Make Sure Your Media Makes Sense and Cents

Convert DOs into activities

Once you have a list of most important DOs, you can convert them into instructional activities that will support learners and learning. There are four types of activities to consider: Content activities, meaning-making activities, practice activities, and assessment activities.

• Content activities: Presentation of content, through readings, presentations, demonstrations, stories, animations, and such.
• Meaning-making activities: Activities that help learners make sense of what they are learning for themselves and their job, such as discussions (to gain different perspectives), exploration (to make connections or find resources), sharing experiences (to collect lessons learned), and planning (to determine what actions to take to put the skills into practice).
• Practice activities: Activities that allow the learner to practice applying what they learned in real or realistic ways, via hands-on exercises, tutorials, simulations, cases, problems, experiments, and such.
• Assessment activities: Same as practice activities, but practice activities allow learners to practice the DOs while assessment activities determine if the learner can perform the DOs, in either a real or a realistic way.

I’m going to concentrate on practice activities because when media resources aren’t adequate, this is where more time and cost-intensive media will typically provide the biggest bang for the buck. Table 3 shows typical practice activities and the media used for these activities for each DO type.

Of course, practical and other considerations (such as time and expense) narrow the list of media that can be used. But this type of analysis, determining the DOs and the activities and media needed to allow the learner to DO them in a realistic context, is one of the best ways I know to determine which activities and media to consider for online and blended courses.

Practical Considerations

The resources needed for building media varies, and is often a limiting factor on what is possible because (drum roll), unless you are developing training for fighter pilots or disaster first responders (whose mistakes are likely to be truly disastrous), there are usually not enough resources to build all the media that would be optimal for a given instructional situation. And many instructional projects suffer from “I-need-it-yesterday” syndrome, which limits what can be done in a given amount of time.

Two huge practical considerations when determining what media elements to use are time and money, and tolerance for pain. In the next few sections, I’ll describe these considerations, along with some ways to deal with them.

Time and money

When clients ask me what makes a project more or less time consuming and expensive, I tell them that given a certain amount of content, media and revision cycles tend to add the most time and cost to a project. That makes it seem like eliminating media and revisions is the answer to all time and cost problems, but that’s silly. Books would take less time to write and cost less if they were all 20 to 50 pages long. Cars would take less time to build and would cost less if they were made with the recycled pile of Amazon.com boxes in my garage, plastic wrap, and duct tape.

Learners need to understand and practice –and understanding and practicing online is often easier using media. (Important to note: Not all practice has to occur online. Assuming that the learner must accomplish all practice inside a monitor using gee-whiz 9000 technologies can be a huge waster of resources.)

Here are some ways to get the media you need most without blowing your budget.

• For checkbox þ training (also known as CYA training – ask your cube-mates if you can’t figure out what this means), don’t bother with media that takes time or money to build.
• Use off-the-shelf courses or media (make sure you have license to use it as desired) and design proprietary content elements to go with it (for example, here’s our company’s policy on accepting gifts from vendors, and here’s a real-life example from our company that shows the damaging effects of not following the policy).
• Link to existing media that someone else has built (such as news clips on television station Websites or YouTube clips).
• Share the expense of developing good media with others who have a use for the same media (for example, simulations handling hazardous waste in a phlebotomy lab).
• Build it yourself with simple, inexpensive tools (such as Audacity for audio clips. and Pinnacle or Flip Video for video clips). Note: We often assume that we need high-quality video. That is often not the case; sometimes cheaper is better.
• Develop offline practice activities when that is practical, so less do-it-inside-the-monitor practice media is needed,

In my experience, most people don’t consider all the costs of media development, and find themselves surprised when unforeseen costs come to bite them. Here are some costs you need to factor in when considering which media to use in online courses.

1. Costs for designing and developing media elements (such as salaries, benefits, overhead, and vendor costs).
2. Costs of media-building tools (such as authoring tools and licenses, and specialized computer equipment, if needed).
3. Costs for maintaining skills, tools, and equipment (new people, new versions, new equipment); and costs for making changes to media elements over time (If you haven’t found that online courses seem to attract never-ending revision cycles like air travel attracts screaming babies, we must be working in different universes).

Tolerance for pain (yours and theirs)

Even if you have all the time and money in the world (unlikely), media usually adds complexity (and pain) to building and using learning materials. Worthwhile complexity (and pain), perhaps, but complexity (and pain) nonetheless. Therefore, you need to consider whether the addition of media adds enough to the learning experience to be worth the extra pain on your and your learners’ parts.

If it’s your job to build online content, and you don’t have media development expertise, you may have a small to large learning curve ahead of you. The good news is that many of the media authoring tools out there are pretty easy to use, in comparison to the authoring tools used just a few years ago. The downside is that these darn tools are always being updated, so the learning curve is ongoing (although the learning curve is usually smaller with new versions).

You have no media development skills in house, and none likely in the near future? In this case, you can use existing media (see previous section) or hire others to build what you need. Think gaining and maintaining authoring skills is a pain? Try working with vendors if you really want pain.

You might also consider providing internship opportunities to students in higher-education media development programs. When I taught a capstone-like course for the instructional design Master’s program at The University of Colorado, Denver, we actively looked for design and media projects that learners enrolled in the course could build. Media development talent may also be available from local community colleges and art schools. However, there’s pain here, too. You need to provide adequate resources (such as content-expert time) and supervise their work, or you won’t be thrilled with the outcome. (You don’t save time, money, or pain if what you get is free but doesn’t meet your needs.)

When considering how much media-related complexity to deal with, don’t stop with yourself or your department. When you add media, you necessarily increase complexity for your learners, too. Will they know how to use the media you provide? Will the pages with media seem overwhelming? (“What am I supposed to do here?”) Will the pages with media seem superfluous? (“What does Mickey Mouse with a huh-yuuuuuuge hammer have to do with workplace violence?”)

Here are some ways to minimize the pain for you and your learners when using media.

• Use the media most appropriate for the learning objective. (See the beginning of this article for some insights on how to do this.)
• Be judicious about using clip art or other eye candy. If it doesn’t add, it may detract. (Do some usability testing to see whether learners like it, hate it, or don’t care.)
• Standardize how media elements work in your courses. That means using a standardized player with standardized buttons that work the same in every course. (Do some usability testing to see if learners understand how to use the media elements that require them to do something.)
• Make sure pages with media don’t seem cluttered. (Do some usability testing to see if learners feel that pages have too much going on. If they feel that they do, they do!)
• DON’T lock learners into clicking on every interaction. (If you think this is a good idea, reread some of the research on adult learners. If you still think it’s a good idea, consider working as a prison guard. If I sound really cranky here it’s because so many people think this makes sense, but this is almost always a really, really bad idea. Nothing makes adult learners more ticked off than being treated like a grade schooler.)
• Don’t overwhelm novices with complex and detailed simulations.

When editing The Online Learning Idea Book (Pfeiffer, 2007), I reviewed numerous instructional media elements. The media in the National Science Foundation’s Interactive Physics materials (http://nsf.gov/news/overviews/physics/interactive/interactive.jsp#Scene_1) and After the Tsunami materials (http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/tsunami/index.jsp ) are breathtaking examples of how good media can support understanding. However, they also show that media can be a bit overwhelming (when too much media is used, or directions for using media elements aren’t clear).

There are certain “Ah-ha” moments I hope you will take away from this article. The most important is that selecting media requires more consideration than choosing whether to eat a grilled or fried chicken sandwich. Most of us do not have unlimited time and money, or an ability to deal with pain. In most cases, we should design and build media elements that best support understanding and real, or realistic, practice. Moreover, in cases where the content is more informational than instructional, you should use media very sparingly.

The good news is that so many of the media development tools available today are easier to use than the tools we had only a few years ago. In many cases, designers can develop their own media elements, without having to go through a typical media development boondoggle (storyboards, development, QA, changes, QA, changes, and so on). For a recent client, we decided to help the content experts develop their own elements (with our assistance). Letting content experts develop their own media certainly wouldn’t work in all circumstances, but it’s a testament to the ease-of-use of many of the new media development tools, that this is even possible. (I think it’s possible in many cases, but I realize that many would disagree.)

So what media development tools do I personally use? My favorite media development tools include SnagIt, Articulate Presenter, Quizmaker, Lectora, Captivate, Camtasia, Audacity, and Flashform. I’m also considering buying Flip Video soon so I can start producing low-budget video as well.

Media can be fun and meaningful, but it can also be frustrating. Use it wisely.

Resources

Flip Video http://www.theflip.com/

Pinnacle http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Home/

Short Courses, Digital Photography Resources http://www.shortcourses.com/

Digital Video Basics http://reviews.cnet.com/Digital_video_basics/4660-12443_7-6510112.html and http://digital-video-101.classes.cnet.com/

Comparison of Video Editing Software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_editing_software

Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Podcasting Tools http://www.podcasting-tools.com/podcasting-articles.htm

Flash e-Learning Overview http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/UsingFlash/help.html?content=WSd60f23110762d6b883b18f10cb1fe1af6-7c97.html

Educational Animation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_animation

Web Game Shells http://www.thiagi.com/web-game-shells.html

References

Alessi, S. M. & Trollip, S.R. (2001). Multimedia for learning: Methods and development, 3e. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Broughton, A. (n.d.) Developing multimedia learning environments (n.d.). University of  Central Lancashire, Learning Development Unit.

Craig, S.D., Gholson, B. & Driscoll, D.M. (2002). Animated pedagogical agents in multimedia educational environments: Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(2), 428-434. Retrieved from: http://www.education.umd.edu/EDHD/faculty2/Azevedo/courses/spring03/edhd779A/Craig&Gholson&Driscoll(2002).pdf (Updated November 2, 2009: http://web.archive.org/web/20040712153414/http://www.education.umd.edu/EDHD/faculty2/Azevedo/courses/spring03/edhd779A/Craig&Gholson&Driscoll(2002).pdf )

Hede, T. and Hede, A. (2002). Multimedia effects on learning: Design implications of an integrated model. In S. McNamara and E. Stacey (Eds), Untangling the Web: Establishing Learning Links. Proceedings ASET Conference 2002. Melbourne, 7-10 July. Retrieved from: http://www.aset.org.au/confs/2002/hede-t.html (Editor's Note: This article no longer appears to be available online as of November 2, 2009. Archive.org is unable to retrieve it.)

Kapp, Karl K. (n.d.). Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning. San Francisco: Wiley.

Mayer, R.E. (2001) Multimedia learning/. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Mayer, R.E. (2003). The promise of multimedia learning: Using the same instructional design methods across different media. Learning and Instruction, 13, pp.125-139. Retrieved from: http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/edpsych/External/EDUC_5080/Mayer.pdf (Editor's Note: This article is no longer available at no charge from online sources. It may be purchased, however. Sources may be found via search engines.)

Shank, P. (2006, 2007). Various articles on practice and activities in Online Classroom, Magna Publications. Retrieved from: http://www.magnapubs.com/newsletters/onlineclassroom.html

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