Online learning programs for K-12 students are on the rise in the U.S. and steadily gaining acceptance among state leaders, school administrators, parents and students. The International Association for K- 12 Online Learning (iNACOL) reports that in 2009:
- 45 of the 50 states, plus Washington D.C., have a state virtual school or online initiative, full- time online schools, or both.
- Many virtual schools show annual growth rates between 20 and 45%.
- 57% of public secondary schools in the U.S. provide access to students for online learning.
- Data suggests that in about six years 10 percent of all high school courses will be computer-based, and by 2019 about 50 percent of courses will be delivered online.
Currently, 24 full-time online education programs and two supplemental online programs operate in Colorado (Colorado Department of Education, Unit of Online Learning). The increase in online learning programs is driven by changes in state legislation that allow accreditation for online charter schools, by the need for supplemental classes, by rising trends in home-schooling, by school districts that view online learning as a viable way of bringing high-risk teens back into the system, and by parents who are looking for a viable alternative when the nearest brick and mortar schools are miles away from their rural homes. Clearly, online learning will continue to play a major role in U.S. education in the next decade.
As distance learning programs increase in scope, so too does the richness of the media (i.e., text, graphics, audio, video) used within its curriculum as Internet bandwidth continues to support larger and larger audio and visual files streamed and downloaded to students’ computers. Moreover, the availability of open-source learning management systems (LMS) such as Moodle have driven down deployment costs associated with curriculum delivery, and an increase in user-friendly production tools allows content providers to deliver new media to students with greater ease. The technology, tools, and craft of producing online media has advanced significantly over the last decade; however, our understanding of the effects of this multimedia – video in particular – on student cognition seems to lag behind our ability to produce online media. In fact, for those of us interested in using video in distance learning, some of the current research is disquieting. For example, in 2000, Matarazzo and Sellen’s study, concluded that rich media, including streaming video, was considered a distraction to task completion (339-348). Given studies such as this one, these questions arise:
- Does the inclusion of multimedia, in particular video, enhance students’ learning processes?
- If so, how and in what contexts is it most effective/appropriate?
- What does current research offer as a guide for multimedia designers with regard to best practices?
- As an educator, how can video be best used?
Theory
To begin an evaluation of the merits of video in e-learning, one must view it in the context of the larger inquiry of multimedia research that is rooted in the early 1980s. In 1983, Richard Clark, Professor of Educational Psychology and Technology at the University of Southern California, wrote that media are “mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition” (445). In further developing his theory Clark asserts “that any necessary teaching method could be designed into a variety of media presentations” and yield similar learning outcomes, so “we must always choose the less expensive way to achieve a learning goal” (Clark 22). If true, this would mean that the multi- billion dollar e-learning industry, much of it based around media that is relatively expensive to create and deploy, amounts to little more than wasted time and money, given that well-crafted text could just as easily be substituted with the same learning gains.
In his seminal paper Learning with Media Robert Kozma, Director at the Center for Technology and Learning, challenged Clark’s position that media is interchangeable: “While some students will learn a particular task regardless of delivery device, others will be able to take advantage of a particular medium’s characteristics to help construct knowledge” (28). Kozma goes on to assert that method and media are so intertwined that both must be considered when designing a learning program; therefore, media selection is extremely important. Kozma emphasized the comparison of text, audio, and video in order to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses as learning tools; whereas, Clark found no value in such comparisons.
Even though the “method vs. media” debate reached its peak nearly two decades ago, neither perspective has collapsed in the intervening years. In fact, it is notable that as recent as 2009, the following passage was attributed to Richard Clark in the blog Information Technology:
Those of you who are supporting my view of this debate face an uphill slog. People who have looked carefully at the evidence and who understand the logic of causality all agree with those of us who now accept that media do not cause learning. But many bright and capable people who have not looked at the evidence and who tend to trust their own experience, resist the claim that it is instructional methods and the accuracy of information we give to students what influences their learning and performance – not the medium or mix of media we select to deliver information and instructional methods. People learn by connecting their prior knowledge with demonstrations (a method) of conceptual (what is it) and procedural (how do I do it) information as we provide practice (a method) opportunities and give them corrective feedback (a method) so that they do not learn incorrect information. Demonstrations, practice and feedback can be provided in a variety of media with the same learning results.
Clearly, Clark feels as strident about his position today as when he published Media Will Never Influence Learning. However, by 1994, Kozma was less concerned with the question of whether or not media plays a part in learning, because in his mind there was no doubt that media does. Instead, the central question for him was “[i]n what ways can we use the capabilities of media to influence learning for particular students, tasks, and situations?” (23).
Like Kozma, other researchers began to appeal for a shift of attention from the deadlocked debate to a more pragmatic course that informs design and teaching, even though research had not indicated conclusively that multimedia substantially promoted learning. In sampling many of the 1994 articles from the special issue of Educational Technology, Research and Development, which focused on the Clark/Kozma debate and associated commentary, many of contemporary experts acknowledged that Clark and Kozma were theoretically correct inside the parameters of their respective arguments; however, to prove or disprove either of these positions was futile. This is, in part, because of the inability of researchers to adequately control all variables such as prior knowledge, learning style, educator effects, media familiarity, and instructional method (Ernest 36).
Without a doubt, multimedia has become a vital part of online learning despite Clark’s views. Yet, until recently, a solid design foundation, supported by research, did not exist. Instructional designers, given no alternatives, made design decisions based on intuition:
Assigning too much influence to media can lead to the design/development of sloppy, ineffective instructional materials that are accepted by technologists and users simply because they utilize CBI [computer-based research], interactive video, or other “high-status” delivery media. Assigning too little influence to media, on the other hand, may discourage reflective thinking by designers about which media can best convey the instructional strategies needed to achieve instructional objectives. (Ross 4)
In 2001, Richard Mayer published Multimedia Learning. This book, backed by his and others’ empirical studies, began to bridge theory and practical design for many in the field of instructional design. The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (Figure 1), for example, asserts that learners have separate channels for processing auditory/verbal content and visual/pictorial content, that learners can only process a limited amount of content in each channel at any one time, and that meaningful learning occurs when learners engage in active cognitive processing during learning, including paying attention to relevant visual and verbal material, mentally organizing the selected material into a coherent representation, and integrating the incoming content with existing knowledge (Mayer, 2007, 466). In short, working memory increases if we process information through both the visual and auditory channels.
Figure 1. The cognitive theory of multimedia learning
Stemming from the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, Mayer put forward research-based, design principles including the following, which are most relevant to the use of video in e-learning:
Multimedia Principle: Students learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
Coherence Principle: Students learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included.
Contiguity Principle: Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented at the same time or next to each other on the screen.
Modality Principle: Students learn better from spoken words than from printed text for explaining images.
Signaling Principle: Students learn better when the material is organized with clear outlines and headings.
Personalization Principle: Students learn better from conversational style than formal style. Segmentation Principle: Students learn and transfer information better when they experience narration and animation [video] in short user-controlled segments rather than a longer contiguous presentation.
Pacing Principle: Students require some time to engage in the cognitive processes of selecting, organizing, and integrating incoming information. When the learner can control the pace of presentation, she is more likely to be able to engage in complete cognitive processing and thus deeper learning.
Pre-training Principle: Students learn better when an explanation of components are introduced before the animation (or video).
It is important to note that Mayer includes video in his use of the terms “images” and “pictures” above, as are illustrations, charts, photos and animations (Mayer 300-303).
Mayer takes a more nuanced view of media than do Clark or Kozma. While Clark argues that one media is as good as the next if proper consideration were given to the underlying teaching methodology, Mayer finds that the culmination of mediums used together in an appropriate way yields higher returns for students. Mayer is more closely aligned with Kozma insofar as both see pedagogical value in multimedia; however, while Kozma focuses on comparative values of particular forms of media in isolation, Mayer uncovers the potential benefits, and complexities, of using multiple forms of media in combination.
Mayer’s work has proven to be far reaching and begins to shape the way designers and educators implement e-learning curriculum with multimedia. Given Mayer’s work, we can assert that the inclusion of video in online curriculum enhance students’ learning processes because video stimulates the visual and audio channels of the brain in ways that other forms of media cannot. Although, if employed incorrectly video can easily be a detraction from learning.
Jack Koumi, while basing much of his work on many of Mayor’s theoretical principles, asserts that they “are pitched at a macro-level that may be suitable for theory-building but that only skims the surface of the detailed design concerns for practitioners” (219). However, by the 2007 release of e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning, Richard Mayer and Ruth Colvin Clark more than adequately expand the implications of the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, where we find a clear crossing over from theory to practical application.
Koumi puts a finer point on how video in particular aids in e-learning design. From a more pragmatic vantage point, he catalogs how video adds value to e-learning and in what contexts it is most effective in his book Designing Video and Multimedia for Open Flexible Learning:
- Dynamic change or movement
Example: Speed of reaction in mechanical or chemical processes - Access to inaccessible places
Example: Deep undersea locations - Access to otherwise inaccessible viewpoints
Example: Shot from helicopter over African plains - Showing technical processes or equipment (especially complex or large-scale)
Example: Wind turbine erection - Showing three-dimensional objects
Example: By either moving the camera or object, student have the sensation of three-dimensions, which helps to contextualize the experience. - Slow/fast motion
Example: Bacteria dividing (fast motion)
People, animals interacting, real-life or drama Example: Student can discern “soft cues” such as body language, which reinforce the lesson.
(35-41)
From the list above, one can see how there are particular circumstances in which video out-performs other forms of media because it features visual motion that can be coupled with sound.
Practical Applications (Best Practices)
Mayer’s departure from the method vs. media debate to a learner-centric approach opened the door to more compressive “how-to” resources and studies that aid both designers and educators, such as Koumi’s comprehensive guide for those interested in using video in e-learning. This section demonstrates how designers and educators can navigate the complexities of video in an e-learning environment, including learning management systems (LMS).
Moodle (i.e., modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment), an open-source LMS, and other such systems, have become attractive additions to school curriculum for school administrators as a cost-effective way of serving their students within their districts. This is especially true because the training time for stakeholders has decreased as these products develop. Moodle can be downloaded for free and set up on most of modern Web servers.
I have deployed the multimedia demonstration to Moodle as a SCORM-compliant package, rather than using Moodle’s native multimedia building blocks. SCORM (i.e., Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is a collection of technical specifications for web-based LMSs. Generally speaking, once content is in SCORM format, it can be ported to any LMS that supports the same SCORM version. While it was not necessary to use SCORM to deploy to any one LMS, best practices dictate that SCORM should be used in most cases to allow for the most flexibility over time (e.g., school district migrates from one LMS to another). I coded the project’s SCORM package “by hand.” Late in the development process I learned about Xerte Online Toolkits, which is a collection of wizards that allow rapid development of SCORM-compliant packages. While I did not use Xerte, I believe it would have sped up SCORM development had I done so.
I chose to demonstrate the operation of a hydrogen electrolysis device with video because it is highly procedural; visual; and, depending upon the age level; may be dangerous if students are not properly trained in lab safety or are not properly supervised. It may be a vicarious exercise for younger, more inexperienced high school students or more hands-on for eleventh and twelfth graders, who are required to build and operate a similar apparatus at home or choose to do so for extra credit. This particular lesson arrangement targets upperclassmen who have the wherewithal for a hands-on experience aided by the media.
Multimedia Designers
Multimedia designers must first gather requirements from school district administrators, educators and other stakeholders. If video is part of the curriculum, storyboards help to flesh out ideas; however, storyboards are not an end in themselves, as these “blueprints” are usually honed, vetted, and iterated over many times throughout the planing stage. Once an agreement on a plan has been reached, designers create and/or collect the media that will be deployed to a course management system. Designers must be able to articulate why a particular course of design was taken (e.g., cite theoretical basis for decisions) and be willing to make changes to meet the needs of the client without sacrificing best practices. In order to do this, designers must have a working knowledge of current research, such as the work accomplished by Richard Mayer, Ruth Colvin Clark, and Jack Koumi.
Stephen Sorden’s article in Informing Science Journal is a particularly good example of how one instructional design team advanced its University’s online content, guided by Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. As recommended by Sorden, I did not accompany the video portion of the lesson with on-screen captioning; rather, I coupled the video with spoken narration (275). In this way, the lesson employs both the audio and visual channels rather than overloading the visual channel with on-screen text and video, staying consistent with the Modality Principle. Designers cannot exclude captioning, however, as this would be in violation of Section 508. In the case of the hydrogen electrolysis unit, I chose to use the Flash video JW player, in part, because of its ability to toggle on and off both the audio narration as well as captioning.
Sorden also advises that designers should avoid split screens or adding “talking-head” overlays as a running narrative because this violates the Coherence Principle (275). Because it is easier than ever to deploy complex and, at times, flashy video presentations within e-learning curriculum, designers may do so working under the assumption that it is best to maintain students’ attention throughout the lesson by dazzling them. This, too, conflicts with Mayer’s Coherence Principle, which recommends that extraneous content be excluded.
Sorden avoids the third-person when possible to adhere to the Personalization Principle (275). The video control bar provides students with the ability to control the pace of the video, thereby fulfilling Mayor’s Pacing Principle. More advanced control features include the ability to speed up or slow down the video. In most cases the Pre-training Principle can be maintain by default. That is, common sense dictates any components of video should be introduced rather than at its conclusion. As one might expect, the research demonstrates this out in Mayer’s Elements of Science of E-Learning (303). Before students play the segments of the hydrogen electrolysis video, they are instructed to move through the five sections of the lesson in sequence. This ensures that all preamble content has been reviewed before the video section.
In designing Lab 2, where video was used, my primary challenge was to adhere to the Segmentation Principle. This is a well-traveled exercise within the medium of text (e.g., parts, chapters, sections, paragraphs), but video poses a challenge because it are not easily segmented without additional processing when edited, and these segments are not easily indexed for retrieval and playback. A central criticism of using video in e-learning curriculum has been that too often it appears to the users as monolithic and indivisible. The information within it is rarely described with the necessary level of precision. Most students will not watch 10 minutes of video to find 30 seconds of relevant material. Many e-learning LMS’s provide students with search capabilities; however, the level of granularity for video is usually too high to be applied to task-based, online learning context, where the ability to quickly find and understand discrete steps is essential.
A secondary concern for me was that associated text and images (and other media) should link to these video segments. In such a scenario, itemized, text-based steps within a procedural lesson would have a link to a video segment, which plays the corresponding video segment. This allows the text and video media to be juxtaposed on the screen (i.e., Contiguity Principle), tying the lesson presentation together.
In segmenting the video and adding links from text or other media to these video segments, the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) configuration file that integrates well with the JW Flash video player. SMIL defines markup for timing, layout, animations, visual transitions and embedded media. SMIL is an XML, open-source standard. For the purposes of the hydrogen electrolysis video, SMIL “points into” a video file from either text links or thumbnail images, which in turn plays specific clips as selected by the user.
Well informed e-learning designers are now working from a firm theoretical foundation and base their multimedia design decisions accordingly. As our understanding of effective e-learning design develops, the software companies are making great strides to create tools that will make it easier for non- technical professionals to create their own multimedia content. These target consumers include educators.
Educators
While educators should not have to be responsible for learning tool-intensive processes for more complex online presentations, we should have a sense about designs that encourage learning as opposed to ones that do not. Some educators may want to put together less time and tool-intensive lesson plans that include online multimedia. These online lesson plans should optimize Mayer’s design principles as much as possible. Moreover, all educators who work within an e-learning context need to know how to navigate their LMS and insert content into the system so that all stakeholders (i.e., students, parents, educators, administrators) have access to it, given their various roles. This requires training, cooperation and preparation on the part of school administrators.
This lesson may have been created by a multimedia designer contracted by the school district or by a collaborative effort on the part of contributing educators within a given school, district, or cooperative. While creating effective video for the Web can be time consuming, educators can dramatically reduce development time by tapping into TeacherTube , which is a video resource covering a wide range of educational topics. These TeacherTube videos can then be embedded into online lessons. As mentioned earlier, Xerte Online Toolkits is an resource for educators when integrating multimedia into online lessons.
Students rarely need to work in isolation within this e-learning environments if properly designed. Moodle provides instant messaging (IM) capabilities as well as integrations with such video conference software as Skype. These tools allow student to communicate in real time with the instructor or other students working collaboratively. If at all possible, a constructivist approach to multimedia deployments to the Web seems the best approach, as this allows students to learn by experience while using the media and educator/team as resources.
Hydrogen Electrolysis Unit within Moodle
The hydrogen electrolysis unit lends itself well to interdisciplinary studies (e.g., chemistry, pre- engineering, math) within a renewable energy module. Much of the following text-based data has been adapted from an educators’ resource found on the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy site as well as other Web resources.
The hydrogen electrolysis unit has five sections contained within the framework of Moodle:
1. Anticipatory set: Discussion of current events relating to hydrogen.
2. New hydrogen information that ties to established knowledge.
3. Lab 1: Building a hydrogen electrolysis device. (This multimedia component features images.)
4. Lab 2: Operating the hydrogen electrolysis device. (This multimedia component features video.)
5. Quiz: Fill in the blank, multiple choice, and essay questions to test knowledge (e.g., transfer/retention testing).
NOTE: In the interest of time, I have not fully developed the end-of-module quiz, as the focus of this paper/project is multimedia. Online quizes within an LMS usually return feedback for students to review, scores to the quiz (when the question requires only an objective answer), and student scores automatically populate educators’ online grade book.
The hydrogen unit can be found here: See Lab 2: Generating Hydrogen.
Conclusion
Without a doubt, the software industry has greatly increased its capacity to produce visual and audio media for online deployment in an effort to capitalize on this emerging market. It is up to designers and educators to understand the underlying pedagogical theory to the fullest extent these roles allow.
While I have focused on the value of creating video and other media by designers and educators within an e-learning environment, students may benefit by designing a Web-based video project themselves. Dr. Del Siegle notes that “video production may soon be the fourth R (reading, writing, arithmetic, and recording)” that students will be required to learn before entering college (Literacy in the 21st Century: The Fourth R – Video Recording). Both the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA) have included video among non-print media in their preparation standards (Benson 2008). Much could be gained by students tasked with creating a “multimedia essay,” including the production and editing of video. For example, after initial training by their teachers, students could work in small virtual teams to produce integrated works that extend the concept of the five paragraph essay. Not only would such a student-centered project be a rich form of expression, it would also prepare students for a wide variety of media careers that have come of age.
Works Cited
Benson, Sheila. “A restart of what language arts is: Bringing multimodal assignments into secondary language arts.” Journal of Advanced Academics 19 (2008): 634–674. Print.
Clark, R. E. “Reconsidering research on learning from media.” Review of Educational Research, 53(4) (1983): 445-459. Print.
Clark, R.E. “Media will Never Influence Learning” Educational Technology Research and Development, 42(2) (1994): 21-29. Print.
Clark, R.E. Media and Learning: A Debate http://www.ingenia-consulting.com/files/Media-and-Learning-Debate.htm, Web.
Clark, Richard. Instructional Technology http://reedintechnology.blogspot.com/2009/02/research-related-to-clark-vs-kozma.html. Web.
Clark, Richard. “Media Will Never Influence Learning.” Educational Technology, Research and Development, 42(2) (1994): 21-29. Print.
Colorado Department of Education, Unit of Online Learning
http://www.cde.state.co.us/onlinelearning/schools.htm#DPS%20hs. Web.
iNACOL “Fast Facts about Online Learning, International Association of K-12 Online Learning” http://www.nacol.org/media/nacol_fast_facts.pdf. (2008). Web.
Kozma, R. B. “Learning with Media” Review of Educational Research, 61(2): (1991): 179-211. Print. Mayer, R.E. “Elements of a Science of e-Learning” Journal of Educational Computing Research 29(3)
(2003); 297-313. Print.
Mayer, R. E. Multimedia learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Print.
Mayer R.E. and Roxana Moreno “Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning.” Educational Psychologist 38(1) (2003): 43–52 . Print.
Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning. San Francisco: Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003. Print.
Ross, S. M. “Delivery trucks or groceries? More food for thought on whether media (will, may, can’t) influence learning.” Educational Technology, Research & Development 42(2) (1994): 5-6. Print.
US Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/education/classroom_materials.html#teacher. Web.