A couple of months ago, in the post ‘A Phone is Not A Book’, I mentioned the need for a different presentation model to be used for instructional content delivered on a smart-phone.

Today, with the Covid-19 situation driving a need for more effective distance learning technologies, I’m going to touch on the need to re-think what instructional media needs to look like going forward.

Students attempt to absorb material by reading narrative text that explains the skills to be developed, viewing or listening to some form of live or recorded presentation, and at times, interacting with others in order to fill in missing pieces in order to unblock missed understanding. In almost all academic and professional settings, progress is assessed through the successful completion of exercises.

A conventional textbook has a couple of these elements already in place – the narrative text and illustrations provide the material to be read, and example problems which can be used to practice the skills being taught.

But too much work goes into well-designed textbooks to leave it at that – a collection of pages, designed to be rendered on physical pages, or digitized representations of the same. No matter the quality of the pedagogy and media, learning involves doing, doing involves trying, trying often involves asking.

Given what we know today, here are a couple of ideas I think are worth exploring when it comes to academic texts (because that is the exploring we’re doing at EBC):

 

Make example problems easier to access.

It’s 11PM, and the physics exam is tomorrow morning. The student remembers that there was, somewhere in his e-book, a highlighted example problem that he had struggled with – if only he can find it amidst all the notes, highlights, and bookmarks that clutter his copy of the e-text.

Students need to pass tests and exams. Tests and exams consist of problems which need to be solved. If a student is interested in seeing a list of only the example problems in a text, s/he must resort to full text searches which pulls up far too many references, most of which don’t directly relate to a sample problem.

Digital technology is certainly capable of limiting the search only to example problems – or in the release of companion titles which provide a slimmed down resource for students who are focusing on the drill and practice habits needed for success.

Exploit technology that fits the device.

To repeat, a phone is not a book. Too much technology has been invested in re-purposing content to be rendered on a device no larger than the palm of your hand.

But smart-phones and mobile browsers have strengths that can be exploited -

  • The utility and speed of access of web-pages mean that bookmarking features should allow the ability to easily save references to important examples or segments of content. Bookmarking or highlighting features are just two of the techniques where electronic media surpasses hard-copy capabilities. Most of these features already exist ---- so long as the student jumps through a paywall.
  • Video and audio can be easily woven into any text-based package, and improvements in bandwidth should customization features allow a wikipedia-like popup that references different media forms based on user preference (e.g. a video presentation for adult learner of algebra may differ from that of a presentation for a high-school student).
  • Phones are about messaging and connecting. Any instructional application which leaves out the ability to quickly send content fragments to friends ignores the student’s need to conveniently interact with other students and mentors. (Try sending an example problem pulled from a paywall protected PDF to a friend without resorting to a screenshot.) Communication features that allow better integration of content with dialog should be de-rigueur.

The development of effective instructional media means more than converting a book’s paper pages into web pages. It means extracting content most relevant for different media forms – hand-held, tablet, and yes, hard-copy all have a place in education.

But someone needs to pay for this stuff.

Good content costs. A world of high quality media that is consistently maintained without a revenue stream is a bridge too far. But these are days where no-one pre-pays to see a chapter about trigonometric functions. And content littered with streams of popups can be too disrupting to the student desperately looking for a good thermodynamics example. Ads will need to be placed more discretely, better woven into the content branding, or introduced only onto views voluntarily traversed by the user which supplement the main content.

If anything, the Covid-19 experience has demonstrated glaring weaknesses in on-line learning. Things aren’t great when the social aspects of learning are yanked from the student-teacher experience. Not all these problems will ever be fixed by educational publishing technology.

But these times also offer opportunity for those who look at instructional titles as something more than a monolithic package of media to be consumed – rather, an opportunity that views quality media as a ‘place’ where students can quickly and conveniently visit, reflect, and discuss.