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Adapting: Online Learning Environments, Visual Pedagogy, and Active
Learners, by W. Michele Simmons
While
most of us
would agree
that there has
been a shift
from print
to screen as
the primary
mode of communication,
many of us
have yet to
understand the
effects this
shift might
have on teaching
our courses.
Indeed while
many courses
talk about
the effects
of technology,
few incorporate
it into their
curriculum
in ways that
actually enhance
learning. According
to J. L. Lemke, "the first
generation of interactive learning technologies has mostly been,
not unexpectedly, simply a transposition of the textbook model of
education to a new display medium. Trees may be grateful, but little
about the nature of learning changes, perhaps only the increased
motivation for some students generated by novelty" (87). Many
instructors merely transport their course materials from a Microsoft
Word document to a Web site—without
understanding
the missed
opportunities
of interactivity
that an online
medium mightprovide.
Simply encoding information in html does not necessarily exploit
online media in a way that engage our students. But even if we do
not fully utilize the medium, transporting documents to the Web
does necessarily change how our students can interact with the information
we provide. For example, adding hyperlinks does not automatically
create productive interactivity, but it does complicate the ways
students assemble the course materials. In this essay, I consider
changes in the literacy skills required to make sense of online
materials that we must consider if we hope to develop engaging online
learning environments. Specifically, I examine ways in which interactivity
and visuals in online materials increase opportunities for learning
but also simultaneously introduce complexities.
While
the online
format may present
additional
opportunities
for involving
the student,
it also requires
additional
skills for assembling,
analyzing,
and using the
needed information.
Being more
aware of these
skills can help
us think carefully
about how we
adapt materials
online. The
manner in which
online text
is "chunked"
into shorter fragments and linked across multiple pages requires
users to assemble and analyze information in ways that defy the
typical notions of a text with closure—of a definite beginning,
middle, and end. Users are forced to know what they need and arrange
it in the order in which they need it—a daunting task that
traditional media does not often demand. Effectively completing
this task of making meaning out of online media requires fairly
sophisticated skills for locating and categorizing information (Lemke,
79). Richard Lanham (2004) asserts that the electronic technology
in new media "creates a different literacy" from
traditional
print-based
literacies (466).
Yet the literacy
practices necessary
to engage with
these online
course materials
are more complex
than
we typically
consider.
-
Complexity
is generated
by the interaction
between information
and interface—between
mode and
media.
Online materials
are both
multimodal
and multimedia
(103). As
Kress
and Van
Leeuwen
note, a
mode
is a type
of
content:
writing,
images or
diagrams
(i.e., "visuals"),
or even
color.
It is the "material
resource" used "as
a means
of articulating
discourse"
(25).
Each mode offers
the potential
for different "representational
and communicational
action by
their users" (Kress
5). An example
of monomodality
would be a
text-only
document, while
a document
with text
and
images would
exhibit multimodality.
Modes are
expressed
through different
media: a book,
CD or Web
site. Medium,
then is the "material
resource" used
in the production
of the discourse
(22). New
media allow
teachers
and students
to choose
the
mode of
their
communication
based on
what they
want to
emphasize
and what
is appropriate
for their
particular
audience
rather than
on cost—encouraging
multimodality
and the
opportunity
it affords
for engaging
readers
in different
ways. Kress
and Van
Leeuwen
identify
four "strata" within
modes
and media
that affect
a communication’s
meaning:
discourse,
design,
production,
and distribution
(4).
In thinking
about
mode,
for instance,
one chooses
which
mode
will best
present
the content
(type
of discourse),
how the
content
is to
be arranged,
as well
as what
rhetorical
or epistemological
position
is to
be adopted
(design)
(51).
As to
medium,
the way
in which
the information
is produced—such
as whether
the
communication
is on
paper
or online—and
the
way
the
information
is
distributed—such
as
the
encoding
used
to
transmit
the
information
into
a particular
interface—determine
the
view
one
gets
upon
accessing
a
document
as
well
as
the
user’s
ability
to
assemble
the
information
(87,
103).
Because
these
two
issues,
production
and
distribution,
are
as
potent
as
issues
of
discourse
and
design,
and
because
they
are
imbricated
in
them,
Kress
and
Van
Leeuwen
argue
that
moving
printed
text
to
an
electronic
format
results
in
fragmented
information
that
cannot
be
assembled
in
the
same
ways
as
when
instantiated
in
more
traditional
media.
If
teachers
do
not
consider
the
production
and
distribution
of
the
information,
they
risk
producing
a
less
structured
and
needlessly
complicated
method
for
gathering
information,
resulting
in a
reduced
capacity
for
users
to assemble
information
(87)
and
also—more
seriously—failing
to exploit
the
pedagogical
possibilities
offered
by
the
process
of assemblage
itself.
Pitfalls
and Promises
of Interactivity
However,
providing
too
much structure
in an attempt
to simplify
online texts
can disrupt
the very advantages
of online
learning
environments.
Kress and
Leeuwen
discuss a
group
of Web designers,
Oran et. al.,
who developed "user
guides"
to
direct students’ paths
in navigating
online information
because the
designers
believed that
individuals
become overwhelmed
by choices, "clicking
aimlessly
from screen
to screen,"
unable
to "assembl[e]" information
presented
in a hypertext
format (377
qtd. in Kress
and van Leeuwen
103). Yet
they found
that these
guides prevented
students from
exploring
on their own
(104). Such
guides do
not encourage
students to
interpret
how the information
relates to
their own
situations,
to build on
what they
already know.
Students’ own
inquiry
and production
is necessary
in online
spaces if
they are
to make
sense, and
just as importantly,
make use
of the information
they read.
[1] Indeed,
a promise of
interactivity
in online material
is that it
might "critically engage" users
in ways that
help them produce
new knowledge
(Porter).
-
All
kinds of
interactivity
are not equal.
Interactive
options for
online material
range from
clicking
and dragging
the edge of "catalogue
pages" in
order to turn
the "pages"
of
the text to
entering correct
answers about
a topic in order
to reach a more
advanced "playing
level." While
the former
inexplicably
perpetuates
the metaphor
of the book
but offers
no real advantage
to the user,
the later can
engage students
to learn
in ways that
are not always
offered in
traditional
pedagogy, but
that may be
more familiar
and intuitive
to students.
It is here
that interactivity
holds much
promise: it
may be possible
through Web
design to reach
our students
who learn differently
than traditional
approaches
accommodate.
To truly help
our students
learn, materials
online should
incorporate
interactivity
that encourages
students to
produce usable
knowledge.
Our work lies
in making the
connections
between the
ways students
learn and the
ways that information
can be distributed
online.
Online Learning and Visual Literacy
The
ubiquitous
nature of graphics
in online materials
presents a
different challenge
to online learning
environments.
While most
of us in the
academy have
been entrenched
in reading,
teaching, and
writing text,
our students
have been saturated
with the visual,
creating a
gap between
how we teach
and what they
know. Charles
Hill argues
that, "so far, our educational system
has failed to take seriously and to adequately respond to the fact
that so much of the information our students have been exposed to
is in visual form" (107). Since students are immersed in a
visual world, we may be able to provide them with a more powerful
learning experience if we address their physical eye—and
maybe ear and
hand as well—and
then enhance
their literacy
skills by combining
text and images.
Our
students may
be visually
literate, yet they rarely
come to our
courses with
(or learn in
our courses)
the ability
to analyze
complex ideas
conveyed by
an image juxtaposed
with text (Lemke,
78). According
to Craig Stroupe,
when an image
and text are
placed next
to one another,
they enter
into a "dialogic relationship":
juxtaposition allows the image to "respond [to] and resist"
the text and vice versa, complicating the possibilities of meaning
for each (27). Stroupe maintains that the availability of desktop
publishing and Web authoring tools make it possible for us (and
our students) to create documents that illustrate this dialogic
relationship between image and text. However, both the writer and
reader of such documents, he claims, cannot understand the implications
and possibilities without a "critical tradition for describing
these effects and a pedagogical apparatus for teaching them" (32).
We have long
worked to teach
our students
to critically
evaluate the
text on the
page, but less
to critically
evaluate the
images
on that same
page, and much
less to consider
how the two
might function
together.
The
opportunities
that online
environments
afford us for
engaging students
in active learning
are vast—even
beyond interactivity
and visuals.
Yet these
two issues
are important
to consider
especially
when developing
interactive
course materials
from existing
print-based
materials.
What links
or interactivity
might be added
to a document
in order to
encourage
students to
critically
analyze information
and couple
it with their
own inquiry
and experiences
as part of
the task of
assembling
it? How can
one teach
students to
analyze images
as effectively
as text and
then to read
the dialogue
between them?
Much is at
stake in working
through these
questions with
each text or
assignment.
In visually
rich, interactive
online environments,
it may be
possible to
impart skills
to students
who cannot
comprehend
them when
represented
in words on
a printed
page.
Notes
[1] I make a similar point about
the complexity of accessing civic websites in an article, Toward
a Civic Rhetoric for Technologically and Scientifically Complex
Places: Invention, Performance, and Participation, under review
by College Composition and Communication. [Back]
Works Cited
Hill,
Charles. "Reading
the Visual
in College
Writing Classes."
Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook.
Ed. Carolyn Handa New York : Bedford/St. Martin, 2004. 107-130.
Kress, Gunther. Literacy in the New Media Age. New York
: Routledge, 2003.
---. and Theo Van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes
and Media of Contemporary Communication. London : Arnold Publishers,
2001.
Lanham,
Richard. "The
Implications
of Electronic
Information
for the Sociology
of Knowledge." Visual Rhetoric in a
Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Carolyn Handa New
York: Bedford/St. Martin, 2004. 455-473.
Lemke.
J. L. "Metamedia
Literacy:
Transforming
Meanings and
Media. Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook.
Ed. Carolyn Handa New York : Bedford/St. Martin, 2004. 71-93.
Lynch, Patrick J. and Sarah Horton. Web Style Guide: Basic
Design Principles for Creating Web Sites. 2 nd Edition. New
Haven : Yale University Press, 2001.
Oran,
T., G. Salmon,
K. Kreitman,
and A. Don. "Guides:
Characterizing
the Interface." The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design.
Ed. B. Laurel. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.
Porter,
James. "Interactivity and Audience: Toward a Rhetorical
Model of Design for Interactive Systems." 20
Oct. 2004 .< http://www.rhetoric.msu.edu/porter/
interactivity_abstract.pdf>.
Stroupe,
Craig. "Visualizing
English: Recognizing
the Hybrid
Literacy of
Visual and
Verbal Authorship
on the Web."
Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook.
Ed. Carolyn Handa New York : Bedford/St. Martin, 2004. 13-37.
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