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
New Business Models in Textbook Publishing
Digitization, the online delivery of instructional materials, the used book business, the rise of self-publishing, and the open access movement collectively are fundamentally changing the world of higher education textbook publishing. Many are asking, how can the college textbook business remain profitable for both authors and publishers? Authors stand to lose out on advances and royalties, not to mention losing intellectual property. And to survive, publishers must find ways to provide low-cost instructional materials while competing with free online sources and the used textbook market.
Depending on their mission and commitment to a traditional publishing model, publishers' responses have included divesting themselves of their higher education divisions, becoming online rather than print publishers, licensing textbooks to institutions as part of course management software, and slicing and dicing their backlists to provide free or low-cost course content. Solutions also have included a "pay-per-view" approach, selling textbooks by the chapter, and a consortium approach, in which a group of publishers shares a website for retail sales where customers can buy textbooks or mix and match textbook content from a variety of publishing houses.
Publishers' dollars that once went into textbook development and design are now going into web site development, content delivery software, and online marketing. Job boards in the publishing industry now call for workers filling new job categories like the following (from Publishers Lunch, publishersmarketplace.com): online editor, digital workflow associate, digital manager, digital analyst, electronic media editor, online marketing manager, digital publisher, digital community builder, web producer, and digital business developer. Many big houses now offer advances only for projects with the greatest projections of sales revenue, and royalty schedules are kept at the lowest until a book breaches high sales benchmarks. Publishers also increasingly require that authors pay back advances that don't earn out, and books that merely break even are not revised (i.e., get the axe).
What can authors do to continue to derive income from textbooks they have written? They can try to keep their textbook alive in online revisions and adapt or provide content for companion web sites or other digital supplements. They can try to negotiate electronic rights separately from print (and good luck to them). If they get back the right to their existing textbook, they can parse and repurpose text to sell as instructional content. They can self-publish the work as an e-textbook and sell it online. And they can use their existing work as the basis for constructing a new interactive online course that institutions or students pay for. These latter solutions essentially put authors in competition with publishers. How's that for a paradigm shift!
Finally, authors can give away their textbooks or supplements or other content for free online and make money on collateral goods. Some online textbook sites, for example, offer royalties for downloads or print copies ordered or for homework site subscriptions. Some repositories offer to pay for the exclusive or nonexclusive use of content. Some authors offer some content for free on their web sites and deliver other content by paid subscription, or offer fee-based teleseminars, webcasts, or consultations. Thus, though it seems counterintuitive, the irresistible open access movement toward free textbooks is actually suggesting new ways to make money.
In my next posts I will explore those new ways and how authors can repurpose existing text and construct original digital textbooks.
Labels: business models, digitization, e-textbooks, Mary Ellen Lepionka, online textbooks, open access textbooks, textbook publishing
Online Courses, Continued
No, I haven't abandoned my blog--just a very busy spell when I could not make time for it.
I was talking about online course development and have expanded my studies on this topic in preparation for participating in the 2008 convention of the Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA) in Las Vegas, June 19-21. On Saturday I will be in a publisher's Q&A roundtable and also will be giving a presentation on the future of textbooks (e.g., how textbook authors can continue to make money in the digital world of free online content). I also signed up for some 15-minute mentoring sessions with textbook authors on Friday. On Thursday I look forward to attending Michael Spiegler's workshop on writing a textbook. Michael has used my book as a text (Writing and Developing Your College Textbook, 2nd Edition, Atlantic Path Publishing 2008). TAA is a great resource for textbook authors and editors (www.taaonline.net).
Topics for my mentoring sessions cover standard areas in textbook publishing, such as writing a prospectus, finding the right publisher, the publishing cycle and process, textbook organization and headings, apparatus and pedagogy, working with co-authors and editors, and doing revisions. My presentation/discussion focuses on the online environment for instructional materials, however, and is called "Textbook 2.0" (at a TAA member's apt suggestion). The deeper I go into this subject, the more I find out, and the more questions arise--an exciting prospect as I love both the research and the puzzle. I look forward to writing and speaking on this and learning even more.
As it happens I have also been developing online courses for clients, learning by doing and thus discovering both limitations and ways to get outside the box. I've also discovered how expensive it can be to have software written for online course platforms and applications. I don't know much at all about that, as my involvement has been on the soft side, with content, using templates. I have not even had to learn a markup language (html or xml). I think I would like to do that anyway, though, as soon as I get a chance. There seem to be many good tutorials online, e.g., at www.killersites.com.
One platform you can check out without commitment and at no cost is the beta at www.utilium.com. [Disclosure: I am listed as a partner in that venture (though I'm only a consultant and not a legal partner or an investor).] In any case, I think Utilium and sites like it hold a lot of promise for instructor-led development of high-quality custom course content that can be sold or shared, as desired, without permissions problems, but with the full potential of the World Wide Web and, hopefully, the interactive user interfaces of social networking.
I look forward to sharing on this blog more of what I learn about the future of textbooks in a digital world.
Labels: e-learning, e-textbooks, Mary Ellen Lepionka, online courses, online textbooks, text and academic authors, Textbook 2.0, Utilium, writing and developing your college textbook
Providing Pedagogy
In addition to narrative context, the learning objects and media assets in an interactive online textbook need pedagogy--devices or elements that are not part of the narrative and are not in the link per se but that teach about the content and are useful or essential to the learning process or otherwise help students achieve the learning objectives. Minimum pedagogy would consist of learning objectives--what students should know, think, do, and/or feel after completing the module--and a system of headings to structure the scope and sequence and relative salience of the content.
Pedagogy also may include a systematic way to begin and end each module, links to definitional glosses, contextual or historical asides, bibliographic or reference annotations, graphic organizers, chronologies, expository captions for photos and art, questions or problem sets, interim reviews, and examples or applications. The pedagogy you provide may reside on your computer as files to which your course is hyperlinked. Pedagogical elements that hyperlinks themselves provide may include, for example, case studies, profiles, research studies, news reports, or journal articles with thematic content. However the links have pedagogical value to the learner only to the extent that learners are given opportunities to interact with the content and assess their grasp and use of it.
Thus, a link to a document describing ground-breaking research would have pedagogical value to the extent that you frame questions about it (or guide learners in framing questions) and to the extent that you suggest answers to those questions (or provide ways for students to interact to find answers). At the least, you would ask or test why the research was ground-breaking and what knowledge it discovered, expanded, or overturned.
One consequence of providing pedagogy in online contexts is that textbook supplements for students--such as test questions and study guide material--may become integrated into the course rather than provided as separate publications. These components, too, enhance the pedagogical value of online courses.
Labels: e-textbooks, hyperlinks, learning objectives, learning objects, media assets, online courses, online textbooks, pedagogy, writing and developing your college textbook, writing narrative
Providing Narrative Context
To me nothing is worse than finding an online course whose assets are merely listed topically. In that case the classification of information provides the only clue to discovering meaning or learning the content. A proper outline is not just a list of topics; it is a system of conceptualization that organizes topics by meaningful terms, degree of importance, and level of specificity--a roadmap for comprehension in the learning process. More than that, even a proper outline is not enough. There needs to be a narrative context.
Narrative context is provided in complete sentences built into paragraphs, telling the story of what it is we are to learn and why. Each asset should have a narrative introducing it, followed by narrative that links it coherently to the next asset in the sequence. Thus the same requirement for print textbooks--that there be transitions--applies no less to electronic textbooks and course packs. Brief annotations identifying the subject of a video or the title of a document, etc., does not constitute narrative context.
Even with a wealth of essentially non-text online visual stimuli, to learn anything at any level of sophistication, students still have to read.
Permissioning Online Resources
Getting permission to use or link to online content is still a gray area in copyright law and application. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf) confirms that you must request permission to use anything you find online that is protected by copyright law, unless a grant of release appears with the material. In that case the author or copyright holder of the published material has authorized its use. A notice may appear such as, "Permission is granted for teachers and students to copy and use this content so long as no fee is charged and this web site is cited as the source". Not all material is protected, nevertheless, including facts, ideas, methods, works in the public domain, many government documents, and so on. Clear explanations of "public domain" may be found online.
The best explanation I have found for determining if you need permission is published by the University of Texas at www.utsystem.edu/ogc/Intellectualproperty/COPYPOL2.HTM. That site also has a clear explanation of the four tests for fair use. Basically, if you are using a lot of original material commercially (online or in print) in such a way that the value of the material to its owner or creator will potentially be diminished, then you must have written permission. Educational use is not fair use if money is involved. For example, if students have to pay for your coursepack or online course, then you must make sure that everything in it is permissioned or falls into the public domain or is defensible as fair use on other grounds.
It used to be that we were supposed to request permission to link to another site before doing so. That practice has been found to be largely unenforceable, however, and is contrary to basic web architecture, which distributes information via hyperlinks. Although link requests increasingly are viewed as a mere nicety, the nuances are still being tested (or threatened) in court cases on trademark infringement. In your online course, use hyperlinks to direct students to other sources of information or media assets, taking care to link to the home page rather than internal pages that may be viewed as more proprietary. Importing hyperlinked material into your web site is another matter, however, and in that case the rules for permissioning apply.
Another gray area is the use of social networking sites to gather information for publication. Private speech is protected, but defining privacy on social sites is troublesome. I recently advised an author to incorporate a waiver into his online questionnaire such that people understand that responding to the questionnaire automatically grants release for him to use it as he sees fit without further consideration to them. I also advised him that the speech of minors is extra-protected and he must have written permission from parents regardless. Also, email is protected speech, and making speech anonymous does not necessarily protect against privacy infringement.
I am not an attorney, though, and my advice cannot substitute for the real thing (which can be found at reasonable cost). My own policy (erring on the side of caution, perhaps) is always to cite sources, include credit lines, observe terms of use (and publish my own), and seek authorization or ask permission whenever I have any doubt.
Labels: copyright law, fair use, hyperlinks, online courses, online textbooks, permissions, public domain
Finding and Choosing Media Assets
In my last post I discussed how to develop a shell for your online course--the structure and conceptual framework for the course you want to teach. You have your units, modules, and headings, along with learning objectives for each module and section in your outline. Now, finding the right media assets to plug into your online course shell is part art and part the luck of discovery.
Recall that media assets include web sites, documents, podcasts, audio files, webcasts, videos, animations, photos, other images, or any of a host of specific files, such as maps or graphics. The best way to find these assets is to start with links you already know or that have been recommended to you by colleagues, and those that are available through your institution, such as library subscriptions to online resources. Then move on to the keyword or key phrase search, preferably trying a variety of search engines.
Evaluating assets for inclusion in your course should be based on the following criteria:
1) Does it directly advance the learner's potential ability to fulfill the stated learning objective for that topic or section? Is the content at the right intellectual level for your audience?
2) Is the source known, credible, authoritative, authentic, literate, accurate, and reliable? Does it cite sources?
3) Can you use it or link to it legally without permission; or can you get permission? (more on this in the next post)
4) Is the web site or link stable and secure? Is it current or routinely updated?
5) Depending on context you also may want to ask, Is it free? Is it free of advertising? Does it require registration or subscription?
Web sites to favor include large or well-known national or international organizations; academic associations; federal and state government sites; online archives of newspaper, journal, or research articles; and open-access college- and university-based repositories.
Web sites to avoid include students' and instructors' pages; personal home pages other than your own; unarchived articles (which tend to disappear); commercial sites with pop-up ads or registration requirements; pages with internal links that are broken or lead to inappropriate content; sites with offensive or salacious content or undeclared bias.
Collect your finds into a bookmark folder, annotating each URL and categorizing it for placement in a section in your course outline. The bookmark folder will help you conveniently hyperlink your narrative text or pedagogy to your assets, or, alternatively, to hyperlink your assets to the learning objectives and headings in your course outline. Providing narrative and pedagogical contexts for your media assets will be the subject of a future post.
You no doubt will find far more resources than you can use in your course. As you develop your bookmark folder, try to choose the right number of assets to correspond with your predicted "time on task" for students to get through a module and satisfy the learning objectives. You may wish to apply the traditional industry standard of a maximum of 50 pages of reading per college course per week, and then reduce this to account for the time needed to study real-time media assets such as audio and video.
Many resources you find will not be conveniently available to you because of permission issues, the subject of my next post.
Labels: media assets, online courses, online textbooks, textbook development
