Pedagogy for Media Assets—3
Media assets and learning objects for online courses include activities built on common web site capabilities. RSS feeds can supply a steady stream of relevant current content. A search bar can permit students to search the online course content or go outside to the World Wide Web. A calendar can show due dates, test dates, and other course benchmarks. Internal and external links can lead to articles or readings, a glossary, and other reference materials or course aids or supplements. Polls can work as information surveys or as pretest and posttest assessments.
A course on personal finance, for example, could begin with students responding to a poll on their current financial thinking and habits. Do they have a budget, for example, do they have a savings account, do they have a mortgage, do they carry credit card debt, are they risk averse, do they participate in an employee benefit plan, how old will they be when they retire, etc., etc.? This type of questionnaire serves a number of functions. The respondent begins to focus on key topics and anticipates learning more about them. The exercise activates their prior knowledge, confirms personal relevance and usefulness, and arouses motivation to learn. For the instructor, the poll may provide insight into the learners' levels of knowledge and mindsets about the subject, which may guide instruction. The poll may also be constructed as a test, self-administered before and after the course as a general assessment of learning.
Other built-in capabilities adaptable to online instruction are message boards, discussion lists, and email. The ability of learners to communicate with each other as well as with teachers or mentors is a critical component of effective learning. Learners become engaged through interaction, and interaction may be even greater and more inclusive in online environments than in physical classrooms.
Dialoguing in message strings, attending chat rooms, blogging, or teleconferencing, students can discuss course topics, ask and answer questions, debate issues, and develop collaborative projects. The most inclusive form of online interaction is the wiki, in which instructor and students generate, contribute, and edit course content. The types of communication or interpersonal interaction made available in an online course are limited only by the software and technologies employed.
Open source software has made sophisticated means of communication widely available at low cost. A web site developer could develop a site for an online course in Drupal, for example, or Joomla, Wordpress, or other free software. Depending on the level of technological commitment, an online "course" could be as simple as a blogsite with comments or a series of podcasts (basically slideshows with voice) or webcasts (basically online broadcasts of events), or as complex as an intranet site or academic portal with comprehensive hyperlinked text and multimedia. Like Facebook or MySpace or Linked In, a course can even create its own social network--the ultimate enhancement, perhaps, of the classroom as a learning environment.
The initiation and response patterns that communication technologies introduce also permit the development of test item files with answers, scoring, and answer feedback. Student assessment and course evaluation are key components of any instruction. Thus, just as pedagogy can be added to articles and media assets, pedagogy can be added or incorporated into the very capabilities that are built into software programs for developing web sites.
Labels: academic portal, distance learning, e-learning, e-textbooks, media assets, online courses, online textbooks, open source software, pedagogy, wiki-textbooks
Pedagogy for Media Assets—2
In my work I have found it challenging to locate good media assets to treat pedagogically in aid of learning (and also, alternatively, to find good content to convert into digital media assets). Some fields are more forthcoming than others. For science subjects, for example, the Web abounds with good cheap or free authoritative images, animations, and videos unencumbered by cookie captures, registration requirements, restricted access, random pornography, marketing campaigns, advertisements, pop-up contests, or monetization schemes. In contrast, unencumbered videos and graphics on business and finance subjects are harder to come by. Most are network or cable television news clips, video blogs by amateurs, student spoofs, or storefronts for commercial enterprises.
Images are plentiful online and there are good free or low cost sources. I usually first go to Google Images—Advance Search to find what I'm look for. Depending on the course subject, my personal favorites are the Library of Congress, NASA, and open source sites such as http://www.arthist.umn.edu/aict/html/. Stock photo sites with royalty-free images also can be good sources, but in many cases you must pay for the use of an image to embed it or to download a high-resolution version of it for print publication.
To direct my efforts I always ask up front if there is a photo research and/or permissions budget for the course and if the author has any photos for use, potentially, in the course. I guess I'm thinking here of the author I worked with who had a collection of slides of apes and monkeys, which I had added to the companion web site for his textbook--back in the days when web sites for textbooks were a novelty. Imagine the images, videos, audios, and animations one might assemble today for an online course on primate evolution!
Video repositories such as YouTube and Google Video have search bars, but it often takes too much time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Edutainment or infotainment can be difficult to distinguish from uncontaminated efforts to inquire, inform, or educate. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) (http://www.ted.com/) is an example of the kind of video sources I look for when developing online courses.
Animations also abound, but most gif files are clip art or expressions of popular culture. Educational animations are mainly for elementary and high school school students, although there are wonderful animations for science and medicine. See, for example, http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Physics/Education/Interactive_Animations/. Software and tutorials exist for animating images, maps, and graphics and for creating 3-D animations, but I usually recommend investing in the services of professional digital animators to support important learning objectives using original content.
Good wav and MP3 audio files also exist online, but they may have limited applicability to most textbook subjects. For a literature course I could envision using links to Librivox recordings, for example, of people reading passages from classic works. I always encourage academic authors to record audio files or tape their lectures for use in online courses. Voice recordings of key points, pronunciation guides, or glossary terms and definitions aid the learner. An audiobook is a useful addition or alternative for many students as a content delivery platform. Providing voice recordings also makes online courses accessible to students with special needs.
Embedding files may be the best option for some projects, but care must be taken to obtain permission or, for free sites, to obtain appropriate information for the credits. Citing or linking to a URL is easier and avoids permissioning issues. This is especially true for articles. I always choose sources that do not require subscription or purchase, although in some projects I have encouraged authors and publishers to license the use of articles through repositories such as EBSCO, Gale, or ProQuest.
Google Scholar has proven to be a useful source of articles and there are many other good online open source professional association, university, and government-archived articles. It typically takes me much longer to screen articles for use in a course than to pedagogize them. Articles often provide theoretical or historical or statistical background, but in most subjects the best use of articles, I find, is to provide concrete examples for teaching and learning chapter/module concepts.
There are many good online news sources as well, if you can find stable URLs for them. Ability to update and frequency of updating is an important consideration when linking to news. Some academic portals, for example for college courses on marketing, economics, archaeology, education, astronomy, etc., may benefit from having an RSS news feed targeted to the course subject.
Other than images, videos, audios, animations, articles, and feeds, online courses can have original interactive features that are pedagogically effective and use the built-in functionalities of the Web. These features will be the subject of my next blog entry.
Labels: academic writing, e-learning, e-textbooks, higher education, hyperlinks, media assets, narrative context, online courses, online textbooks, pedagogy, textbook
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
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
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
Online Course Development
My recommendations for developing an online course start with building a working table of contents with textual headings, just as you would for a print textbook. The best structure for online application is a sequence of units of study, which can be presented online as a learning sequence comprised of self-contained modules. Depending on length and complexity of content, a module can function at the level of a unit or a chapter. In any case, text headings serve as conceptual organizers for topics and subtopics within a module.
The more self-contained modules are, the more easily they can be moved in the sequence of instruction or chosen for other customizations with content from other sources. Learning objects, your own or ones you find online (or in repositories such as MERLOT), are self-contained lessons or bits, such as definitions or examples. You can put bits together to help populate sections within a module. Discrete learning objects and modules permit maximum flexibility in constructing courses, but it it critical to functionally interrelate information as well.
I think a serious flaw in online course development is the tendency to unharness information from larger meaning. For this reason it is essential to include pedagogy, such as learning objectives, module openers and closers, discussion questions or critical thinking questions, overviews, summaries or reviews, and glosses for technical terms. Each module should have learning objectives--what students should know or be able to do after studying the unit. There should be one of more learning objectives for each main heading within a module. Among your learning objects should be text boxes or links to brief documents in which you address the question of larger meaning within each module and the conceptual (and logical or historical) relationships between modules.
Consider developing a course in 8 to 14 units or modules inclusive of pedagogy, depending on semester length and course requirements, such as opportunities for assessment or student presentations. The number of modules should provide a practical course load for learners (and for the instructor to administer) at a rate of around one module a week. Getting course content into a finite number of modules is the same challenge you face in having a reasonable number of chapters in a textbook. Highly dense and technical material usually needs a larger number of shorter modules assigned at a rate of two a week. Keep in mind learning theory and research about chunking information for maximum effective learning rate.
Module content consists of the learning objects, bits, personal documents, links, and media assets that you assemble to help students satisfy each learning objective. If you wanted your introduction to economics students to distinguish among financial markets, for example, what would you show them and what would you have them read and what would you have them discuss, etc.? Learning materials you offer them might include choices among podcasts, videos, animations, simulations, news articles, scholarly articles, research reports, interviews, graphics, photos, links, prepackaged lessons, maps, demos, tutorials, blogs, dictionary entries, government statistics, and so on. For teaching effectiveness, the media assets you choose must be somehow endowed with pedagogy and couched in the larger meaning that makes learning anything worthwhile.
Next time: More on finding media assets and endowing them with pedagogy.
Labels: distance learning, e-textbooks, learning objects, media assets, online courses, online textbooks, pedagogy
Advice on Textbook Writing - 2: The E-Textbook Model
Try developing your textbook manuscript using an e-textbook model. Think of your chapters as modules, your paragraphs as nested learning objects or "content". No need to draft in html; just construct a core narrative text (telling the story) and system of headings (organizing the story conceptually). Then tag or keymark the text for links to learning objectives, supporting web sites, examples, problems, articles, images, glosses, questions, activities, source citations, bibliography, etc. For each module keep a log of these proposed links and supporting materials and their sources as a sort of media log, similar to the permissions logs you would keep. (I model this process in chapters 9 and 10 in my 2005 book on writing and developing college textbook supplements, but already I see I must update! Readers' advice for revising that book is most welcome.)
I see several reasons for drafting to an e-textbook model, some relating to exposition and some to the realities of textbook publishing today:
1. Writing a core narrative is good discipline for saying what absolutely needs to be said in a minimalist (and infinitely expandable) way. Some might argue that this is a reductio ad absurdam exercise, and in some hands it no doubt would be. However, expressing what is most important--the key fact, the main point, the basic chronology, the critical argument or proof, the one thing to remember, the so what?--is an expository writer's duty to the learner. Your mission as a textbook author should be based on what you feel is most important for readers to come away with.
2. Core narratives let you draft a whole-book first draft, to schedule and to length, without being overwhelmed with details. At the same time, media logs let you choose the best and most efficient supporting material for your content for each use--in the print edition, in an electronic edition, and in each supplement, including what you can give to your colleagues, the classroom instructors, to help them teach the course.
3. Media logs let you plan for proving or enriching your narratives in limitless ways at many levels of discourse. These ways offer students and instructors greater choice in what they will use to learn and teach the course content. And this is the way education is headed today. For better or worse, knowledge is becoming unpegged from the minds of its creators--at once personalized and globalized.
4. A textbook manuscript constructed this way can be easily deconstructed and its parts repurposed for applications in web interfaces and e-learning or interactive online courses, in both open-access and for-sale environments. Educational publishing for all levels is headed this way. Publishers use particularized textbook and ancillary content as mix and match media assets. A manuscript that can be easily published in any form has clear added value, including in textbook publishing contracts where the granting of electronic rights has become mandatory for publishers even to begin to compete.
5. A manuscript written to the e-textbook model is easy to revise, as the core content remains largely the same except for any new research, facts, or interpretations. Finding new assets to support the content in a revision can be just plain fun, a playground for invention and creativity and also a way to incorporate the contributions of coauthors and students or other contributors.
There probably are more reasons, and I would like to hear them. There is a downside too, of course, especially for the traditionalists among us, but I'm rather excited by all the changes.
Labels: e-learning, e-textbooks, learning objects, media assets, textbook manuscripts, textbook writing, writing and developing college textbook supplements
