Textbook Authorship

Pedagogy for Media Assets-1

A year has passed since my last post, I see. Where did the time go? I think I got side-tracked by new opportunities and another career/life-changing transformation, which I seem to undertake every 5 to 7 years (for better or worse). In my last post I promised to discuss finding media assets and endowing them with pedagogy, and this has become especially relevant for me now as I develop more online courses. I have 3 days to catch up on posting before I begin a new contract--so here goes.

First, a clarification of terms. In education, pedagogy refers to teaching, especially instructional strategies. In educational publishing, the term extends to any material that supports subject content, especially material that aids learners in discovering, acquiring, or mastering that content. The material may be on the page (in the textbook) and/or in ancillaries or supplements (in the textbook package).

Textbook pedagogy may include, for example, overviews, outlines, focus questions, headings, key terms, summaries, figures, tables, images, illustrations, cartoons, captions, summaries, review questions, applications, bibliographies, timelines, marginalia, any material especially selected to be set off from narrative text (e.g., boxes), and so on. Pedagogical material that accompanies the text in a supplement or on a web site might be questions or assignments or problem sets in a reader, workbook, or lab manual; practice tests; study guide; slides; animations; links; video; software applications, etc.

Whatever model of learning you prefer, interactivity is implicit in the concept of pedagogy, as an extension of the relationship and communication between teachers and students. I think this implicit interactivity is the principal reason that the Internet has so rapidly become the place where education takes place. The Internet is a natural fit, a true home, a global classroom for teaching and learning for the constructivist and the objectivist, and the Socratic and the didact, alike.

Publishers use the term media asset to refer to digitized text, still images, moving images, sound files, hyperlinks, and user interface capabilities (such as mouseover, drag and drop, poll, chat, email, etc.) that can function pedagogically (can teach). Thus, media assets are pedagogical devices that can be digitized and delivered electronically or online. To function as pedagogical devices, media assets must be chosen and illuminated by people with content knowledge working in an educator role. You must write the question, activity, assignment, or annotation that will transform a media asset into a learning experience or learning object.

For example, the pedagogy for a chapter in a history textbook may include maps, drawn to spec and digitized. Your map specs might include instructions for an interactive key (different colors will show the extent of successive Bantu migrations, for example) or for an animation (moving lines will show the dispersal of groups at different times). The key and animation must address or help to satisfy a learning objective for the chapter (e.g., After reading this chapter, students will identify and trace the waves of Bantu migration, explain the push-pull factors that caused the migrations, and summarize their impacts on the history of sub-Saharan Africa). The map thus appears as a static image (art) in the text and as an interactive image (media asset) on a CD or web site.

But wait! To have pedagogical value, the interactivity must mean more than just being able to learn from manipulating the object. The mind of the learner must be engaged to relate the experience to the concepts and facts expressed in the text in aid of the learning objective. How will this engagement take place? Questioning is by far the most popular pedagogical device used in such a case. The student answers questions about the media asset, relating it to the instructional content, gets answers and answer feedback, and perhaps follows up with an online search or a reading or a discussion or a problem to solve or a hypothesis to test, and so on.

E.g., What dates did the Bantu migrations shown on the map span? What two paths did the first wave of migration take? How did physical and cultural geography affect the spread of the first migrants and subsequent migrations What was the overall extent of spread, and what push-pull factors account for this spread? What impacts did the Bantu migrations have on indigenous peoples? Etc.

So, finding or creating a media asset and endowing that asset with pedagogical value are two different functions that together invite both interactivity and engagement. Together they are greater than the media asset per se, as they embrace the broader intended learning. For example, aside from the specific geographic information your map reinforces, the concept of push-pull factors transfers to other migrations on other continents among other peoples at other times. Your map activity has pedagogical value to the extent that it encourages learners to question or apply this concept.

Labels: academic writing, educational publishing, instruction, Internet, learning object, media assets, open education, pedagogical value, pedagogy, teaching

posted by Mary Ellen Lepionka @ 2:07 PM