Multimedia Learning in the Age of Interruption (2009)
This presentation will focus on the emergent cognitive style of "continuous partial attention." Coined by former Microsoft executive Linda Stone, the term describes the fragmentation of attention characteristic of many computer users today, whose minds, as they use the computer to perform tasks, are perpetually alert to the possibility of incoming e-mail, instant messages, and other communications and contacts. According to Stone, this constant pinging "makes us feel alive. It's what makes us feel important. We just want to connect, connect, connect." As an expression of the contemporary zeitgeist, continuous partial attention is capturing the same kind of attention in the popular press that "multi-tasking" did in the 1990s, but academic interest in the phenomenon is slow in coming. This is particularly the case in the field of education, where little if any research has been done on the potential implications of continuous partial attention for computer-based learning. This presentation describes the phenomenon and offers a new direction for the design and research of multimedia learning in the age of interruption.
Ellen Rose is a Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick, where she held the McCain-Aliant Chair of Multimedia and Instructional Design from 2001 to 2010. She is the author of two books and numerous articles on educational computing, the social effects of technology, and instructional design. Her current research includes a SSHRC-funded study which uses hermeneutic phenomenology and media ecology as lenses through which to explore professors’ and students’ experiences of teaching and learning within Blackboard and other Learning Management Systems.
A media ecology perspective on multimedia and cognition: Is multimedia making us stupid? (2011)
Grounded in the interdisciplinary perspective of media ecology, this paper offers a new way of thinking about the relationship between multimedia and cognition. Working from the basic premise that media and technologies play an important role in shaping human habits of mind and social organizations, media ecologists contend that our modes of communication form an “information environment.” Multimedia is now in the process of becoming not a spectacle to be marveled at but an unquestioned and ubiquitous element of the contemporary information environment. From a media ecology perspective, this means that the question we must ask about multimedia is not only how we can use it to support learning, but also how continual engagement with a ubiquitous multimedia subtly alters cognitive patterns and propensities—in other words, how we think. Research suggests that, as multimedia plays an increasingly central role in our daily communications and thought, it contributes to an emergent cognitive style of fragmented attention and superficial reading, while eroding our capability for sustained reflection. Education is offered as the primary means by which students can be helped to achieve an epistemological distance from their information environment, which will allow them to think critically about the role of multimedia in their lives.
Ellen Rose is a Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick, where she held the McCain-Aliant Chair of Multimedia and Instructional Design from 2001 to 2010. She is the author of two books and numerous articles on educational computing, the social effects of technology, and instructional design. Her current research includes a SSHRC-funded study which uses hermeneutic phenomenology and media ecology as lenses through which to explore professors’ and students’ experiences of teaching and learning within Blackboard and other Learning Management Systems.
Narrative in Multimedia Learning: The Learner as Story Maker (2009)
Several mental models of multimedia learning emphasize limited processing capacity in encoding and retention of information (Mayer, 2002; Sweller, 2005). They share the notion that appropriate use of multimedia can help to overcome the limited capacity. In contrast to the two preceding models, the Congruence-Association Model (CAM) arose from the context of film and media perception (Cohen, 2005). In an extension of this model to the education context, CAM views the learner as aiming to make sense out of six simultaneous channels of information: text, visual scenes, speech, sound effects, music, and human-body motion. This information is analysed in terms of its temporal structures and in terms of the associations (meanings) brought to mind. Some information that leaks through to long term memory elicits hypotheses, expectation in a narrative context about what is actually happening at the level of the presentation. It is argued that the learner creates a working narrative based on the best match between the lower order (structures and associations) and higher level (hypotheses) information. The model emphasizes that the learner as a creator of narrative. The model claims that a multimedia presentation which leads the learner to create a coherent narrative will promote superior learning (retention and transfer) than presentations (with or without media) that provide poor support for coherent narrative. It follows that lecturers could consider the lecture in the context of narrative and the selection of multimedia enhancement in terms of its facilitation of generation of coherent narrative.
Annabel J. Cohen (B.A. McGill; Ph. D. Queen’s University; ARCT Royal Conservatory – Toronto) has dedicated her career to the study of music cognition, with extensions to multimedia and learning in a cultural context. She is Principal Investigator and Project Director of AIRS (Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing, www.airsplace.ca), an interdisciplinary, international initiative supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through its major collaborative research initiative program. As a Professor of Psychology at the University of Prince Edward Island, she was the designated Project Leader for a Canada Foundation for Innovation grant that focused on interdisciplinary educational research in Culture, Multimedia, Technology and Cognition in partnership with UNB and U de Moncton. This project is the foundation for the current conference. She has published over 85 articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings papers, contributing to the psychological understanding of tonality, music transposition, the acquisition of music grammar, effects of film music, and creativity. A recent focus with her students has been the development of the AIRS short battery of singing skills. She is the editor of Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain, and serves on the consulting boards of several other journals. Her research has received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). She is an Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University, Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, and Council member of the American Psychological Association.
Video-Gaming, Homo Digitalis, and the Internet as God in the 21st Century (2011)
Video-gaming, cell phones, instant messaging, the Internet…educational discourse about new technology abounds with the worry that we are transforming from homo sapiens to homo digitalis, digital beings whose primary mode of interaction is not facial or manual or bodily, but digital and visual and cut off from bodily social interaction and from the natural world. Research has even claimed changes in brain states to substantiate these concerns. I explore the extent to which any such risk of being ‘cut off’ might be due not only to our isolation in front of computer screens, but also to the linguistic, perceptual and cognitive micro-features of video-game use…and by our being in effect repositioned in the world as creaturely fellow-users and dependents upon the vast unseen all-knowing all-powerful god of the 21st century, the Internet. But… advocating education over panic, I attend also to the political significations involved in the discourse of presenting video-gaming and Internet use as “addictions”.
Pamela Courtenay-Hall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Prince Edward Island. Her research interests are in the areas of: environmental thought, feminist theory, ethics, philosophy of science, philosophy of education, parenting, sexuality, and critical thinking. She has a B.A. (Mathematics) and B. Ed. (Senior/Intermediate Mathematics and Physics) from the University of Windsor, and M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Windsor with a concentration in ethics and environmental ethics, and an M. A. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame with a concentration in philosophy of science. Her Ph. D. in Philosophy is from the University of Toronto and her thesis title was “Ecoholism and its critics: A critical exploration of holism in environmental ethics and the sciences of ecology”.
Video Games, Colonization, and Critical Computer Literacy (2009)
Most critical examinations of video game use focus on the extent to which many video games contribute to a culture of violence and sexism, lead to addiction, and disincline habitual users from healthy social interaction and physical exercise. These problems are real and important. But there is a much more pervasive yet subtle problem with video game use that has not yet made it onto the research and educational policy radar screen. This is the impact of video game use on ecological perception. Ecological perception refers to the following four dimensions of perceptual behaviour:
1)ATTENTION SPAN
2)INSTANT GRATIFICATION EXPECTATION (“IGE”)
3)HABITS OF PERCEPTION (These include the time and space scales andpattern ranges which an individual brings to her experience.)
4)LANGUAGE HABITS (The complexity and tenor of the language net that an individual develops, the narrative and moral significances cast by this net, and thesocial expectations formed as a result.)
These dimensions govern how children perceive the world they live in – how they perceive the people, the nonhuman beings, the landscapes and places, and the social practices in their world. They also govern how children locate and orient themselves within their world, setting directions and limits on identity formation and habits of interaction with others.
In this presentation, I will explore the ways in which ecological development is impacted by “the micro-features” of video game use – the complex dynamics of engagement that video games lead children into. I will present evidence to suggest that the frequent use of many popular kinds of video games—both those purporting to be educational and those purporting only to be fun and exciting—can train into children certain limits of attention, excesses of “Instant Gratification Expectation,” perceptual habits centered on the fast- moving and readily digested, and (particularly for video games targeted at boys and young men) language habits oriented around the values of competitive acquisition, colonization, or mutual extermination. In other words, the dynamics of computer-game engagement can lead to a certain “colonization” of our children. I will also explore the potential of bringing these problems to children’s critical view, suggesting that this critical thinking” approach to video game use can not only diminish the harmful effects of colonization, but actually advance children’s “ecological development.”
In sum, I am arguing the need for, and suggesting possible strategies for, helping children and youth make progress toward a form of “computer literacy” that goes beyond keyboard dexterity, interfacing skills, and internet navigational expertise, to:
·awareness of the impact of computer gaming on their attention, expectation, andperceptual and language habits,
·understanding of computer programs as constructed texts,
·critical awareness of the cultural messages that computer games deliver,
·social and educational reflexivity in their use of computer games and programs. I call this “critical computer literacy.”
Pamela Courtenay-Hall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Prince Edward Island. Her research interests are in the areas of: environmental thought, feminist theory, ethics, philosophy of science, philosophy of education, parenting, sexuality, and critical thinking. She has a B.A. (Mathematics) and B. Ed. (Senior/Intermediate Mathematics and Physics) from the University of Windsor, and M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Windsor with a concentration in ethics and environmental ethics, and an M. A. in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame with a concentration in philosophy of science. Her Ph. D. in Philosophy is from the University of Toronto and her thesis title was “Ecoholism and its critics: A critical exploration of holism in environmental ethics and the sciences of ecology”.
"Mandela Went to China...and India too": The Impact of Media on Children's Musical Cultures in South Africa (2009)
The cultural landscape of South Africa is reflected in the songs and games of young children whose music often embodies the social and political history of the world around them. My research with young children in the Limpopo province of South Africa is indicative of how children of similar ages identify with the idea of South Africa as a nation and how children themselves use music as an educational tool to engage with their social and cultural identities.
In a country such as South Africa, where the celebration of diversity stands central to the success of the country, the representation of race, class, culture, and ethnicity is distinctly approached in children's musical worlds. Educational media ("edutainment") produced for local broadcast, in the form of television and radio programming, directly impacts children's musical voices and the musical elements of this programming endeavor to overcome barriers of language, race, culture and class. In addition, ideas, thoughts, and newsworthy information are filtered into children's musical languages through the distribution of media in urban and rural areas. This paper explores ideas that have surfaced from my research on children's music and the media in South Africa and addresses the issues children express through their creative musical output. Music is indicative of the continuing social transformation in South Africa, and the manner in which children create, disseminate, and consume music represents the significant impact of media on the musical lives of children in both rural and urban South Africa.
Andrea Emberly recently completed her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington in 2009 where she focused on the musical cultures of childhood in Venda and Pedi cultures in Limpopo, South Africa. Her dissertation explores the intersections of local, national and global influences on children’s musical cultures including community music making, handclapping games, school music curriculums and television programs. She conducted field research in South Africa from 2005-2007 and recently returned to South Africa in 2009 to collect additional research as a part of the Communicative Human Musicality Project at the University of Western Australia.
Andrea is from Alberta, Canada and came to the University of Western Australia in September 2009. In her former life she studied classical trumpet performance at the University of Alberta and Illinois State University. She was inspired to shift her focus to ethnomusicology and now enjoys learning new handclapping games from the around the world and watching Bert and Ernie sing songs in different languages.
What do you mean, it’s gone? : multimodal narratives and rereading (2011)
Hypertextual narratives have given way to reader-driven narratives driven by advances in online technology and communities, and the merging of various technologies to create new spaces for the development of narrative. However, what is sometimes overlooked in the excitement over the possibilities raised by emerging media is that there are significant losses involved. I argue that the impossibility of rereading multimodal texts (created in a collaboration of writer, reader, and medium) presents a problem for interpretation: without rereading, some kinds of interpretive processes are permanently disabled. Since these processes—the refinement of hypotheses, the discovery of new interpretations, and the integration of conclusions—are central to critical reading, we should understand the implications for literacy in the multiplication of transitory texts. I urge a reconsideration of multimodal narratives, and suggest embedding interpretation within a reader-generated response to help harness the power of image, sound, text, and technology.
Anne Furlong, Ph.D. (Linguistics), UCL, is a professor in the Department of English, at the University of Prince Edward Island.
The ‘Unknown Soldiers’ of the Classroom: Paul Virilio and Multimedia (2009)
This chapter puts forward the thesis that instrumental philosophies of technology are insufficient to address issues of multimedia-based instruction in classroom contexts. This is done through a critical examination of the analyses of Paul Virilio. He contends that the increasing militarization of societies globally is closely related to the development and spread of military technologies, including information technologies, among civilians and civilian institutions. Virilio implicitly poses the question of whether technology is a passive and ‘neutral’ instrument, or an active and ‘partial’ agent (and if so, how)? Ultimately, I argue that the value of his approach to technology is in the questions he raises, not necessarily in the answers he provides.
Dr. Udo Krautwurst is a social theorist with particular interest in the anthropology of representations and the historical confrontations between different means of knowledge production and technology. Recently, he has been researching and theorizing the anthropology of science and technology on PEI; he is studying the cultural practices surrounding information technologies and biotechnoscience and how these practices link to issues of power and issues of knowledge production that affect social relations.
Cross-Cultural Variation in Multimedia Presentation Preferences (2009)
Work in the study of cross-cultural variation has traditionally focused on identifying consistent , fundamental dimensions (i.e. Variables) of variation between major cultural groups. Work by researchers such as Hofstede (1997), Hall (1990) and Trompenaars (1993, 1998) has focused on identifying characteristics of cultural variation across national groups and then hypothesized how this variation could affect a particular group's preferences and interactions both within the group and across cultural boundaries. The most extensive study of this type has been done by Hofstede, the results of which led him to posit five distinct variables of cultural variation: power distance, collectivism, versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term versus short-term orientation. Other researchers have introduced different and/or additional variables (e.g. Hall posits a difference in him people organize their interactions with respect to time, monochronic versus polychronic), but Hofstede's work is best supported by empirical evidence and most popular with researchers applying this work to Information Technology (IT) studies (primarily due to its empirical base, its straight-forward description of variables and its initial focus on IT workers as its subjects).
Hofstede's theory relates to how people view the world and prefer to have their society organized. For example, the variable power distance measures the extent to which members of a cultural group expect and accept unequal power distribution with that culture. Cultures with a high power distance tend to have centralized political power and exhibit tall hierarchies in organizations with large differences in salary and status while cultures with low power distance tend to view subordinates and supervisors as closer together and more interchangeable, with flatter hierarchies in organizations and less difference in salaries and status. The theory is often then related to how information should be presented to people within a cultural group, with (e.g.) members of a high power distance culture preferring to have new information supported by references to authority while members of a low power distance culture prefer to have new information supported by detailed explanations and supporting material. Hofstede's theories of cultural variation have been applied to the design of multimedia material by Aaron Marcus & Emilie W. Gould (2000). In this work, the authors discuss each of Hofstede's five variables and hypothesize how each should affect information interface design for a specific culture. In other words, how to design an effective and appealing multimedia interface for a specific cultural group based upon that group's cultural characteristics. To return to the example of power distance, the authors posit that this cultural characteristic should influence interface design in the following ways:
●Access to information: highly (high PD) vs. Less-highly (low PD) structured.
●Hierarchies in mental models: tall vs. Shallow.
●Emphasis on the social and moral order (e.g. Nationalism or religion) and its
symbols: significant/frequent vs. minor/infrequent use.
●Focus on expertise, authority, experts, certifications, official stamps, or logos:
strong vs. weak.
●Prominence given to leaders vs. citizens, customers, or employees.
Importance of security and restrictions or barriers to access: explicit, enforced,
frequent restrictions on users vs.. transparent, integrated, implicit freedom to
roam.
●Social roles used to organize information (e.g., a managers' section obvious to all
but sealed off from non-managers): frequent vs. Infrequent
Such guidelines for interface design are invaluable, if they are accurate. However,
the guidelines are to this day still largely hypotheses, albeit by a highly regarded interface
designer. It would be highly recommended that these hypotheses were backed up by
experimental testing demonstrating their validity.
It is the purpose of this presentation to demonstrate how these hypotheses are being tested by the presenter, with examples taken from past and on-going experimentation. Discussion will focus on experimental design, testing techniques and advances (by Hofstede) to cultural classification that are nation-independent.
David LeBlanc is a professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at UPEI. He has a background in artificial intelligence, cognitive science and theoretical linguistics, with degrees in computer science and linguistics. His current research focuses on cross-cultural variation in interface design—work he is eager to expand to the study of variation in player preferences within video games. This work involves experimental usability testing.
Integrating Technology in Senior High Science: Does Gender Matter? (2009)
Gender gaps in attitudes toward science and self-efficacy still exist in K-12 and post-secondary education. Student inquiry, supported by new hand-held data loggers, with their graphic interface may improve this situation. A mixed-method study involving grade 10 science and grade 11physics students from 10 teachers’ classrooms in PEI, Canada, sought to find if student inquiry, aided by data loggers, helps reduce attitudinal and self-efficacy gender gaps. Findings suggest that gender differences persist (such as science anxiety, self-efficacy and self-confidence in the ability to learn science). Implications for science teacher practice, technology integration and future research are suggested.
Ronald J. MacDonald teaches science methods, technology integration and research methods courses in the Faculty of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island. He has been a junior and senior high school science teacher in Nova Scotia and Ontario, Canada, for 15 years. He has also been an information technology integration specialist and professional development facilitator.
His PhD dissertation addressed the intersections between teacher attitudes toward Information Communication Technology, leadership and professional development for ICT integration. His current research focuses on the development of communities of practice for supporting science teachers who want to increase student inquiry through the integration of ICTs, such as data logging technologies. Other current research addresses the following topics: gender differences in attitude toward science brought about when technologies are integrated in the classroom/laboratory; how New Learners (first year university students) learn with new technologies; and how to improve teacher education through building stronger links between university coursework and the school practicum.
Multimedia, Relationality, and InuitQaujimajatuqangit in an Online Learning Environment (2011)
All technologies, including those involving multimedia, imply embedded cultural assumptions. This is particularly important in contexts such as that of the Nunavut MEd, the first graduate program to be offered in Nunavut, as the students are Inuit and speak Inuktitut as a first language, while lead instructors for their coursework are mostly non-Inuit and speak English as their first language. Creating an online learning environment to support the Nunavut MEd therefore requires establishing coherence between the multimedia technologies used and the language and culture of the students. Drawing on a framework developed for the 2009 HITS conference, this presentation will look at the relationship between Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit—traditional Inuit values—and the online environment supporting the MEd.
Sandy McAuley worked for seventeen years with online learning environments as supports for very small isolated secondary schools in Canada’s arctic. His work with educators and students to create and investigate online bilingual knowledge-building communities for Inuit students became the basis for his doctoral research at OISE/UToronto. A portion of this work was supported by the Canadian TeleLearning National Centres of Excellence and as a member of this team Sandy contributed to the development of Knowledge Forum, a powerful collaborative hypermedia environment. Sandy joined the UPEI Faculty of Education in 2003.
Sandy’s background in teaching English literature and creative drama has resulted in an interest in how digital media can use sound, graphics, and user-controllable virtual spaces to support the construction of meaning and the creation of knowledge and identity. His work in the far north has contributed to an awareness of the kinds of issues that cultural differences may bring to the use of these media to support learning.
Tracking Modernities: Video Technology and The Vanuatu Young People’s Project (2009)
Independent since 1980, Vanuatu, like many postcolonial nations, is unable to meet the rising demand for formal education from its rapidly growing population of young people. In this paper I analyze how video technology and school drop-outs intersect in an urban project in Vanuatu, an archipelago in the southwest Pacific. Many young people living in marginalized urban settlements are disenchanted with the failed promises of development, particularly in the area of education that is characterized by high drop-out rates and low levels of literacy. Access to video production has provided some school-leavers and drop-outs opportunities to challenge the cultural and social constraints that limit their articulation in the public arena where discourse is dominated by elders and Melanesian big men. By tracking the ways in which video production has offered some young people new discursive possibilities, this paper explores how technology allows youth to mount a critique of modernity including ideas of what counts as literacy, education and authority in newly configured public spaces.
Jean Mitchell has a M.A. in International Development and a M.A. and PhD in Social Anthropology, and has lived, worked and conducted research for extended periods of time in India, Indonesia, and in the South Pacific nations of Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. In India and Solomon Islands she worked for the United Nations while in Kiribati she researched gender and fisheries as part of a collaborative study with government officials. In Vanuatu she undertook extended fieldwork in an urban settlement culminating in the creation of the Vanuatu Young People’s Project at the Vanuatu Cultural centre. In this ongoing project young people are trained in research, advocacy and video production. Innovative ethnography that privileges collaborative approaches promotes indigenous researchers and foregrounds the perspectives of gender and youth have been central to my academic work. She recently completed a SSHRC-funded project entitled “Working Flash, Youth, Labour and Mobility in Vanuatu.”
She has been active in research in the area of Medical anthropology and she has also conducted research into the experience of Tonkinese indentured labourers in Vanuatu that examined connections between memory and the politics of the Cold War. Most recently she has written articles and edited and co-edited books on L. M. Montgomery. Recent (2011) publications include “Operation Restore Public Hope: Youth and the Magic of Modernity in Vanuatu” and “Engaging Feminist Anthropology in Vanuatu: Local Knowledge and Universal Claims.”
Harnessing Color for Effective Presentation of Images and Text (2009)
Color combined with graphics enables presenting enormous amounts of information in a manner that can readily be understood. Yet until recently it was generally believed that color had no effect on the legibility of visual graphics. Because legibility had been defined in terms of processing speed, previous measurements of color legibility had been confounded by the fact that color information was transmitted by slower neural pathways than those for brightness. Therefore these experiments found that only differences in brightness mattered. To avoid this problem, I defined legibility in terms of the number of visual pathways needed to convey information. Visual presentations that required fewer pathways to be seen clearly were defined as being more effective than presentations that required more pathways. (This is simply a reversal of how visual acuity is defined in the 20/20 system.) At the UPEI-Health Canada Legibility Testing Facility, we use distance thresholds to indirectly measure the required number of visual pathways. Early data on legibility of colored graphic symbols on colored backgrounds found color combinations that were significantly more effective than black/white. This proved that color does affect legibility. The results of a three-year project involving 48,000 measurements by 12 persons with normal color vision are presented. Examples of the effectiveness of various color combinations will be demonstrated. Discussion includes effects of certain graphical characteristics and implications for standardizing color legibility.
Thomy Nilsson, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor of Psychology at the University of Prince Edward Island.