysis. They can portray the full richness of realism or they can simplify, stripping away distracting details to focus on the essential. They can offer a visual portrayal of abstract theories and concepts.
As video production has become less expensive, many people have jumped in to produce their own without due consideration of production "values" such as lighting, distance from the subject, contrast between subject and background, focusing on the right things, and more. Video quickly loses its power when used for static situations such as lectures, readings, displaying photos, etc. The first rule of video is to say no when there is no visual action or narrative (Halls, 2012).
Color or black & white?
“Color is a duplication of reality; black and white is an interpretation.” So says Clyde Butcher, a famous black and white photographer. The impact of color on learning appears to be a settled issue although little research on the subject appears in the literature. A few of the more interesting findings from the past:
- Color in learning materials is more effective for emphasizing differences, directing attention, and retention of non-verbal material (Alemar, 1991; Peterson, 1976).
- Color video of human activity does not significantly impact arousal levels compared to black & white (Kayhani, 1983).
- Color does impact interest and arousal for photography and recall of peripheral details, but not recall of central material (Katzman & Nyenhuis, 1972).
Multimedia
Appropriately combining the different media adds to the effectiveness of each, one medium making up for the weaknesses of another, and working together to amply their effectiveness. Research tells us that text and images used together promote better learning than either alone, as does combining images and audio. The same is true when we mix audio and video (Clark, Nguyen & Sweller, 2006).
The rich potential of these combinations is poised against the possible disaster of uniting them inappropriately. Three evidence-based examples from Clark et al:
- An image of a spreadsheet with separate text instructions imposes unnecessary cognitive load, reducing comprehension, whereas instructions embedded within the image reduce it, increasing comprehension.
- Repeating the same words in text and audio interferes with the comprehension of both, but explaining diagrams with speech rather than text facilitates understanding.
- Superfluous text, visuals, and audio all interfere with learning by distracting from the core message.
Simultaneous use of multiple media does not necessarily have to occur in order to reap the benefits. Within a course of instruction, a video or activity followed by discussion followed by journaling can add up to powerful learning. The key lies in combining multiple experiences using multiple senses and multiple perspectives to teach the whole person and account for personal learning preferences.
Digitized media
Converting the various media into the 0’s and 1’s of computer code results in a number of pretty phenomenal possibilities. Media once restricted to local access is now available worldwide. The different media are all accessible with a single device. They can be transformed in a number of ways – enlarged, broken apart, made louder, combined. Text can be read aloud for those who can’t see; sounds can be described for those who can’t hear – both without human assistance. Media can be tagged with descriptions for easy search access (metadata). Users can interact with digital media in ways not available with analogue, finding, sharing and networking as they see fit – again interacting worldwide using a single device. On the educational front, multiple forms of the same content can be provided that appeal to different learner preferences or reinforce each other – a story in text and as a play, for instance, or an election described by commentators and charts and graphs.
Summary
Life delights and challenges us in many forms. It and our bodies are multi-sensory and multi-modal. It demands our active participation. Education needs to do the same. Digital media with its flexibility, wide distribution, and 24/7 access makes this possible in ways never before seen.
Selecting media
The Center for Educational Design, Development, and Distribution within the U.S. Navy has developed a number of useful resources for use when considering media options.
They developed the following sets of questions to serve as a thinking tool. Media selection is best considered during the design and building phases of development. The process is usually an iterative one where you need to balance your instructional needs with media properties. Instructional needs should never be compromised for technology but sometimes the technology is simply lacking in desired features. When this is the case, it may mean breaking down the needed features and determining if a solution can be constructed using a combination of technologies – old and new.
Instructional goals
- What do you want the students to learn or experience using this media?
- What is the main goal?
- What experiences do you want students to have?
- What mental models do you want your students to form?
What concepts need to be learned?
- If it is information you are presenting, how will you ensure students know the important points and integrate new information with prior knowledge?
- What kind of learning are you soliciting that this media can facilitate?
- Cognitive (factual, conceptual, procedural, metacognitive)
- Psychomotor (conscious, coordinated movement of the body and its parts)
- Affective (feelings, attitudes, motivations)
- Interpersonal (skills of behavior and attitudinal dispositions toward and with other people)
- Perceptual (acuity of perception enabling diagnosis and prediction)
- Is the information new to students or will it reinforce previous learning?
- If it’s new information, how can this media help your students connect the new with prior knowledge?
- If you are building on knowledge from previous learning, how can this media segue into the new information and help students recall previously learned content?
- What unique challenges exist for this topic or lesson that media may be able to overcome and facilitate the learning process?
- Is the content highly abstract? If so, can you use metaphors, examples, analogies, or illustrations to help students grasp the ideas?
- Is the content complex? If so, should you start with the ‘big picture’ or the ‘pieces’? Should you build in guidance so the students know that things won’t make complete sense until some later date when the pieces of the puzzle start to form a complete picture?
- Can media be used to pace the learning process allowing time for reflection and encourage students to focus on key points to avoid developing wrong ideas?
- What are the lessons learned in past teaching experiences for this topic or lesson that may be avoided or implemented in instructional media to help students learn better?
Instructional uses
- How would the media be used in the course?
- Content presentation, e.g., multimedia online lectures, videos, audio recordings, digital documents for reading, etc.
- Content support, e.g., detailed graphics, slide show, animations, interactive graphs and maps, etc.
- Application of concepts, e.g., interactive application where students apply concepts by inputting data, testing parameters, observing outputs and trends in data, etc.
- Assessment, e.g., present dynamic case studies, project-based assessments, dynamic performance tracking, self-check quizzes, games, etc.
- What media would best serve your instructional goals? (See Media Elements chart).
- Graphics
- Interactive media
- Video
- Audio
- Slideshows
- A combination of the above
- Have you seen any instructional media that you like? It is helpful to use examples of media you like, even if it is just one or two feature such as the look and feel, features, functions, sequencing, etc. as springboards to creating custom solutions.
- Does some or all of the content/information for this topic/lesson change over time? If so we want to identify a design that allows for easy revision and management of content.
Media selection guide
The Center for Educational Design, Development, and Distribution has also developed a useful set of guidelines for considering and selecting media.
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| Examples | Instructional qualities | Use guidelines |
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| Audio | ||
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| Examples | Instructional qualities | Use guidelines |
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| Video | ||
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| Examples | Instructional qualities | Use guidelines |
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| Programmed interactions | ||
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| Examples | Instructional qualities | Use guidelines |
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