Lesson 7 - Choosing Media
2. Pedagogical Differences between Media
2.4. Pedagogical Affordances - or Unique Media Characteristics
‘Affordances’ is a term originally developed by the psychologist James Gibson (1977) to describe the perceived possibilities of an object in relation to its environment (for example, a doorknob suggests to a user that it should be turned or pulled, while a flat plate on a door suggests that it should be pushed.). The term has been appropriated by a number of fields, including instructional design and human-machine interaction.
Thus the pedagogical affordances of a medium relate to the possibilities of using that medium for specific teaching purposes. It should be noted that an affordance depends on the subjective interpretation of the user (in this case a teacher or instructor), and it is often possible to use a medium in ways that are not unique to that medium. For instance, video can be used for recording and delivering a lecture. In that sense, there is a similarity in at least one affordance for a lecture and a video. Also, students may choose not to use a medium in the way intended by the instructor. For instance, Bates and Gallagher (1977) found that some social science students objected to documentary-style television programs requiring the application of knowledge or analysis rather than the presentation of concepts.
Others (such as myself) have used the term ‘unique characteristics’ of a medium rather than affordances, since ‘unique characteristics’ suggest that there are particular uses of a medium that are less easily replicated by other media, and hence act as a better discriminator in selecting and using media. For instance, using video to demonstrate in slow motion a mechanical process is much more difficult (but not impossible) to replicate in other media. In what follows, my focus is more on unique or particular rather than general affordances of each medium, although the subjective and flexible nature of media interpretation makes it difficult to come to any hard and fast conclusions.
I will now attempt in the next sections to identify some of the unique pedagogical characteristics of the following media:
- Text
- Audio
- Video
- Computing
- Social media
- emerging technologies, in particular, virtual/augmented reality, serious games and artificial intelligence.