Abstract
While the educational potentials of the so-called new media are rich and ready for implementation, the discussion of their benefits has become somewhat redundant. Media and education scholars have agreed on the necessity for further exploration and exploitation of these technologies since the 1960s, but the discourse has not moved much beyond the argument that these technologies exist, and that they deserve a permanent place in the twenty-first century classrooms.
The variables missing from the conversation about new media technologies and their use in contemporary classrooms include a holistic look at these tools as media per se, a critical look at their very qualities that make them media, their ability to carry discourse that transcends the confines of a physical or virtual classroom to embrace society as a whole. The questions of ownership and incentives are also overlooked when the makers of those media are concerned while a teacher or university choose to adopt such technology. The so-called new media are never neutral tools of instruction. As one New York-based media scholar noted during a panel discussion on liberal pedagogy, educators often depend on Silicon Valley wizards and entrepreneurs to navigate the swift currents of technical revolution towards the right brand of techno-savviness within their own classrooms. If the image of a lecturer holding an iPad to change slides on a classroom screen becomes horrendously obsolete after the relative technological eternity of, say, 3 years, society will know exactly which incarnation of Steve Jobs to thank for the next big wave of the Digital Revolution.
The group of authors of New Media and Digital Pedagogy: Enhancing the Twenty-first-century Classroom includes scholars, educators and practitioners in a variety of spheres that include communication, creative writing, educational technology and gaming. The editor, Michael G. Strawser, co-authored the first essay that constitutes the first chapter, titled ‘New Media and the Twenty-first-century Classroom: A Research and Instructional Imperative’, which introduces the volume, posits the problem, and offers a very brief background with historical context and theoretical understanding.
In the second chapter, titled ‘Instructional Enhancement: New Media as a Paradigm Shift’, authors Marjorie Buckner and Mary Norman explore the evolution of new media-based pedagogy in the context of historical patterns and development trends. Their findings confirm that the new media learning paradigm offers rich opportunities for media advancement (Chapter 2, p. 28). While stressing the features of these unique technologies themselves, the authors point at the importance of developing critical self-examination skills among students who become consumers of classroom media messages.
The third chapter is titled ‘Media and Digital Literacy: A Framework for Instructional Strategy’, where authors Jason Martin and Jason Zahrndt delve into the issues of media and digital literacy by positioning them as frameworks for long-term instructional strategy. The authors predict that appropriate and effective use of technologies, combined with the willingness of institutions to provide continuous instructional support, will remain crucial if accompanied with efforts to minimize distractions and improve the overall student experience (Chapter 3, p. 48).
The editor’s introduction of the fourth chapter emphasizes the twenty-first century frequently enough to raise a doubt about the lasting value of the arguments introduced in this essay, titled ‘Faculty Development in the Digital Age: Training Instructors in New Media Pedagogy’. While making valid claims about the ability of new media to enhance learning, discovery and delivery of knowledge (Chapter 4, p. 75), the authors of this chapter delve into questions of programme effectiveness and student-centredness of learning as a way of grounding theoretical research into everyday applications in classroom pedagogy.
Shifting from the transmission model of communication towards a vision that leans towards community building, author Nigel Haarstad explores ‘Learning Interfaces: Collaboration and Learning Space in the Digital Age’ to understand the ability of new media to facilitate collaboration by bringing students together on digital platforms that enhance effective learning. While accepting the plurality of theoretical approaches to understanding the formation of community in student-populated online spaces, the author asks a number of valid questions about equalizing versus marginalizing potentials of educational hardware and software, the use of available analytics to make ‘pedagogically informed choices’ (Chapter 5, p. 93), and the need to critically evaluate the ability of technology to influence community and collaboration in contemporary classrooms.
Author Beth Case examines ‘Accessibility and New Media Technologies’ in her essay that constitutes the sixth chapter, addressing the current landscape of challenges related to the accessibility of material mediated by educational technology, the potential of new media to equalize the higher education classroom, and the charge laid upon media-enhanced pedagogy and digital tools to continue the process of equalization in the future (Chapter 6, p. 99). This chapter concludes with practical advice for instructors subscribing to the tenants of Universal Design that include encouragement to try new technologies and new approaches to teaching, to examine the ways each student with a disability would access course materials or participate in activity, and to include contingency plans for cases when students with disability would enroll in the course and find that certain materials or activities are beyond their reach (Chapter 6, p. 111).
Paying tribute to a new trend in pedagogy, the seventh chapter by author Clay Ewing, titled ‘Gamification and the New Media Imperative’, is dedicated to the analysis of the role of games as means of enhancing learning through strategic thinking, role-playing, and other methods of interaction characteristic to the medium. While acknowledging the positive aspects of classroom gamification that include experiential learning and building a sense of belonging among students, Ewing also warns educators about the potential risks associated with the ability of this technology to undermine classroom community by pulling some students ‘away’ into another ‘space’ (Chapter 7, p. 141). The author warns educators about the potential challenge associated with overemphasizing the experiential aspect of classroom activity at the expense of reflective thinking and critical theorization.
While recognizing the effectiveness of classroom technology in general and paying tribute to the trend of incorporating new media in everyday pedagogy, authors Renee Kaufmann, Nicholas T. Tatum and T. Kody Frey explore the difficult choices that educators face while having to select a particular form of technology. In the ninth chapter, titled ‘Current Tools and Trends of New Media, Digital Pedagogy, and Instructional Technology’, the conversation is focused on the abundant variations of tools, which may become overwhelming. Important questions facing instructors at the crossroads of choice include the impact of technology on their overall credibility, the delivery of learning outcomes, and the motivation of students. Joining the ranks of other authors contributing to the present volume, Kaufmann, Tatum and Frey confirm the dual nature of the overall effectiveness of digital media technology as a classroom tool, recognizing both its benefits and challenges in a series of important questions ranging from the specific audience for which the technology is intended, to time efficiency and overall impact. As a desirable side effect, the authors note that the questioning of benefits of technology is likely to provide a rationale for students wondering about the instructor’s choice of a particular form of digital media as a pedagogic tool (Chapter 9, p. 161).
Appropriately, in the tenth chapter, Shawn Aposel looks at ‘The Next Phase: New Media and the Inevitable Transition’ as the next round of the spiral process in which society reinvents itself through new technology since the beginning of the Digital Era. Looking twenty years back and noticing the same trends in teaching, learning and communication through technology, the author outlines economy, connectivity, vulnerability and potential loss of privacy among a host of benefits and drawbacks that educators face today in the same manner they did in the 1990s. Viewing the library as the site where technology dwells, the author glimpses at the future of education to predict that since ‘technology is the reason why we have universities to begin with’ (Chapter 10, p. 176), it will always remain the case. This appears to be a fair representation of the overarching argument of this book, which not only views all media as somewhat monolithic and almost anonymous, but also devoid of any issues related to ownership, ideology, or power.