Comparative Merits and Distinctive Teaching Functions of Different Media

Context:
Most uses of computers in distance education rely on text or print. In this selection the author suggests ways to use computers interactively and to adapt them to students' individual needs.

Source:
Koumi, J. 1994. "Comparative Merits and Distinctive Teaching Functions of Different Media: A Basis for Deploying Media to the Learning Tasks Each One Is Best Suited For." Media and Technology for Human Resource Development 6(3), pp. 201-04, 206-07, 209-10, 211-212.

Copyright:
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Computers

Just like video and audio-vision, teaching packages on the computer can be in the form of "Tutorial Programs" providing graphical and textual information and testing students' comprehension and supplying feedback on their activities. However, the computer's storage and processing power provides the potential for more individualised learning: the material can be organised in a network structure, enabling learner choice of a wide variety of paths through the material. However, in this form, students' choice is still within a non-negotiable agenda, predetermined by the teacher, without the possibility of freely adapting to students' individual needs: in other words, like the other electronic media above, it is still a one-way medium.

Various elaborations of the basic model introduce the potential for more interactivity and adaptivity. By incorporating simulation, a computer package enables students to explore how processes change when parameters are varied: unlike simulations on video, individual students can choose which parameters to change and by how much (Daniels and Koumi, 1992). This constitutes a far greater degree of interactivity than is possible through print or audiovisual media.

There is also the advantage of a multi-media package, all on one machine. It is now possible, using CD-ROM, to incorporate extended segments of audio and video into computer packages. Hawkridge (1993, chapter 8), discussing such packages, notes that a limited number of intriguing multi-media programmes have been developed recently, for example to aid language development.

Hence, as well as choosing an individual path through the material, learners can even make choices of symbol system for each segment, as Kozma (1991: 204) notes:

. . . moment to moment selection of appropriate media can respond to specific learner needs and task demands. Audio-linguistic and even text information may be sufficient for most of the presentation for most learners, but visual information can be presented to a particular learner, for a particular segment, at a particular moment, and for a particular purpose.

An apprehension arises here as to whether students can be given too much choice to handle, in which case they might make inappropriate choices in order to reduce the mental processing demanded. Clark (1983: 455) reviewed studies that indicated that:

. . . by mistake students choose those media carrying methods that inadvertently result in less learning for them… Higher ability students seem to like methods and media that they perceive as more structured and directive because they think they will have to invest less effort to achieve success. However, these more structured methods prevent higher ability students from employing their own considerable skills. Lower ability students seem to typically like less structured and more discovery-oriented methods and media. These more unstructured approaches offer the chance to invest less effort for the less able student who, on the other hand, actually needs the greater structure of the methods they like less.

As for adaptivity this is supposed to be a central feature of an elaboration of the above Tutorial Programs, the so called Intelligent Tutoring Systems, which derive from the field of Artificial Intelligence. These attempt to "model" the students by monitoring their responses, i.e. to infer what they know and don't know about the relevant domain and hence to decide which instructional action, if any, to take next (Ohlsson, 1991: 11).

However, the extent to which such packages can truly adapt their material to the individual learner is still limited: in the present state of the art, such adaptations have to be pre-emptive. Laurillard (1993) feels that the claims for ITS are overstated and that a "Tutorial Simulation" can achieve equivalent results.