Garry Hoban, speaking at a recent Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology session Education Technology Seminar: Engaging Students in Representing, Explaining & Communicating Content, observed that the act of teaching results in learning, not only for students, but for instructors as well. “When you design a lecture or a workshop, the person who learns the most is you,” said Garry, an associate professor of science education and teacher education at the University of Wollongong. “In order to explain something, you have to understand and internalize it, and think about how to communicate it.”
To most educators, this concept is a familiar one. Simply put, it is the idea that the best way to learn something is to teach it. This idea is an underlying principle in Garry’s research, which targets new ways for science and science education students to explain content by creating different forms of digital media.
Garry’s research proposes the use of five forms of digital media in science education: podcast, video, slideshow, slowmation (a form of simplified animation developed by Garry), and blended media (a combination of the four other forms). He contends that the use of these five forms results in deeper student engagement with course material than traditional assessment methods.
Garry also discussed his theory of a semiotic progression, which is the idea of learning by taking information and converting it from one representation to another. When creating a digital media project, students transform the same information from text to speech, from image to video, and so on. This requires students to make decisions about the concepts and the best ways to represent them through digital media.
In order to make these decisions, students must be knowledgeable about the material. “They’ve had to do a fair bit of research, think about how to explain it through narration, hunt for different types of media, and eventually, it’s become a little production. There’s a lot of engagement,” Garry said.
To demonstrate, he used part of the seminar to create a blended media presentation, going step by step through the process: conducting research, planning the presentation, gathering images and other media, recording the narration, and integrating the different types of media to form the final presentation.
Garry’s research shows that students enjoy digital media projects more than traditional written assignments. It also shows that students exhibit better retention of knowledge acquired through digital media projects than written assignments.
Why is digital media such an effective tool for education? Like many educators, Garry admits that it is becoming more challenging to engage students, who are often more interested in their cell phones than the textbook. Rather than chide students for their dependence on technology, however, Garry suggests using this relationship for educational purposes.
Nowadays, even cell phones are capable of creating digital media, and most computers come equipped with moviemaking software, be it Windows Movie Maker or iMovie. As demonstrated by Garry, digital media projects are surprisingly straightforward to create, and students can easily access the programs needed to create them.
Garry also addressed concerns that students could hastily create a digital media project without putting too much thought into their work. As with any academic assessment, he noted, the instructor must ensure that students are aware of expectations by providing appropriate criteria and learning objectives.
As an example, Garry detailed his own criteria for evaluating students in training to become teachers. “To assess anything, you’ve got to have an intention. My intention is to see if they can explain something to a certain audience, whether it’s a kindergartener or a grade 6 class. My students have to justify what they’re doing.”
Garry believes that digital media will continue to enhance, not hinder, his students’ development. “It’s not just using media for the sake of using media,” he said. “There’s a purpose to everything. It’s simply more effective. We want students to develop multi-modal literacies.”
For more information, including instructions on how to create each of the five types of digital media projects, please visit the DigiExplanations website.
