Media – Text

Strengths

Limitations

• Codification: knowledge can be consistently represented in some form.
• Transparency: the source of knowledge can be traced and verified.
• Reproduction: knowledge can be reproduced or have multiple copies.
• Communicability: knowledge is in a form such that it can be communicated and challenged by others.

• It lacks the expressiveness of speech. When speech is transcribed into text, it loses many of its unique qualities – tone, rhythm, pace and repetition.
• The cognitive demands of organising ideas into acceptable syntax, conventions, and presentational form can pose significant barriers to using text for expression among both novice and expert writers alike because we think in images or word fragments. Ideas float in and out of our heads—and rarely in a linear or conventional way.

Media – Audio

Strengths

Limitations

• It is much easier to make an audio clip or podcast than a video clip or a simulation.

• Requires less bandwidth hence downloads quicker and can be used over relatively low bandwidths.

• It is easily combined with other media such as text, mathematical symbols, and graphics.

• Some students prefer to learn by listening compared with reading.

• Audio combined with text can help develop literacy skills or support students with low levels of literacy.

• Audio-based learning is difficult for people with a hearing disability.

• Creating audio is extra work for an instructor.

• Audio is often best used in conjunction with other media such as text or graphics thus adding complexity to the design of teaching.

• Recording audio requires at least a minimal level of technical proficiency.

• Spoken language tends to be less precise than text.

Media – Video

Strengths

Limitations

• Links concrete events and phenomena to abstract principles and vice versa.

• Enables students to stop and start, so they can integrate activities with video.

• Provides an alternative to the presentation of content.

• Makes learning interesting by linking it to real world issues.

• Develops higher level intellectual skills and more practical skills needed in a digital age.
• The use of low cost cameras and free editing software enables some forms of video to be cheaply produced.

• Faculty lacking knowledge or experience in using video other than for recording lecturing.

• Limited high quality educational video available free for downloading due to the fact that developing high quality educational video is costly.

• Time consuming.

• To get the most out of educational video students need specially designed activities that often will have to sit outside the video itself.

• Students often reject videos that require them to do analysis or interpretation.

Media – Computing

Strengths

Limitations

• Can integrate the pedagogical characteristics of text, audio, video and computing.

• Are useful for teaching many of the digital age skills.

• Gives students more power and choice in accessing and creating their own learning and learning contexts.

• Enables direct interaction with learning materials.

• Enables regular and frequent communication between student, instructors and other students.

• Flexible – supports a wide range of teaching philosophies and approaches.

• Can help in tracking of student performance and thereby freeing up an instructor.

• Lack of training in and awareness on the advantages of computing as a teaching medium.

• The traditional user interface for computing, such as pull-down menus, cursor screen navigation, touch control, and an algorithmic-based filing or storage system, while all very functional, are not intuitive and can be quite restricting from an educational point of view.

• Voice recognition and search interfaces such as Siri and Alexa are an advance, and have potential for education.

• Despite computing’s power as a teaching medium, there are many aspects of teaching and learning that require direct interaction between a student and teacher – and between students – even or especially in a fully online environment.

• Computing needs the input and management of teachers and educators, and to some extent learners.

• To use computing well, teachers need to work closely with other specialists, such as instructional designers and computer scientists.

Media – Social Media

Strengths

Limitations

• Useful for developing key skills needed in a digital age.

• Enables teachers to set online group work, learners can post media-rich assignments either individually or as a group.

• These assignments when assessed can be loaded by the learner into their own personal learning environment or e-portfolios for later use when seeking employment or transfer to graduate school, learners can take more control over their own learning.

• Through the use of blogs and wikis, courses and learning can be thrown open to the world, adding richness and wider perspectives to learning.

• Students can be easily distracted.
• Posting inappropriate content may harm the school’s reputation.
• Students may find it hard to interact with each other if relying too much on social media.

Media

Presentation Characteristics

Text

• Text is particularly good at handling abstraction and generalisation, mainly through written language.
• Text enables the linear sequencing of information in a structured format, which enables the development of a coherent, sequential argument or discussion.
• Text can present and separate empirical evidence or data from the abstractions, conclusions or generalisations derived from the empirical evidence, and relate evidence to argument and vice versa
• Text’s recorded and permanent nature enables independent analysis and critique of its content.
• Still graphics such as graphs or diagrams enable knowledge to be presented differently from written language, either providing concrete examples of abstractions or offering a different way of representing the same knowledge.

Audio

Audio can present:

• Spoken language (including foreign languages) for analysis or practice.

• Music, either as a performance or for analysis.

• Students with a condensed argument that may:
  • reinforce points made elsewhere in the course;
  • introduce new points not made elsewhere in the course;
  • provide an alternative viewpoint to the perspectives in the rest of the course;
  • analyse or critique materials elsewhere in the course;
  • summarise or condense the main ideas or major points covered in the course.

• Provide new evidence in support of or against the arguments or perspectives covered elsewhere in the course;
  • interviews with leading researchers or experts;
  • discussion between two or more people to provide various views on a topic;
  • primary audio sources;
  • analysis of primary audio sources, by playing the source followed by analysis;
  • ‘breaking news’ that emphasises the relevance or application of concepts within the course;
  • the instructor’s personal spin on a topic related to the course.

Video

Video can be used to:

• Demonstrate experiments or phenomena, particularly:
  • where equipment or phenomena to be observed are large, microscopic, expensive, inaccessible, dangerous, or difficult to observe without special equipment;
  • where resources are scarce, or unsuitable for student experimentation (e.g. live animals, human body parts);
  • where the experimental design is complex (for example, testing whether wild sharks are more attracted to blood than fish oil)
  • where there is an element of risk or danger in conducting the experiment;
  • where the experimental behaviour may be influenced by uncontrollable but observable variables.

• Illustrate principles involving dynamic change or movement.

• Illustrate abstract principles through the use of specially constructed physical models, for instance an animation of a normal curve of distribution.

• Illustrate principles involving three-dimensional space.

• Demonstrate changes over time through the use of animation, slow-motion, or speeded-up video.

• Demonstrate correct procedures in health, safety, repairs and maintenance.

• Substitute for a field visit, by:
  • providing students with an accurate, comprehensive visual picture of a site, in order to place the topic under study in context;
  • demonstrating the relationship between different elements of a system under study
  • identifying and distinguishing between different classes or categories of phenomena at the site (e.g. in forest ecology);
  • observing differences in scale and process between laboratory and mass production techniques;
  • using models, animations or simulations, to teach certain advanced scientific or technological concepts without students having to master highly advanced mathematical techniques; see for instance ‘Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Made Easy.’

• Bring students primary resource or case-study material, i.e. recording of naturally occurring events which, through editing and selection, demonstrate or illustrate principles covered elsewhere in a course.

• Demonstrate ways in which abstract principles or concepts developed elsewhere in the course have been applied to real-world problems.

• Synthesise a wide range of variables into a single recorded event, e.g. to suggest how real world problems can be resolved;

• Demonstrate decision-making processes or decisions ‘in action’ by:
  • recording the decision-making process as it occurs in real contexts;
  • recording ‘staged’ simulations, dramatisation or role-playing,

• Demonstrate correct procedures in using tools or equipment (including safety procedures);

• Demonstrate methods or techniques of performance (e.g. mechanical skills such as stripping and re-assembling a carburetor, sketching, drawing or painting techniques, or dance);

• Record and archive events that are crucial to topics in a course, but which may disappear or be destroyed in the near future, such as, for instance, street graffiti or condemned buildings;

• Demonstrate practical activities to be carried out by students, on their own.

Computing

Computing can:

• create and present original teaching content in a rich and varied way (using a combination of text, audio, video and webinars);

• enable access to other sources of secondary ‘rich’ content through the internet;

• enable students to communicate both synchronously and asynchronously with the instructor and other students;

• structure and manage content through the use of web sites, learning management systems, video servers, and other similar technologies;

• create virtual worlds or virtual environments/contexts through technology such as animations, simulations, augmented or virtual reality, and serious games;

• set multiple-choice tests, automatically mark such tests, and provide immediate feedback to learners;

• enable learners digitally to submit written (essay-type), or multimedia (project-based) assignments through the use of e-portfolios.

Social Media

Social media enable:

• networked multimedia communication between self-organising groups of learners;

• access to rich, multimedia content available over the internet at any time or place, as long as there is a suitable internet connection;

• learner-generated multimedia materials;

• opportunities to expand learning beyond ‘closed’ courses and institutional boundaries.

Media

Skills

Text

• Suitable for independent analysis and critique.

• Useful for developing the higher learning outcomes required at an academic level, such as analysis, critical thinking, and evaluation.

Audio

• Enables students (through repetition and practice – recording) to master certain auditory skills or techniques (e.g. language pronunciation, analysis of musical structure, mathematical computation).

• Gets students to analyse primary audio sources, such as children’s use of language, or attitudes to immigration from recordings of interviewed people.

• Helps teach the right attitudes by presenting material:
  • in a novel or unfamiliar perspective;
  • in a dramatised form.

Video

• Enables students to recognise phenomena or classifications (e.g. classroom teaching strategies, symptoms of mental illness, classroom behaviour) in context.

• Enables students to analyse a situation, using principles either introduced in the video recording or covered elsewhere in the course, such as a textbook or lecture; for example, possible raw material on managing domestic violence.

• Interpreting artistic performance e.g. drama, spoken poetry, movies, paintings, sculpture, or other works of art.

• Analysis of music composition, through the use of musical performance, narration and graphics.

• Testing the applicability or relevance of abstract concepts or generalisations in real world contexts.

• Looking for alternative explanations for real world phenomena.

Computing

Computing can be used to:

• develop and test student comprehension of content;

• develop computer coding and other computer-based skills;

• develop decision-making skills through the use of digitally-based simulations and/or virtual worlds;

• develop skills of reasoning, evidence-based argument, and collaboration through instructor moderated online discussion forums;

• enable students to create their own artefacts/online multimedia work through the use of e portfolios, thus improving their digital communication skills;

• develop skills of experimental design, through the use of simulations, virtual laboratory equipment and remote labs;

• develop skills of knowledge management and problem-solving, by requiring students to find, analyse, evaluate and apply content, accessed through the Internet, to real world problems;

• develop spoken and written language skills through both presentation of language and communication with other students and/or native language speakers;

• collect data on end-user/student interactions with computer and associated equipment such as mobile phones and tablets for: learning analytics, adaptive learning, assessment, automated or human feedback.

Social Media

Social media can be used for:

• digital literacy;

• independent and self-directed learning;

• collaboration/collaborative learning/teamwork;

• internationalisation/development of global citizens;

• networking and other inter-personal skills;

• knowledge management;

• decision-making in specific contexts.