Mary Harrsch (mharrsch@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU)
Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:25:24 -0700
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 10:25:24 -0700 From: Mary Harrsch <mharrsch@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> Subject: The use of interactive film activities
List address to send message to everyone: ifets-discuss@LISTSERV.READADP.COM
Details of current discussion: http://grouper.ieee.org/ltsc/ifets/discussions/discuss.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was very impressed by the "Animal Landlord" example explained in Brian
Smith's paper:
http://www.media.mit.edu/explain/papers/MM97_Landlord.PDF
Just last week I was reviewing supplementary online learning materials
produced by a major textbook publisher and just shook my head at the passive
nature of the presentation and lack of collaborative exercises included in
the environment. They simply extended the textbook model to the electronic
environment. Students clicked on materials to read or animations to watch
then were tested with multiple choice assessment tools that did little but
test their short term memory. Brian's "Animal Landlord" program, however,
provides an opportunity for students to observe, categorize, and hypothesize
about observed behaviors and ecological environments then debate their
findings with other students as they strive as a group to identify strategic
factors and construct a decision tree to explain predator-prey interactions.
Brian mentions that he cannot draw any conclusions yet about the gains of
active over passive learning activities. He wonders if nature film
narration were improved to include a more advanced discussion of the
importance of ecological variables on predator-prey behaviors if students
would passively learn just as much. If he and his colleagues study this
phenomenon I hope he develops methods to analyze long term retention of the
information and development of analytical skills following exposure to such
interactive exercises. I cannot imagine that such stimulating learning
would not produce a significant difference in long term retention.
Mary Harrsch
Network and Information Systems Manager
College of Education
102-K Education
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
(541) 346-3554
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~mharrsch/index.htm
---------------------------------------------------------
Forum website: http://ifets.gmd.de/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@ieee.org
Info on Join/Leave List: http://ifets.gmd.de/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Mon 23 Aug 1999 - 22:31:18 MEST