Comparative Merits and Distinctive Teaching Functions of Different Media

J. Koumi

Context:
The author of this article describes distinctive ways in which video and TV can help learning occur. He also details purposes for TV and video in distance education that exploit their ability to convey realistic experiences.

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. 206-08.

Copyright:
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Item 1.1 inventory for TV/video: distinctive ways, to help learning

Cognitive objectives can be facilitated (or so it is intended by practitioners) through the eight media-distinctive techniques below, i.e. the techniques can be accomplished well only by a medium like TV which has diagrammatic and real-life moving pictures accompanied by sound effects and words.

Two of the techniques, illustrating and modelling, have been suggested by Salomon (1983). His third and major suggestion, supplantation, is incorporated in item (ii).

1. Composite-picture techniques, e.g. split screen and superimposition, can aid synthetic, analytic and discrimination skills. For example, split screen of a muscle contracting with a simultaneous moving graph of the muscle's electrical potential against time; or graphics superimposed onto geological structures to highlight how the strata are folded; or three-dimensional graphics grafted onto archaeological sites to recreate the original architecture.
   
   
2. Visual metaphors for abstract processes, e.g. specially concocted physical models and animations, in effect implanting the teacher's imagery into students' minds—thereby supplanting other, ineffectual mental processes, as in Salomon (1983). For example, the concept of 'iteration' can be portrayed with an animation in which the outputs of a procedure, the procedure pictured as a black box, are fed back repeatedly into the box to produce new outputs.

Salomon (1987) has demonstrated the educational power of simple symbolic metaphors, such as zooming or panning, reporting experiments in which:

better skilled students showed improved skill mastery when specific [symbolic] codes activated skills, those with poorer initial mastery showed evidence of code internalisation when the latter overtly supplanted the skill.

However, there have been no studies, to my knowledge, which have investigated more complex metaphors, at the level of the above animation example.

3. Modelling a dynamic process with a contrived, simplified version that encapsulates salient features (as in Salomon, 1983), e.g. through animation for chemistry, through dramatisation for sociology (such as dramatised enactment of parent-teenager interaction). The encapsulation of salient features hopefully primes students for the full process in later study.

A special type of modeling is the "artist's impression" (e.g.: through animation) of real-world processes that are impossible to view, e.g., submicroscopic processes, cross-sections of volcanic activity. Also, pre-historic processes, such as how the glacier cut through here.

4. Simulating variable situations/processes: changing the parameter values to explore various versions of the processes (e.g. through animation, drama), such as what would happen if the ceiling of the coal mine collapsed ahead of the men or behind them? or what would happen if the interviewee tried a variety of approaches? Also including hypothetical processes such as Exploring a Non-Enclidean Universe in which the axioms of geometry are varied.

The term 'simulation' is more often applied to computer simulations with learners in control of parameter variations. However, strictly speaking, these should be called 'interactive simulations'. These will be discussed later.

5. Illustrating abstract concepts with evocative, palpable real-world examples (as in Salomon, 1983), e.g. through documentary programmes, hence rendering the principles more tangible. In a similar vein, showing the application of abstract principles to real-world problems. (The print medium can of course use real-world examples, but lacks the realism of TV).
   
   
6. Condensing time by pruning real-world processes (i.e. editing out non-salient events), bringing the duration within the viewer's concentration span.
   
   
7. Demonstration by teacher or role-model of technical logical or social skills by handling equipment, symbols or people. The objective is for the student to achieve skills such as manipulating a home experiment kit, solving an equation, learning a foreign language.
   
   
8. Narrative power: precise control over what the learner experiences in pictures, sound effects and words (including intonation and phrasing), pacing and sequence, structured into an educationally digestible story. For example, an informal, personalised, but clear, coherent overview of disparate elements. The power derives from facilitating the viewer's total attention through incorporating educational narrative devices such as seeding, variable pacing to clarify meaning, allowing mental elbow room, creating picture-word synergy (Koumi, 1991). This power might be considered undesirable in light of the current ascendancy of learner-centred educational philosophy. However, despite the justification for this ascendancy, an essential ingredient of most learning situations is, surely, a clear exposition of the teacher's conception.

Item 1.2 inventory for TV and video: providing realistic experiences

Experiential objectives (various experiences) can be achieved (uniquely in most circumstances) by showing/documenting otherwise inaccessible:

1. places (e.g. factories, undersea, overseas locations)
2. viewpoints (e.g. aerial views, microscopy)
3. complex or large-scale technical processes or equipment, with synchronous sound
4. three dimensional objects: by moving the object or the camera and/or by the presenter's hand exploring the space
5. slow/fast motion (e.g. slow motion of animal actions, fast motion of cloud movement)
6. people, animals interacting, real-life or drama: e.g. interviewees' body language, tone of voice
7. real-world events (including the use or creation of archive film/audio)
8. dynamic change or movement
9. chronological sequence and duration (important in e.g. sequence and pacing of body language and pauses for interviewing skills, progress of chemical reactions, fluid dynamics)