The Role of Media and Technology in Education

* * * *

Chapter 3: The Role of Media and Technology
Bates, A.W. and Poole, G (2003). Effective teaching in higher education :Â foundations for success /Â Â San Francisco, Calif. :Â Jossey-Bass.
Keywords: Bates, Technology, Media, asynchronous, synchronous, medium, structure and organization of knowledge.
This reading is part of the Module Handbook of Educational Broadcasting.
In this chapter Bates discusses the roles of media and Technology he defines the concepts and links them to the educational field. He describes the nature of both concepts, their attributes and characteristics. As he explicitly says, the outcomes are based in his personal experience and a qualitative research. He used the Plato’s dialogue of Pheadrus to explain how writing was used as an educational technology vs. memorization.
He says we construct our knowledge by recurring to different ways of approaching the same phenomenon, such as reading about heat properties and touching something hot. Then he claims that face-to-face education is not better or worse than technology assisted learning, it is simply different. He goes over 5 primary types of educational media (Direct face-to-face, Text (including graphics), Analogue Audio, Analogue video, Digital multimedia) and he gives an explanation of asynchronous and synchronous technologies.
Useful quotes:

• In our view, speech, writing drama, radio and television programming, computer programming, and Web-based courses are all media, or more strictly, symbols systems that uniquely define specific media. Classrooms, books, theatres, cinemas, radio sets and transmitters, cable, satellites, television monitors, computers computer software and computer networks are all technologies. P48
• Technology are physical things … they do not communicate, Media however are means of communication. They require a source of information, a means of transmitting information (including symbol systems), and a receiver that is, someone who is interested in, has access to, and knows how to interpret the communication. P48
• Although there is usually an assumption that media will use technology of some kind for the means of transmission and communication, media may not be related necessarily to any specific technology. P49
• Indeed for deep understanding, we often need to learn in different ways about the same concept… In this context, more probably means better. The more ways we can learn about a subject or topic, the more deeply we are likely to understand. P51
  Learning through technology is not necessarily better or worse than face-to-face education; it is, though different. P51
• How media, however defined, can be used to facilitate knowledge-construction and meaning making on the part of the learner? P51
• The issue of the volume of information is also critical. P53
• Communication technologies are good for information transmission P54
• There is evidence that within a particular medium (such as video) certain technologies have educational advantages over others. For instance, in research at the British Open University, Bates (1984) and co-researchers, consistently found that students rated recorded formats (video-and audiocassettes) better for learning purposes than broadcast formats due to the extra control they had over when and how they could use the material. P58-59
• From an educational perspective, each medium represents the world in different ways P59
• We use the term multimedia to describe the combinations of text still graphics, animation, audio, and video within a simple technology, such as a computer or television. The value of multimedia is that it allows for the representation of knowledge in a variety of ways. Students can learn about abstract principles through text and see the application of those principles through an animation or a video example. This variety presents the opportunity for deeper levels of understanding particularly if the presentational qualities are fully and deliberately exploited to achieve this purpose and are combined with the potential for learner interaction. P60
• Interaction is a term frequently used to describe an advantage of computer based learning, but it is very rarely adequately defined or understood in an educational context. P68

Structure and Organization of Knowledge

• Hypertext structures
• Algorithmic structure
• Problem-Based structures
• Expert System Structures

For the prototype

• The instructor … might take a small videoclip illustrating a single concepts or principle and introduce the clip, comment on the clip as it is being played, then summarize the principles after the clip” P60
• A learning object is a reusable digital resource to support learning. P66

Thoughts

• Less is more in contents; and more is more in perception channels and ways technologies to present the media.
• Video messaging with cell phones like video clips is an asynchronous way of video conferencing

Alberto Ramirez Martinell