Qualities of Educational Media

Index

Overview ¦ Traditional media ¦ Digital Media

Overview

d

Considering the learning brain as comprised of three networks (recognition, strategic and affective) helps us to examine how learners interact with the forms of representational media commonly used in education (text, images, speech, manipulative materials, and the growing field of networked multimedia). Each medium is suitable for different instructional purposes, and each offers different advantages and challenges for learners. Because the key to UDL is individualization, the single most important characteristic of UDL materials is flexibility. In this section we contrast traditional media with digital media.

In our book, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/, we explore in depth the nature of different learning media in connection with their application for UDL.

Back to index

Traditional media

d

Traditional instructional materials tend to be inflexible because they are usually individual, self-contained units like, a book or a videotape. There are essentially no viable means of modifying traditional curricular materials. This inflexibility means that for a teacher to practice UDL using traditional materials, large collections of individual materials would be required to offer appropriate choices for different students. Such collections would be costly, consume too much space, and create nearly insurmountable logistical problems in the classroom.

Back to index

Digital Media

Digital media are inherently transformable. Each medium can be designed to be adjustable in intensity and appearance. So, for example, sounds can be made louder or softer, text can be made larger or turned a different color against another colored background with a different color highlight. Images can be magnified or shrunk, edited or copied, or dynamically linked to tables or other data, changing the graphic display of information when the data are changed. These kinds of adjustments are called “within media transformations.”

d

“Cross media transformations” change the essential representation of information from one medium to another such as text to speech or speech to text. Both of these can be programmed into online tools and software programs via translation algorithms so that the transformation from one medium to another can take place immediately as users need the alternative medium. For example, if a student with dyslexia needs a particular word read aloud, the computer can read it on demand.

Other cross media transformations require interpretive work and preparation, with a particular instructional purpose in mind. Examples of these include image and video description in synthetic or digital speech (providing access to those who cannot see the images) and captioning of dialogue and other sounds such as music or sound effects (providing access to those who cannot hear the sound).

Cross media transformations are never exactly equivalent. Although the literal content may be identical, certain features are lost and gained when media are substituted. For example, through headings and the arrangement of white space text provides cues on the page or screen about what is important. When text is converted to speech, those cues are lost. The text becomes a stream of sound in time. Conversely, speech offers cues such as intonation, gesture, loudness, and facial expression, which are lost when speech is converted to text. See Chapter 3 of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age (http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/chapter3.cfm).

Back to index