The Multiple-Media Difference

USING SEVEN KINDS OF SYNCHRONOUS AND ASYNCHRONOUS INTERACTIVE MEDIA FOR A COURSE ON DISTANCE LEARNING--FACE-TO-FACE AS WELL AS VIRTUAL TECHNIQUES--THIS UNIVERSITY INSTRUCTOR REPORTS THAT ALL OF HIS GRADUATE STUDENTS WERE ABLE TO FIND THEIR VOICES 1N ONE OR ANOTHER OF THE MEDIA AND MANY OF THEM ACHIEVED PROFOUND AND RICH LEARNING EXPERIENCES AT A DISTANCE. BUT THE USE OF MULTIPLE INTERACTIVE MEDIA ALSO HAS DISADVANTAGES. NOT THE LEAST OF WHICH 1S THE PROBLEM OF MEASURING THE OUTCOMES OF WHAT HE CALLS DISTRIBUTED LEARNING.

A medium is in part a channel for conveying content. With the Internet increasingly pervading society and fostering new interactive media such as shared virtual environments, educators can readily reach extensive, remote resources and audiences using on-demand and just-in-time techniques.

Just as important, however, a medium is a representational container that permits the use of new types of messages. Since expression and communication are based on representations such as language and imagery, the process of learning is enhanced by broadening the types of instructional messages students and teachers can exchange. New forms of representation, such as interactive models using visualization and other means of making abstractions tangible and sensory, make possible a broader, more powerful repertoire of pedagogical strategies.

Emerging interactive media also empower novel types of learning experiences. Interpersonal interactions across networks, for instance, can lead to the formation of virtual communities. (See my article "Emerging Technologies and Distributed Learning," American Journal of Distance Education 10:2, pp. 4-36.)

DISTRIBUTED LEARNING

By means of the innovative kinds of pedagogy enabled by these novel media, messages, and experiences, our hitherto synchronous, group, presentation-centered forms of education--traditional "teaching by telling"--are evolving into an alternative instructional paradigm. "Distributed learning" involves orchestrating "learning-by-doing" educational activities among classrooms, workplaces, homes, and community settings.

Recent advances in computer-supported collaborative learning, hypermedia, and experiential simulation allow students to experience guided, inquiry-based learning across barriers of distance and time. With the aid of mentors, students collaboratively create, share, and master knowledge about authentic real-world problems. Through a mixture of instructional media, learners and educators can experience synchronous or asynchronous interaction: face-to-face or in disembodied fashion, as an "avatar" expressing an alternate form of individual identity.

Distributed learning shows students that education is integral to all aspects of life, not just schooling. It also shows them that people adept at learning can use many tools for expression and communication, tools scattered throughout their everyday contexts.

Such an instructional approach also builds partnerships for learning among stakeholders in education: teachers and families, colleges and employers. In addition, distributed learning conserves scarce financial resources by maximizing the educational use of information devices (televisions, computers, telephones, video games) in homes and workplaces.

Emerging information technologies make possible an extraordinary range of cognitive, affective, and social "affordances"--enhancements of human capabilities potentially of great power for distributed learning. At the same time they have definite limits for expression and communication.

Much study is needed to develop the new kinds of rhetoric necessary to make these emerging media effective for learning. It will also take much time and effort to design appropriate mixes of information tools and virtual environments for specific groups of learners, particular contents, and given sets of educational goals.

A graduate course on distributed learning I teach illustrates one approach for exploring these issues. Goals are to give participants hands-on experiences with the range of interactive media now readily available for distributed learning and to develop an understanding of how each medium shapes the cognitive, affective, and social interactions of learners. Access to the online course syllabus and links to related research are available at my Web site (www.virtual.gmu.edu/EDIT611/syllabus.htm).

The creation, sharing, and mastery of knowledge is not simply an intellectual exercise; the emotional and psychosocial dimensions of learning are important as well. While much is known about instructional design in classroom settings to facilitate affective and social interactions, many emerging media are so new that little is understood about the emotional and collaborative affordances they provide--and lack.

SEVEN KINDS OF MEDIA

My course on learning across distance uses seven instructional media: (1) face-to-face interaction; (2) videoconferencing; (3) synchronous interactions in a text-based virtual world called Tapped In (www.tappedin.sri.com); (4) "Groupware" that incorporates a shared design-space; (5) asynchronous, threaded discussions; (6) asynchronous telementoring; (7) Web sites structured around an ongoing interaction or experience.

The first four of these interactive media are synchronous, the next two asynchronous, and the last a mixture of both.

This wide range of media allows for distributed learning that incorporates the complementary strengths of face-to-face instruction, virtual synchronous interaction, and asynchronous expression and communication. Participants are able to contrast the amount of effort required to master the rhetoric of each medium, the instructional design strategies effective in each, and the ways; in which each shapes individual cognitive and affective experiences, as well as group interactions. With the exception of videoconferencing, the use of these media creates no additional costs for the instructor or students above the standard resource allocations to supply a solid information technology infrastructure on college campuses.

THE STUDENTS

In spring 1998, 31 graduate students in instructional technology completed the course. Most were in the 25-45 age range and were employed full time with years or decades of professional experience in education and training. The class included public school teachers, instructional designers for industry, training managers for government, and college faculty and administrators.

Many of these students had no prior experience with several of the media used in the course. As majors in instructional technology, however, they became literate in each medium more rapidly than would a typical university student.

While this group is not representative of most learners, the students are typical of professionals in many fields seeking in-service development to further their career goals. Their ability to rapidly gain fluency in new media is also characteristic of the generation of students now in K-12 schooling.

GAINING INSIGHTS

I informally analyzed the course along several dimensions as a case study of distributed learning and teaching via multiple interactive media. I compared the quality of students' products and projects with those from comparable classes taught via conventional face-to-face instruction. I also compared students' ratings of the course and their sense of its professional utility.

Reflective comments in class discussions gave me additional information. One of my doctoral students, Audrey Kremer, also analyzed extensive archived asynchronous discussions both qualitatively for content and quantitatively for participation patterns. While the findings from this case study do not "prove" anything and the results are limited in their generalizability, the insights gained are certainly suggestive.

Three sets of findings from this case study were striking. First, all students found a "voice." Second, learning went beyond "no significant differences" findings to more powerful outcomes. Third, it's a complex task to optimize motivation, learning, and academic credit for educational achievement.

Finding a Voice--Students exhibited very different preference patterns for the seven ways of expression and communication used in the class. Lively debates ensued among those who liked--or hated--particular instructional media and found their rhetoric either intuitive or cumbersome.

Furthermore, even though all students agreed that the class meetings on campus were valuable, a large proportion of students rated face-to-face interaction below some of the virtual means of communication. The reasons these students gave for preferring virtual interaction went beyond convenient access to suggest that they found this type of expression more authentic as a medium for learning.

An outcome striking to me as an instructor was that each student found his or her voice in one of the seven interactive media. Even the best classroom instructor, expert in facilitating discussion, knows that some students will "lurk" in face-to-face interactions. These learners are awake and listening but do not become actively involved unless forced to do so--then relapse into silent observation. Unlike educators, who typically enjoy direct interpersonal dialogue, these students do not feel authentic when communicating in face-to-face group discussions. Some are shy; some like to take time to reflect before answering; others feel at a disadvantage because of gender, race, physical appearance, disabilities, or lack of linguistic fluency.

In the mixture of asynchronous and synchronous media for virtual interaction, all of the students were active and fluent in at least one of the six virtual media. At the same time, students adept at face-to-face interaction often reported their expressive and communicative abilities diminished in at least one virtual medium--they felt disenfranchised, and they lurked when forced to use that type of rhetoric. All the students were surprised by this outcome and often were unable to predict which media they personally would find empowering and which disabling.

All the class participants found their voice in some instructional setting; the overall learning experience was richer for everyone, because each student made a full contribution. Those students who felt hampered by a particular medium could watch others model effective expression and communication using its cognitive, affective, and social affordances. As a result, everyone's fluency and comfort in all the media improved over time, although distinct preferences remained.

Learning Outcomes--An extensive research literature has repeatedly documented "no significant differences" in comparing various instructional media--videoconferencing versus face-to-face instruction, for example. (For details, see http://tenb.mta. ca/phenom/phenom.html.)

All these studies are flawed, however, in that they compare the average performance of a group for one single mode of delivery versus another. This research does not recognize that for each medium utilized, some students are empowered, others disenfranchised--and the net impact averages out.

In contrast, well-designed courses using several instructional media with differing characteristics and affordances (for example, synchronous vs. asynchronous, high bandwidth vs. low bandwidth, contextualized vs. decontextualized) let all students use their most effective learning techniques. Mixed-media courses have the potential for better learning outcomes for every student than comparable courses taught via any single medium--including solely face-to-face instruction. While the use of seven media is likely to be overkill for most types of learning experiences, I maintain that in every course at least one synchronous virtual and one asynchronous virtual medium should be used, plus (if possible) face-to-face interaction.

Students in my course found that their learning was richer and more profound than in comparable conventional classes because:

* all students participated fully because each found a voice

* students could readily communicate with each other to share resources for learning when it wasn't necessary for all interactions to be facilitated by the instructor in a limited-time classroom setting or in difficult-to-arrange face-to-face small-group meetings

* asynchronous media allowed for extensive, deep discussions

Some students spent many hours communicating asynchronously, having a much richer dialogue than could have been possible via the best face-to-face facilitation. But of course my students were experienced professionals with varied backgrounds and had a lot to share with each other. The impact of student-to-student learning would have been less had the students been novices in the course topic and of similar backgrounds.

Learning across distance has too often been "quarter-of-a-loaf" education, diminished not only by purely presentational pedagogy but also by low affective/social stimulation compared with face-to-face instruction. Now the situation is reversed; face-to-face instruction alone cannot provide the range of resources and the empowerment of expression that complementary interactive media make possible. In a few years the terms distance education and face-to-face instruction probably will be obsolete; all education will be distributed learning with varying balances of media depending on the pedagogical situation.

A Complex Task--Many of my students appreciated the richer, more inclusive types of interchange that occur in an asynchronous medium. Still, this deeper educational experience consumes more time and is less social than classroom or virtual synchronous settings, leading to diminished motivation for many students despite a sense of having learned more. Instructional design must carefully balance synchronous and asynchronous experiences to ensure that learners' affective and social motivation is sustained over a course or series of courses.

Some of my students felt that this mixed-media learning experience called into question the seat-time-based methods by which educational institutions quantify the amount of learning and determine a sufficient level of credit-hours for matriculation. Many of them engaged in virtual synchronous and asynchronous interactions substantially beyond the requirements of the course or what would likely have occulted in a conventional learning experience.

The three academic credits each received toward graduation were a poor measure of their true educational achievement. As we increasingly use multiple interactive media for instruction, performance-based measures will be central not only for assessing learning but also for accurately assigning appropriate amounts of academic credit.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Overall, my three sets of findings offer considerable promise for improved educational outcomes and for the transformation of conventional instructional settings. Moreover, many other faculty working with these media report similar insights.

Case studies, however, are only suggestive. We need extensive, rigorous, and generalizable research to further elucidate the cognitive, affective, and social affordances--and limits--of new Internet-based media for learning. From this research will come instructional design methodologies more sophisticated than those currently in use, strategies that require more complex pedagogical planning from instructors.

But more than improving the effectiveness of education is at stake in implementing distributed learning. The National Science Foundation has a multidisciplinary research initiative centering on Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI; see www.ehr. nsf.gov/kdi/default.htm). In science and many other fields, new ways of learning and knowing are emerging that involve creating a community of mind, a new type of "cognitive ecology."

Through sharing disparate data and diverse perspectives via emerging interactive media, a virtual group of professionals develops an evolving understanding of a complex topic. Over time, the group's conception of the issues involved continually expands and deepens, at times broadening the range of disciplines seen as relevant.

During these times, the membership of a knowledge networking community grows to include participants who bring new perspectives and backgrounds. An ever larger cast of members redefines how to conceptualize the topic. That involves a constant collective acculturation into new ways of thinking and knowing via communal learning.

Emerging interactive media are crucial to knowledge networking. They provide rich sources of data, rapid information exchange, sophisticated analytic tools, and--most important--the collective intellectual capacity to tackle larger, more complex multidisciplinary problems at low cost.

In contrast to my "Leave It to Beaver" generation, which was prepared for a mature industrial workplace, today's students face a global economy in which knowledge networking and mastering the rhetorics of multiple interactive media are crucial skills (see Learning with Technology, the 1998 yearbook of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which I edited). Distributed learning is vital for preparing students for this future. Before long, an educator's refusal to use multiple interactive media may well be considered professional malpractice.

Chris Dede (cdede@gmu.edu and www.virtual.gmu.edu) is a Full Professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he has a joint appointment in the School of Information Technology & Engineering and the School of Education. He has a major grant from the National Science Foundation to develop educational environments based on virtual reality technology.

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