In case you’re wondering, people are spending more time in front of more screens as sources of information and entertainment. Research conducted at Ball State University used a novel combination of technologies to monitor and measure the media Americans are using and for what purposes.
The data followed 476 participants and resulted in 952 observed days of recorded media usage. The study takes an unbiased look at what technologies Americans are using and does not delve into effects of particular media. The Video Consumer Mapping Study, as it is called, noted some surprising findings:
TV users were exposed to, on average, 72 minutes per day of TV ads and promos—dispelling a commonly held belief that modern consumers are channel-hopping or otherwise avoiding most of the advertising in the programming they view.
Despite the proliferation of computers, video-capable mobile phones, and similar devices, TV in the home still commands the greatest amount of viewing, even among those ages 18-24; thus, in the eyes of the researchers, appearing to dispute a common belief that Internet video and mobile phone video exposure among that group (and the next one up, ages 25-34) were sizeable in 2008.
Rather than young people and retirees, consumers in the 45-54 age group average the most daily screen time, just over 9½ hours. The average for all other age groups is strikingly similar at roughly 8½ hours—although the composition and duration of devices used by the groups during the day varied.
Even in major metropolitan areas where commute times can be long and drive-time radio remains popular, computing has replaced radio as the No. 2 media activity. Radio is now No. 3 and print media fourth.
Contrary to some recent popular media coverage suggesting that more Americans are rediscovering “free TV” via the Internet, computer video tends to be quite small with an average time of just two minutes (a little more than 0.5 percent) a day.
Early DVR owners spent much more time with DVR playback than newer DVR owners. At the same time, DVR playback was even more likely than live TV to be the sole medium.
“Environmental” exposure outside the home, while still relatively small at just 2.8 percent of total video consumption today, could nearly double during the next few years.
A tables of results for “Average Daily Minutes of Media Consumption: Means Including Zero” can be found here.
Although I find that teaching the history of a subject is often a big help in understanding its present state, recent reseach from Amsterdam suggests that using illustrations (drawings and diagrams) in the teaching of history might have no positive effect on learning. Dr Maaike Prangsma and associates looked at the effectiveness of using various illustrations in the teaching of history and found that no discernible differences could be found in test results between illustrated and plain text presentations immediately after the instruction was delivered or six weeks later. Interestingly, the students did say that on the whole the graphics made the learning easier, leading investigators to conclude that the illustrations might enhance the efficiency of the training. The British Psychological Society’s report on the study claims that:
“The key finding was that the nature of the learning task made no difference to learning outcomes. The plain text version appeared to be just as effective as the versions involving a diagram, drawings, or combination of the two. The researchers were surprised by this result and offered a number of possible explanations. For example, perhaps the initial text on the fall of the Roman Empire was so effective it undermined any possible differential effects from the learning tasks. Or perhaps graphics aid science learning because there are clear rules about what different signs and symbols mean, whereas history lacks these conventions and the students therefore didn’t know how to use the visual aids.”
In agreement with a basic philosophical tenet underlining this blog, the authors of the study concur that garnering a positive appreciation of the subject matter presented is not to be ignored:
“The goal of educational motivation is not only to make learning more efficient … or effective … but also to make learning more pleasant such that the affective learning experience is more satisfying and learners will want to learn more.”
Further information concerning this study can be found in rewiew here.
Prangsma, M., van Boxtel, C., Kanselaar, G., & Kirschner, P. (2009). Concrete and abstract visualizations in history learning tasks. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 79 (2), 371-387 DOI: 10.1348/000709908X379341
The University is doomed. At least from some accounts. Recent articles and blog posts claim that both educational consumers and producers have deep concerns over the state of its health and projected longevity. For example:
What seems clear from all this discussion is that life in electronic world has shifted the ways in which we learn, teach, work and relate to one another, and these ways are not reflected in the mainstream educational institutions that presently exist.
Naturally the roles played by the University are varied. David Wiley at “Hacking Education” by Union Square Ventures offered five basic components of a college or University:
Content provisioning
Research – conducted, archived, disseminated
Help provided to a student with a question on content
Social life
Issuing credentials
Note these might just as well be extended to the high school or the entire K-12 educational system as most points overlap secondary and college systems. A point of departure among students and critics (often unspoken) is that most or all of these essential services can be gotten from outside formal schools. Once upon a time there was a notion that schools centralized scarce information and formed a focus or concentration of knowledge that modern learners no longer regard as necessary or true. To a modern learner the “information is out there” all around us. What they need are tools and techniques for harnessing, interpreting and applying ubiquitous information.
The discussion about how education must or will change in light of the modern electronic environment goes back quite a few years. A casual glance at Marshall McLuhan‘s writings on education will turn up articles and interviews from over forty years ago. One such article co-authored with George Leonard for LOOK Magazine (Feb. 21, 1967) is titled “The Future of Education: The Class of 1989.” With the exception of professorial tenure, McLuhan and Leonard address the same points that current writers wrestle with:
Schools are preparing students for a world that no longer exists.
Classrooms have not changed substantially over the last century.
Mass education is a product of the mechanical age and the production line.
Education was designed to slow and control the processes of personal growth and change.
Students are furnished with rigid and isolated “bodies of knowledge.”
Competition is the chief motive force in mass education.
The lecture system, the “…least effective [mode] ever devised by man, served well enough in an age that demanded only a specified fragment of each human being’s whole abilities.”
New technologies are not as central to tomorrow’s schooling as are new roles for student and teacher.
There will no distinction between work and play as the student will be totally involved.
The main work of the future will be education.
The University will become an integral part of the community offering degrees of “membership” corresponding to varied levels of participation.
Given the essential and ongoing nature of education to the modern learner (or consumer) certain changes in approach can be expected:
The learning process must be interactive or two-way.
Learning styles must be taken into consideration.
Standardized one-size-fits-all courses are out. Same for tests and evaluations.
The University (read: curriculum or degree program) should not have walls.
Learning should be asynchronous.
Courses must be timely, relevant and engaging.
Failure is part of the learning feedback loop; not an end of the process.
Responsibility for learning will be shifted away from the student and towards the instructor or institution.
Portfolios are more important than letter grades.
Certifications are static and local and therefore have little lasting value.
There are several compelling reasons why we can expect consumers to prevail over the Universities and win these changes. First, students are coming to school steeped in electronic communications media and want to continue learning as they live, with full involvement. They will not accept that they have to “power down” to go to class. Educators will have to embrace new methods and techniques if they are to engage modern learners. Michael Wesch is a good example of a university teacher who accepted the challenge with his classes at Kansas State University only to write a new chapter in undergraduate pedagogy.
Secondly, education is expensive. The current average cost of a private university in the US is about $25,000.00 a year and is growing faster than inflation or medical care. Several generations of Americans have been to college since the Second World War and have grown to accept that in most cases a degree or two are essential to membership in the middle class. That said, these same middle class folks are also steeped in the most commercially oriented culture in history and are now becoming more consumer oriented concerning education. Part of this consumer oriented pressure will be in the direction of getting an education that fits their goals and lifestyles. Already we have seen the rise of non-traditional online Universities that focus on older students already in the workforce. No doubt others will rise to furnish the needs of other groups. If the Universities don’t change, students will vote with their feet (and checkbooks).
One other factor that is influencing modern students’ perception of the University is cultural, verging on mythological. Many top business/media/technology leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Michael Dell do not have college degrees. This sends a powerful, if silent, message to many. Consider the story of Rob Kalin at “Hacking Education” mentioned above:
“I graduated high school with a D minus average. …My guidance counselor said ‘drop out of high school, you’ll have an easier time getting into college if you just get a GED.’ I [decided] to graduate with this D minus and see what it does for me. I didn’t get into any accredited school . I got into a diploma program in an art school in Boston, and it was near MIT. … I used the art school to make a fake ID to go to MIT. Someone said [college is] expensive. I said no, it’s free, you just won’t get credit for it.”
“Today, no one is going to ask Rob for his college transcript. His credentials are the companies he has created.”
Researcher Stephen Mahar of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and his colleagues have tested the effect of routine garden-variety animations on the learning of new concepts. Often used by presenters and designers in classrooms and training sessions, these stock slide show animations commonly found in programs like PowerPoint might have a negative effect on student learning.
The team used two versions of a presentation prepared in Microsoft PowerPoint, one with animation, the other without. Students were shown one version of the presentation and tested for comprehension and recall. Apparently, recall of static graphics was much better resulting in higher test scores among the group using non-animated presentation. There are some questions concerning what precisely was being animated (that is, why was animation employed?) and what was the nature of the animation? Further, Mahar et al. go on to suggest that the animation acted as a distraction rather than an enhancement given the nature of the material being presented (factual and “incremental”). Mahar and et. conclude that although the animations were received well by the audience, the benefit to learning is not only missing, it is counter-productive.
The researchers caution that the study evaluated teaching new concepts and it is possible that training more akin to a procedure, method or technique might prove a better match for animated graphics. A follow-up study is planned.
A report of this study is published in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning (“The dark side of custom animation” in Int. J. Innovation and Learning, 2009, 6, 581-592 ). See also: “Less is More When Developing PowerPoint Animations.”
Designers and authors of educational materials are constantly in need of quality content for presentations and courses. Given the ease with which media can be “borrowed” and used in courseware, the question of what is acceptable to use in a document or web site comes up frequently among designers and managers. Although it is not acceptable to use copyrighted materials without appropriate licensing from the author, the Creative Commons license does allow creative media to be shared and used in many educational applications. From the Creative Commons About page:
CreativeCommonsis a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.
Look for the Creative Commons license. View this introductory video to get a better idea of what Creative Commons is and how to use it as both a consumer and producer of digital media.
Garr Reynolds is in the throes of a new book titled “presentation zen DESIGN” due out at the end of the year. It follows on a previous title “presentation zen” and drills down deeper into material specifically related to visual communication. From his blog post:
“For many of us, there is a hole in our education when it comes to communicating visually, and knowledge of even the basics of graphic design is missing for most people. This book intends to do its small part to help fix this problem by focusing on concrete graphic design principles and techniques in the context of presentation design, though the concepts and knowledge can be applied to other areas of one’s professional life. This book is a deeper exploration of the Design section of PZ (chapters 5-7). The underlying guiding principles are the same — restraint, simplicity, and naturalness — but this time applied strictly to visual communication in general and graphic design in particular. My aim is to help the non-designer become a bit more savvy of a visual thinker and to give him or her the tools and understanding to apply this knowledge in concrete, practical ways immediately in presentations (and beyond).”
Reynold’s work should be required reading for anyone who teaches or gives talks with PowerPoint and the like. His emphasis on clarity, simplicity and naturalness is a balm to the tired soul deluged by dreary stacks of slides that drone on in endless succession.
The author also requests suggestions, stories and examples from his readers. Please write to Garr Reynolds at this address with suggestions for “presentation zen DESIGN.”
Commenting on the popular rise of collaborative technologies in higher education, Richard Miller of Rutgers University illustrates the effects that group communications media are playing on the development of creative writing and written expression. He goes on to speak about the role of “collaborative composition” in creative writing and its place in the proposed Center for the New Humanities at Rutgers University. From the presentation:
The most significant change in human expression in human history.
We are no longer grounded in the printing press.
We now live in this Read/Write world.
We have imagined a space where students can work on multimedia composition.
You have to excel in the use and manipulation of images.
This is all building towards a larger vision that involves re-imagining the Humanities for the 21st Century.
One of my pet rants is that good design matter, even for training materials. Well designed tools don’t just delight the eye they function better, adding efficiency to their purpose. The problem, however, is that design is often taken as extraneous and unnecessary by development managers, instructional designers and other business people who see it as “eye candy.”
Psychologist and author Donald Norman has a post on this issue and attempts to remedy the situation at Northwestern University:
Terry Winograd of Stanford’s computer science department and d.school wrote a very nice description of our new Design + Operations MMM program at the Kellogg School of Business and Northwestern Engineering. That article is available in Interactions, the magazine for Human Computer Interaction professionals.
The essence of successful interactive products is not just the interaction an end user has with the product, but with the whole range of operations that make that interaction work.
Norman goes on to say that Jimmy Guterman at O’Reilly Radar Group reviews the program in a post titled “Teaching Design to Business People.” A copy of the Winograd article in PDF format can be gotten here: p44-winograd.
A recent research effort from scholars at the University of Minnesota concludes that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook do have a positive effect on learning and can foster creativity:
The study found that, of the students observed, 94 percent used the Internet, 82 percent go online at home and 77 percent had a profile on a social networking site. When asked what they learn from using social networking sites, the students listed technology skills as the top lesson, followed by creativity, being open to new or diverse views and communication skills.
The study supports findings by teachers using Web 2.0 technologies in class who report that often students do not know how to use social media for educational purposes:
Interestingly, researchers found that very few students in the study were actually aware of the academic and professional networking opportunities that the Web sites provide. Making this opportunity more known to students, Greenhow said, is just one way that educators can work with students and their experiences on social networking sites.
The report goes on to cite that findings of a “digital divide” between low-income students and others might be overstated:
The study also goes against previous research from Pew in 2005 that suggests a “digital divide” where low-income students are technologically impoverished. That study found that Internet usage of teenagers from families earning $30,000 or below was limited to 73 percent, which is 21 percentage points below what the U of M research shows.
Further information on the findings can be found here.
I am a big fan of Media Literacy, not only because it helps as a consumer of media but also because it aids in the production of efficient communications. If you know the sensory bias of medium you can better match it to an application.
Not surprisingly educators and trainers have become more aware of the varieties of media experiences in which their students routinely participate and learn through in their daily lives. The degree to which average people in North America acquire information through non-literate media can be shockingly high, leading many to conclude that the benchmark of phonetic literacy as the leading indicator of what it means to be literate may have to be augmented for the post-literate age we live in.
The Media Awareness Network is a good resource for parents and educators looking to manage and promote media literacy. One of their working definitions of media literacy is:
Media literacy is the ability to sift through and analyze the messages that inform, entertain and sell to us every day. It’s the ability to bring critical thinking skills to bear on all media— from music videos and Web environments to product placement in films and virtual displays on NHL hockey boards. It’s about asking pertinent questions about what’s there, and noticing what’s not there. And it’s the instinct to question what lies behind media productions— the motives, the money, the values and the ownership— and to be aware of how these factors influence content.
Media education encourages a probing approach to the world of media: Who is this message intended for? Who wants to reach this audience, and why? From whose perspective is this story told? Whose voices are heard, and whose are absent? What strategies does this message use to get my attention and make me feel included?
In our world of multi-tasking, commercialism, globalization and interactivity, media education isn’t about having the right answers—it’s about asking the right questions. The result is lifelong empowerment of the learner and citizen.
The Ontario Public School Board has a note on their web site about what they see as the emerging issues surrounding the new media and the future of the classroom. In it they mention:
“Today’s students are leaders in the use of technology and we know they want their learning experiences in school to reflect this,” said Colleen Schenk, president of OPSBA. “Students want to take the technology they use in their daily lives and integrate it with how they learn. They want their learning clearly connected to the world beyond the school.”
They go on to say:
Many students feel, however, that when they come into school they have to “power down” to fit into an environment that offers fewer options for learning than are available in the life they live outside of the school. This can erode students’ perceptions of the relevance of education as they experience it in many schools today. At the same time, students need the guidance and leadership of their teachers in judging the authenticity and worth of the information so readily available to them.
What seems clear is that instructional designers and trainers need to do several things to further the use of media in continuing education:
Educate learners about the biases and limitations of media.
Show participants how to use new media for learning.
Develop the skills to master and employ new media in training programs so that participants want to take part in the training and get value from it.
PowerPoint slides and printed Student Guides alone are no longer sufficient. We should not be asking our students to “power down” to come to class. We need recognize that for the most part people today are learning all the time and we must work to make it easier and more efficient when they come to us for the formal experience. Far too often the opposite is the case.
