Teaching and Learning with Technological Media

What have you learned in the course about designing instruction from a multimedia perspective? First of all I want to say that this course has been one of the most challenging courses of my educational career, but it has also been one of the most fun and rewarding classes as well. Designing instruction from multimedia was a completely foreign to me and I am just so grateful to have learned the appropriate tools to make this possible. Before I get into me experiences in Dreamweaver, creating and constructing a website, in which I showcase all the seven singular and multimedia projects, I want to talk about the adobe creative cloud and the programs that we used in it. The adobe creative cloud is such a powerful tool and I am so happy that for just $19.99/month,  I was able to download and utilize its products. For this course, we used Acrobat, Photoshop, InDesign, Audacity, Premiere and Dreamweaver. CECS 5110 helped me learn how to properly utilize these tools by providing excel

Designing and creating web-based, multi-media instruction is quite fun, but very laborious. Planning and designing ways to present instructions utilizing text, audio, visuals and video- in the appropriate places takes careful consideration and it is only half the battle. Once you’ve got all the files you want to insert, then you take one daunting task of designing a web page layout, writing the HTML code for it using Dream Weaver and then checking to see if bowers actually render the layout you want.  After all the work you put in, it feels quite rewarding, given that you get what you want,  to have a web page render your instruction. I believe that this is the most powerful, convenient and far reaching method to disseminate instruction. The Asynchronous nature of web-based instruction allows the ultimate freedom, accessibility and flexibility for learners to learn at their own pace- despite geographic location, or distance from the actual instruction. Learners are able to visit a

Taking this course has taught me a tremendous amount about teaching and learning with multi-media. Prior to becoming a Campus Instructional Technologist, I had been in the classroom for five years and my students, colleagues and peers all regarded me as being pretty technologically savvy when it came to teaching and learning with the utilization of technology- blended and flipped classroom learning. Although I don’t deny those claims, I must admit that I was merely a user of technological resources currently available to the educational field. The things that I've learned in this class, I feel, will transitional me from being a user, to being a producer of technological educational resources. Thus far, I've learned the proper techniques in developing effective instruction using text, visual, audio, visual-text, audio-visual and video instruction. Developing instruction is by no means an easy venture. Adequate planning is needed to successfully design these multimedia instruc

     Video instruction, in my opinion, is the best way to instruct a person, or a group of people, a particular goal or objective. When a learner watches a video for instruction, the learner’s brain is engaged in multiple ways, and therefore, elicits better learning from the student. What I learned from creating a video for instruction is that it is incredibly easy and efficient, compared to all other, single modalities of instruction available to create and it is also the most efficient means to teach goals and objectives in an asynchronous manner.      The benefits of teaching and learning from the video modality, far outweigh the difficulties of teaching with video. The only difficult thing about designing instruction with video, is that editing can be quite laborious and it is a bit heavy, front loaded. I had over 30 minutes of video I had to chop down into approximately nine and a half minutes. Choosing the right clips and angles, with the correct transitions and audio with t

     Video instruction is the most efficient way to teach people a particular goal and set of objectives. Having said that, teaching and learning with audio and images, combined, would be very close to having the same benefits of maximizing learning as would video. Compared to teaching and learning with only text, only visuals, only audio, or even audio/text, teaching and learning with visual and audio instruction is superior.      The benefits of teaching and learning with audio and visuals would be that as a double modality, an instructor would be reaching and engaging a far greater audience that any of the modalities by themselves. The instructor has more flexibility and wiggle room as far as instruction is concerned, because learners can learn from depicted visuals, and those things that are hard to explain with visual only, the instructor can supplement with audio. For example, the instructor could audibly say or explain a sequential process of events from a depicted image. T

I must say that as a student, I’ve always taken for granted the times I’ve been effectively taught with the use of multimedia.. Thus far I’ve learned that in order to develop meaningful and effective multimedia instruction, one must first start with a master plan, then work backwards from the desired end goal. Having said that, it was easier to brainstorm particular projects, than it was to create them. It has been a laborious, yet rewarding experience learning programs to help me reach my instructional goals. Thus far, I’ve learned how to properly use Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, InDesign, Dream Weaver and Audacity to create effective and efficient multimedia instruction. Audio-visual instruction is a very powerful means of conveying information. It activates several parts of the brain and has the potential of eliciting powerful emotions, cognition and previous knowledge from the learners, Audio-visual instruction facilitates and far extends learning from students. From a classroom pe

Developing instruction with audio was quite a fun experience. I truly enjoyed working with audacity and creating amateur, instructional pod-casts. Compared to visual instruction, in my opinion, audio instruction was less laborious and much more pleasant to create.                 Having said that, I do not think that teaching with audio is more efficient than teaching with visual, or text. Whether the visual and text instruction is uni-modal, or combined, both are more efficient at conveying the instructional message for two reasons. The reason text is a more efficient means of instruction is because when developing audio instruction, one has to first type and use text to develop a script, to then read and record from, and in essence is doubling the work to convey the same material. Visual instruction is one of the most efficient ways a person can teach, as the maxim goes a picture is worth one thousand words.”                 The only reason someone might thing to instruct anothe

I believe that using Audio-only instruction will not be as beneficial to the learner in terms of acquiring knowledge, simply because it is a uni-modal method of instruction. On top of that, to those people that have the capacity of utilizing all their senses, audio instruction is not that much more different that text instruction by itself. Having said that, some will benefit more from audio-only instruction versus text only instruction. People that are strong auditory learners will benefit greatly from the auditory, stimulating instruction. There are in fact some individuals that learn better from hearing instruction, than actually seeing it. However, if you are hearing impaired, then audio-only instruction will obviously not be the best. I believe that using auditory-only instruction, might best be used as supplement that involves other senses. If used in conjunction with other sense stimulating activities, then the use of auditory-only instruction will be beneficial at solidify

     I believe that instructing someone on how to accomplish a particular goal or objective is absolutely made more efficient by combining text and images Text by itself, as a means of instructing is sufficient and can lead to good transfer of knowledge and skills, however, the level of informational acquisition is contingent upon the learner’s knowledge of the language the text is presented in and the learner's level of vocabulary and other technical nomenclature associated with the topic. In the end, if the designer wants to convey a set of goals and objectives to the learner by way of text, the instructional practitioner must belabor to be as specific as possible, sparring no exceptions and providing a full dictionary of applicable vocabulary.      Instruction by the use of visuals is a bit easier to convey, as imagery makes assimilation and mimicking of desired goals, objectives and behavior easier to accomplish. The instructor need not labor and write extensively in order

Designing instruction using multiple media is a little more cumbersome that what I initially thought it was going to be, however, I believe that the end product will be a better instructional tool, than using single mode instruction. The visual/text instruction mode will benefit teaching and learning, because both modalities work and complement each other to the point of facilitating instruction by making it easier to explain and see what the learning goals, objectives and steps are. Potential Issues I see arising from this multi-modal instruction is that it can be very time consuming for the instructor to piece together. It would be ideal if one were to create an instructional document, to use for years to come, but if one’s instruction is ever-changing, then this mode of instruction would take too much time to keep replicating, when instruction by video would be more efficient. Learning on the other hand, would be enhanced by using visual images and text, than either modality, by it

According to Dual Coding Theory, individuals tend to learn significantly better when using a combination of instructional medium including text, visuals and audio. As a student and instructor it has been my experience that when learning about a particular matter, the acquisition of knowledge, skills and behaviors is facilitated by using a combination of learning media to enhance instruction. I also believe that when incorrectly implemented, single modality instruction quickly becomes a bore and as a result, makes it harder to instruct and learn from.  It is without question that instructional design based on a single medium modality, compared to multi medium modality falls short of being the most efficient way to instruct a particular set of knowledge, skills and desired behaviors. In spite of this fact, there are variances (text vs visual), when it comes to instructional design efficacy that employs a single modality and there are ways of enhancing that modality (visual design and co

The use of color theory and visual design, when properly used in instructing can act as a powerful aid and enhancer in learning. When properly used, the use of color can elicit and excite learners from the get go and can induce powerful associations in learning. When looking at text alone, for example, the learner might immediately be turned off by its dullness and lack of interest, thus making it harder for that student to learn—right from the start. However, the use of visual aids, perhaps a large, and guiding picture, with the use of the correct colors, that that will elicit the desired physical, mental and emotional response wanted by the designer will enhance the way in which the learner approaches, examines, processes and ultimately understands the information presented. Visual design and color theory can most certainly detract from the learning processes, by distracting the learner (too much noise) or sending the learner the wrong priming message (pleasant and calming colors us

In teaching and learning, I must say, that upon completing project 1, I had really taken audio and visual aids for granted.  Trying to instruct solely using text and hypertext is a lot harder that what I initially thought it was going to be. In my teaching and learning experiences there have almost always been visual and audio aids present to supplement the text. In fact, in recent years it seems as though text is used only as a supplemental to visual and audio aids for instructional purposes. In some cases, no text is even used when instructing a process. After completing project 1 I understand why it is so difficult to instruct using text only and why some companies use less text and primarily use audio and visuals to teach a process. Just the other day I was assembling a wagon I got from my son and the instructions were primarily in picture format. The only text used was the numbering of the steps. The rest of the instruction were just pictures of the assembly process. When I bou

     Teaching and learning with technological media greatly enhances the efficiency and retention of desired skills, kno wledge and behaviors when properly utilized as a means of  facilitating the process. Technological media allows a practitioner to more effectively asses learners, quickly give feedback, tailor  a lesson to their  needs, dynamically engage learners and more effectively teach them the items students need more help on and it allows the instructor to quickly breeze by things the learners already know. From my experience, this leads to an objective increase in student content mastery and greatly eliminates downtime, busy work and disengagement. On top of this the use of adaptive curriculum further aids the instructors differentiate learning when the learner is too far behind or too ahead of the rest of the class. I have taught science for six years and from my experience, the use of media has greatly simplified my job as a teacher and transformed my role into that of a