CHAPTER THREE
IMPORTANCE OF MULTIMEDIA RESOURCES IN SOCIAL STUDIES INSTRUCTIONAL DELIVERY
Introduction
With the integration of multimedia into study instructions, the attention of students can be captured, learners are engaged, and difficult concepts are easily explained and thereby leading to the inspiring of creativity among them. Several tools are available with various ways of using them. Hence, a teacher in search of technological tools required to achieve a given learning objectives or outcome, can simply be overwhelmed. With the understanding of the insufficient time that teachers have during the course of teaching periods of the day, time should not be wasted to learn the technique to utilise these tools. With the modelling of social studies education combined with the use of technology for learning, students are prepared to succeed in the contemporary world where changes take place rapidly.
Developing a community of learners
These processes give students opportunity to have fun and simply ways to know their selves and at the same time give them an avenue for creativity. One effective too utilized for this is called Voice Thread. With the use of a webcam, students can record their own videos and can also watch videos of other students, having all of them on a single page.
Enabling the visualization of abstract concepts for students
There is simple but effective softwares called ScreenSteps. It allows users to easily create visual handout for students. Jing software can also be used by instructor and learners for the recording of screenshot or videos that can produce tutorial video of a website. These videos are embedded on their website or sent as attachment to students’ mails. With these kinds of software, teachers are able to maximize the use of their multimedia and available online resources.
Scaffolding of learning by means of video and online games.
When a student is assigned to read on difficult to understand historical event, they may be made to undergo a pre-reading process by watching or made to comment on video that have similar background information. By searching of this kind of video for students, knowledge gaps for this kind of reading exercises are filled. These kinds of videos can be embedded on the class website, blog and student can also be allowed to add related videos on the playlist when the locate them.
Reviving culture by creating and viewing audio-visual instructions.
By viewing videos and television programs online, students are updated on contemporary issues in their countries. Each student can as well create his/ her own video and get it shared with other classed and by these cultural norms are compared in a group blog.
Promotion of understanding of the subject matter and testing skills
Encouraging students in the creation and publishing of original digital stories. Making them to post produced weekly podcast for classroom use where events of the week is highlighted with the use of blogs. This can also involve filming development stages of skills.
Enhancing access to information using multimedia software tools
Students are encouraged to make use of voice recognition tool (like the speech- to-text tools) for writing their essay. This is useful for students with keyboard challenges or fine motor challenges. For students having hearing challenges, auto-captioning features can be used for the creation of accessibility to multimedia.
Helps students to visualize concepts and making connection.
With the use of CMap tools which is a multi-platform software tool that can be downloaded freely, students will be able to work as groups. With this they can construct concept map and can as well record this construction with the use of CMap tools.
Encouraging collaboration and feedbacks
Students can be encouraged to post their slideshow and then allowed to view colleagues’ presentations and posted comments. This can also include encouraging students to share video on sharing sites like the TeacherTube. By using collaborative software like blogs, learners can create, edit and publish personal works for others to view, comment and evaluate.
Help students to present learning through authentic assessments.
Students can be made to make a collection of their work and the details of their progress by using Learning Logs instead of relying only on end of term test and evaluation. They should be shown tagging of post, creating categories (as the case may be; course objectives or standards), linking to artifacts, writing of reflections and then make out time to reflect and document their work at weekly intervals. With this, student would be able to refine their learning Log, turn their work into “Showcase Portfolio”, present them to their class, study group, parents and discussing their work by the end of the term. This will not only personalize their study experience but gives them a sense of responsibility with regards to their work and make them to view learning as a lifelong activity.
Relevance of Multimedia Resources in Social Studies
The relevance of multimedia in education have been clearly expressed especially its positive impact as a tool employ enhance teaching and learning. Multimedia is a description of a system that can integrate more than one media to form one product or presentation which can be in form of a program software or a web page. Mayer (2005) described multimedia as a presentation made up of sound, works, texts, pictures that are carefully integrated to make learning meaningful. Though there is evolution with regards to the capabilities of interactive multimedia and it being popular amongst contemporary educators, it is important to note that researches done in the field of interactive multimedia as a means of instructional approach is not exhausted (Alessi and Trollip, 2001; Lockard and Abrams, 2004). In the view of Mayer (2003), multimedia instructional message consists of word and picture that are integrated together to make learning more meaningful.
Based on the foregoing, two definitions can be ascribed to multimedia:
Presentation containing words and picdtures,
Presentation designed to enhance learning meaningfully.
The exceptional contributions that multimedia brings to the process of learning have been buttressed by Mayer (2003), Brouweret al. (2007) and Thompson (2007). Three reasons why multimedia is used in classroom have been heighted by Gilakjani (2012) and these include:
Increasing the level of interest that student have for a given concept,
Enhancing their understanding of the concept
Enhancing students’ ability to memorize.
Learning styles vary among student and one of the advantages of multimedia is that it offers different styles in learning while addressing individual difference among students. Though there are some identified disadvantages associated with multimedia resource, it is important to note that its advantages with regards to teaching and learning are enormous.
Educational technology in combination with interactive multimedia has influence the teaching of social studies by moving from mare memorizing dates and information (Bitter and Pierson, 2005) to being student-centred learning experience (Trinkle and Merriman, 2000).Despite the fact that it promotes students’ use of computer in facilitating reflective inquiry, solving of problems and taking of decision (Evans, 2004) social studies education has continued to be the conventional teacher-directed and lecture/textbook oriented pattern of learning (Diem, 2000; Friedman and Hicks, 2006; White, 1999). Studies tailored towards the use of effective technologies for instructional material in teaching social studies is not much (Cantu, 2000).
Findings have shown according to Molebash (2002) that by effective integration of the multimedia components, it can be used to the learning of history and social studies. Especially if:
it is student oriented in terms of instruction;
it motivates students to learn;
it broadens and deepens students’ understanding of history and civic concept.
Findings have also shown cases of modest positive results amongst many groups of students that made use of computer-based tutorial programs for practicing social studies skills (Twyman and Tindal, 2006). The work of Higgin, Boone and Lovitt (1996) showed that the use of hypermedia guides yielded significant results for students in their 9th grade of social studies in which there was a significant ability to recall, comprehend and development of positive attitude towards learning. The same was reported by Boom et al.
that by using cognitive organization organizer amongst secondary school student, there performance was positively influence with regards to the learning and teaching of social studies.
Nigeria has it associated challenges with regards to the use of multimedia in classroom teaching process. Some of these challenges include:
Exorbitant cost of acquiring and installing multimedia and computer related infrastructure.
Inadequate teachers and technical staff that are computer literate.
Unwillingness among teachers to learn how to use multimedia as instructional teaching tools in schools (Altherret al., 2004).
By using multimedia, various concepts and processes can be demonstrated clearly. These include the simulation of complex contents and the presentation of various levels of abstraction. Multimedia resources have found very useful application in the enhancement of students’ motivation who hitherto have been encumbered with the burden of low motivation and inadequate pre-knowledge of concepts in question (Singh, 2003).
Multimedia helps in the creating of effective environment for learning which is consistent with cognitivism and constructivism. This is reflected in the studies of Singh (2003) which showed how effective the resources of multimedia could be in comparison with traditional methods of lecturing. It was further noted that it takes shorter period of time to learn with the use of multimedia environment than the conventional (traditional) learning instruction methods. Other Authors have noted that various styles and approaches in learning available in the multimedia enable student to build their own knowledge.
Grimley, 1999). This is why Jarosienvitz (nd) noted that multimedia aided teaching (MAT) is more appealing and attractive and hence made recommendation that classed should be tailored to a multimedia based environment if students must be motivated and enabled to quick understanding. The process of teaching and learning with ICT is now a vital feature in education. Multimedia assisted teaching (MAT) is a channel through which traditional method of teaching can be enhanced if instructional delivery must be carried out effectively (Rolfe &Gray, 2011). It can hence be noted that multimedia resources play significant roles in teaching and learning, and it benefits cannot be overstressed.
Section 10 of the National Policy on Education outlined the benefits of Audiovisual instructional materials which include these listed objectives:
Developing of access and improving educational programmes.
Enhancing and improving teacher’s teaching competency
Making children to see learning meaningful.
Reducing the cost of education
Developing and promoting effective utilization of innovative materials.
For this reason, the following areas highlighted as reasons fo the use of audiovisual for effective teaching/ learning social studies:
The use of audio-visual is a source of meaning information to instructors and learners.
Students’ scope of experience is broadened by teachers through the utilisation of audio-visual.
Students’ interest are stimulated
Students are encouraged to study individually at their own pace.
It stirs up active participation in students and the spirit of imagination and enquiry.
Causes readiness to teach and learn.
Achievement of performance with regards to learning
Enhances student’s perception of concepts.
Easily illustrate relationship that exists among concepts.
Shows the attributes of concepts.
Provision of feedbacks to learners and instructors
Makes repetitive activities less stressful.
Helps to minimize time spend on teaching and learning.
Breaks the barriers of intellectual learning and creating common/past experiences.
Helps in the determination of performance among students.
Makes learners to be more positively inclined to the course of study.
Helps teachers and students to be more adaptive to changing environment.
Audio-visual as an instructional media material makes the workload of teachers lighter.
Difficult concepts that a learner would longer time to understand as they are taught now become easy to comprehend because teaching processes now involve both teachers and the use of interactive multimedia.
Some of the values of audio-visual as an instructional material in learning/teaching of social studies in the advanced basic education are:
Audio-visual materials help in bringing situation close to learners; this.
includes the use of motion pictures and films.
Knowledge acquired are made more permanent among learning students.
Helps teachers to talk less since most of the multimedia learning.
resources are self-explanatory.
Learner’s interest and curiosity is arisen.
It provides direct experience to learners with regards to the social and physical environment.
Abstractions and new contents are simplified with the use of multimedia.
There is higher proportion of what the students learn in terms of experience and knowledge when compared to what they would have learned/ understood by just depending on what the teacher teaches by the use of conventional teaching method.
Teachers’ time is saved as a result of the use of multimedia and this saved time could be utilised for other meaningful teaching and learning of social studies.
What is taught is individualized to the perspective of learners.
Review Questions
Several educational benefits are derived from multimedia by students. List and explain these with regards to it being used as instructional delivery tool in Social Studies.
The National Policy on Education emphasized the importance of Audiovisual as a vital instructional material for learning. Discuss this in line with the implementation of the Social Studies curriculum at basic education level.