Lesson 7 - Choosing Media

14.2. The Interactive Characteristics of Media and Technologies

Different technologies can enhance or inhibit each of the three types of interactivity outlined above. This again means looking at the dimension of interactivity as it applies to different media and technology. This dimension has three components or points on the dimension in terms of the extent an active response from a user is required when a medium or technology is used for teaching.

Some media are inherently ‘active’ in that they ‘push’ learners to respond. An example is adaptive learning, where students cannot progress to the next stage of learning without interacting through a test that ascertains whether they have learned sufficiently to progress to the next stage, or what ‘corrective’ learning they still need to do. Behaviourist computer-based learning is inherently interactive, as it forces learners to respond. Technologies that control how a learner responds are often associated with more behaviourist approaches to teaching and learning.

Although some media or technologies are not inherently interactive, they can be explicitly designed to encourage interaction with learners. For instance, although a web page is not inherently interactive, it can be designed to be interactive, by adding a comment box or by requiring users to enter information or make choices. In particular, teachers or instructors can add or suggest activities within a particular medium. A podcast can be designed so that students stop the podcast every few minutes to do an activity based on the content of the podcast. This approach can be applied just as much to textbooks, where activities can be included, as to web pages.

In many cases, though, a medium will require the intervention of a teacher or instructor both to set activities around the learning materials and to provide appropriate feedback, thus adding to rather than reducing the workload of instructors. Thus where instructors have to intervene either to design activities or to provide feedback, the cost or time demands on the instructor are likely to be greater than if the other two kinds of interaction are used.

Some media may not have explicit interaction built-in, but end users may still voluntarily interact with the medium, either cognitively and/or through some physical response. For instance someone in an art gallery may cognitively or emotionally respond to a particular painting (while others may just glance at it or pass it by). Students may choose to make sketches or drawings from the painting. Learners may respond in similar ways to reading a novel or poem.

The creators of the work may in fact deliberately design the work to encourage reflection or analysis, but not inexplicit ways, leaving the interpretation of a work to the viewer or reader. (This of course is a constructivist approach to learning.) Media that encourage learners independently to be active without the necessary intervention of a teacher or instructor also has cost advantages, although the quality of the interaction will be more difficult to monitor or assess.

Thus one dimension of interactivity is control: to what extent is interaction controlled or enabled by the technology, by the creators/instructors, or by the users/learners? It can be seen that this is a complex dimension, once again influenced by epistemological positions, and also by design decisions on the teacher’s part. These categories of interactivity are in no way ‘fixed’, with different levels or types of interaction possible within the same medium or technology. In the end, interaction needs to be linked to the desired learning outcomes. What kind of interaction will best lead to a particular type of learning outcome, and what technology or medium best provides this kind of interaction?