Digital Media and Student Learning
- May 28, 2018
- 3 min read
Recently, I created a short edited video as part of my Master’s Program at Deakin University. I discussed the role of digital media in facilitating student learning and engagement in the context of higher education in Australian Universities. We live in a rapidly evolving digital world, where technology pervades almost every aspect of our lives. Education, particularly, higher education is not an exception. As such, it is critical to explore the potential and challenges of using digital media in higher education.
Broadly speaking, the strategies I adopted in making this video have two components. First, I carefully read scholarly articles, written by leading education scholars, to get an overview of the theoretical background. It helped clarify my understanding of what we mean by ‘digital media’ and ‘learning and engagement’. I also read University of South Australia’s five-year digital learning strategy. It gave me an idea about the prospects and challenges that Australian Universities embrace while promoting digital and blended learning. The second component involves technical aspects of making a video, which I will discuss later in this blog.
At the beginning of this video, I presented some statistics on the digital learning environment of some of the large Australian Universities. I gathered this information from the websites of those universities. I defined the key terms, and briefly discussed the differences between face-to-face teaching and digital teaching setups. Here, I used photos with Creative Commons Licence. The first photo shows a conventional small classroom setting, whereas the second and the third photos show examples of a digital learning setup.
I discussed four major points to explain how digital media can help facilitate student learning and thus help universities fulfill the requirements of the learners of the 21st century. First, learning can be enriched with digital content from multiple sources. Second, digital media encourages self-directed learning among students. Third, high quality digital lectures are often more attractive to students. And, finally, digital learning approach helps students excel in their future careers.
Australian universities are yet to fully capitalise on the potential that digital technologies can bring to higher education. In the final parts of the video, I discussed three major challenges that universities face in moving from conventional teaching to online and blended teaching. First, digitally enabled teaching and study facilities (such as laboratories, studios, clinics, and workshops) are required. And, this can be prohibitively expensive for small universities. Second, successful integration of digital media into the curriculum depends on student- and educator-training. Third and the most difficult challenge is to develop and practise a pedagogical approach conducive to flexible and personalised learning experience. Upon reading scholarly articles, I got the impression that educators and researchers all over the world are working towards designing a pedagogical approach to complement blended learning.
The second strategy of making this video was to teach myself the know-how of making high quality
videos using professional or semi-professional video editors. In fact, it was the first edited video I ever created. Throughout the trimester, I watched several videos that Dr. Adam Brown shared with his students. Inspired by those clips, I wanted to make a video with a complete message, which looks professional. The most difficult challenge was to choose an appropriate video editor. After several days of research online, I chose Movavi Video Editor because of its attractive features for the new learners. Several useful tutorials are available on YouTube, which greatly helped me learn the nuances, such as how to edit, and how to add intro, texts, and photos to a video presentation. Throughout my video, I used texts and photos to emphasize the main points of my discussion. I enjoyed the whole process and learned a lot from it.
References
Beetham, H, 2007 ‘An approach to learning activity design’, in H Beetham & R Sharpe (eds), Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: Designing and delivering e-learning. New York: Routledge, pp.26-40.
Oliver, R, Harper, B, Wills, S, Agostinho, S, & Hedberg, J 2007. ‘Describing ICT-based learning designs that promote quality learning outcomes’, in H Beetham & R Sharpe (eds), Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age: Designing and delivering e-learning. New York: Routledge, pp.64-80.
Robin, B 2008 ‘Digital storytelling: A powerful technology tool for the 21st century classroom’, Theory into practice, vol. 47, no. 3, pp.220-228.
University of South Australia, 2015 ‘Digital Learning Strategy 2015-2020’. Available at: https://i.unisa.edu.au/siteassets/staff/tiu/documents/digital-learning-strategy.pdf
Links for Creative Commons photos
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