Lesson 7 - Choosing Media

I will now summarise the unique pedagogical characteristics of the different media discussed in this lesson.

Figure 24 presents a diagrammatic analysis of various learning media. I have arranged them primarily by where they fit along an epistemological continuum of objectivist (black), constructivist (blue), and connectivist (red), but also I have used two other dimensions, teacher control/learner control, and credit/non-credit. Note that this figure also enables traditional teaching modes, such as lectures and seminars, to be included and compared. Figure 8.8.1 represents my personal interpretation of these media, and other teachers or instructors may well re-arrange the diagram differently, depending on their particular applications of these tools.

Not all tools or media are represented here (for example, audio, and video or MOOCs). The position of any particular tool in the diagram will depend on its actual use. Learning management systems can be used in a constructivist way, and blogs can be very teacher-controlled if the teacher is the only one permitted to use a blog on a course. Badia et al (2011) have shown that educational design and the situational use of technology very much influence whether specific affordances or unique characteristics of a medium are successfully exploited. Student preferences or pre-dispositions can inhibit or support the successful implementation of specific affordances of different media (for instance, computer science students’ preferences for adaptive learning rather than the communication and discussion affordances of ICT – Arenas, 2015).

However, the aim here is not to provide a cast-iron categorization of the affordances of different educational media, but to provide a framework for teachers in deciding which tools and media are most likely to suit a particular teaching approach. Indeed, other teachers may prefer a different set of pedagogical values as a framework for analysis of the different media and technologies.

However, to give an example from Figure 24, a teacher may use an LMS to organize a set of resources, guidelines, procedures, and deadlines for students, who then may use several of the social media, such as photos from mobile phones to collect data. The teacher provides a space and structure on the LMS for students’ learning materials in the form of an e-portfolio, to which students can load their work. Students in small groups can use discussion forums or FaceBook to work on projects together.

The example above is in the framework of a course for credit, but the framework would also fit the non-institutional or informal approach to the use of social media for learning, with a focus on tools such as FaceBook, blogs, and YouTube. These applications would be much more learner-driven, with the learner deciding on the tools and their uses. The most powerful examples are connectivist or cMOOCs.