Scaffolding Video Instruction

Certainly we can teach students some video skills. But which skills?

• How do we rationally choose which video skills to teach?
• In what order do we teach them?
• And how do we combine video instruction with the rest of our instruction–so it’s not just “you read and studied, now go and make a video.”

The answer in a single word is: scaffolding. We start simple. We begin with more basic or lower-order skills. And we match the task to the relevant criteria, so students can go from success to success, succeeding first at simpler tasks and mastering them before advancing to greater challenges.

How do we do that? We use video technology the same way we use all instructional technologies.

And thereby we stumble into a hornet’s nest.

Is there a more abused phrase than “instructional technology” or “educational technology”? If you’re like me, you remember when that meant: an overhead projector or a VCR. Never: chalk or a map. And yet aren’t those “tools” as well?

But if you think about some very familiar “instructional technologies,” they actually give us a very good image of the purposes or functions we need to perform in the classroom–and beyond.

• The instructor writes on a blackboard or whiteboard. By doing this, the instructor’s message becomes easier to see in the back row. And it’s easier for students to reflect on and perhaps take down something that endures for several minutes–as opposed to the disappearing stream of oral discourse.
• A student takes notes with a pencil and paper–or records a lecture with a voice recorder. This is also very practical. Even if it didn’t help the student commit information to memory, the act of writing leaves a concrete record to which the student can return later.
• A map or a microscope slides provide evidence the students explore, analyze and use. Here the evidence depends on the discipline. Geography has need of maps. Biology has need of tissue samples. Language classes have recorded examples of native speakers.
• A poem or painting serves as an exemplary of an art form: students unpack its many meanings and analyze its devices. To understand what a work of art is you’ve got to encounter one. However you define “art,” you’re usually looking at something complex and multilayered whose meanings must be extracted through interpretation and by reference to the history of the medium, its most expert practitioners.

In short, instruction uses tools that serve different purposes or functions–each with its own kind of criteria. (And we can infer the functions by looking at many instances of the tools in order to derive the general type for the particular instances.)

• Utilitarian: in one very common case, making information more legible or audible. Here the criteria are generally pragmatic: cost, effectiveness, etc.
• Documentary: recording or capturing to make a message enduring and accessible. Here the criteria involve fidelity: does the tool capture enough information with a high enough degree of clarity. More is not necessarily better: often, little benefit is gained from additional fidelity.
• Evidentiary: bearing evidence or information specific to the objects and practices of a discipline. Each discipline decides what facets of information are more and less pertinent: one lung x-ray may be better for one diagnostic purpose, while another is better for examining some other aspect of lung structure or function.
• Aesthetic: compact, complex, layered information. Here also, each discipline decides which medium and instance carries this information the best–a color slide or jpeg of a certain size, a VHS, DVD or Blu-Ray all vary by the amount and quality of information.

Video can serve exactly the same kinds of functions. Indeed, this is true of instructional technologies in general: they serve some particular function–and if they don’t, they aren’t worth a damn–and these four functions seem fundamental.

What’s more, when students and teachers start using video, they most likely proceed through these functions in pretty much this order. A few examples can convey this idea.

• Students interview each other or capture video reflections in a diaristic or reflective way. Instead of writing on pieces of paper or an online discussion board, students can use video to capture thoughts and ideas, to discuss. Video is simply capturing, storing and relaying information. Pragmatic criteria apply: the technology simply needs to be reliable and easy enough.
• Students observe and use video to capture details of a thing, place or process. This could be an ethnographic study of how people use a certain cooking implement. It could be the way a certain animal behaves. It could capture small group dynamics during a discussion. Fidelity is the key criteria: the viewer needs to be able to see and hear well enough, and so students will learn how to place the camera, capture adequate sound, and find lighting that is adequate to the task. There is little sense that a more artful recording is better.
• Students collect and edit video footage to focus on that evidence which is most relevant to their discipline, topic or argument. This is part of the editing process. Perhaps the original observations are good enough, and now editing selects the most relevant material. What’s being studied and said determines which pieces of video are more interesting.
• Students combine their evidence in subtle and complex arrangements which condense much meaning into a small space. One way we talk about works of art is to point out how: if any small detail were changed, that would change the whole. When students continue to edit their footage, their message becomes more minutely organized, the impact more powerful, and the message more nuanced. While students may not make “a work of art,” their work becomes more artful–and thus more impactful.

In short, we expect tools to meet our needs. When we are clear about what those needs are, we can better pick the tool. I once worked with a programmer who used the wonderful phrase “gold-plated wrench”–meaning a tool that is a costly work of art but is no more useful for it.

If we help students simply capture footage first, they can move on to capturing good-enough footage, then relevant footage, and finally merging that footage into a complex whole. The last part requires the most sophistication, but by keying our expectations to where students are in the learning process, we help them progress in an order whose logic is dictated by increasing complexity.

--Edward R. O'Neill

Some Tech Tips & Links about Mobile Blog Posting

Okay. I'm not going for depth here: just sharing some useful information.

If you want your students to blog, being plug-and-play can be easier on you: you don't have to support a platform. Just ask your students to blog or tweet where they are comfortable. You only need to be able to search for the relevant tags. Or you can ask students to post links into a class-only discussion board.

Nevertheless, it can be useful to share some tips with your students. I've collected some relevant links here.

General

• For searching purposes, you might devise a #hashtag, tag or combination that, separately or together, identifies either your program or this instance of it.
• E.g., #mycollege #coursename

Blogger/Blogspot

• With blogger/blogspot, students can post via email:
  • http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41452
• Posting to blogger via SMS:
  • http://www.blogger.com/mobile-start.g
  • http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=42448

• I don’t see information on how many mobile devices can be used. There may be some limit.

Tumblr

• http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/email_publishing

Twitter

• https://support.twitter.com/articles/14014-twitter-via-sms-faqs

--Edward R. O'Neill

Start Small, Simple and Easy.

Seven Ways To Scaffold Authentic Learning

Let’s say you want to learn to play the piano.

(That's called "authentic learning": a real thing that a normal person can recognize, rather than a pencil-and-paper test about an abstract concept or heap of facts.)

What’s more: you want to play a Beethoven piano sonata.

So how do you go about achieving something

big,
complex, and
difficult?

Practically-speaking, you should likely start with something

small,
simple, and
easy.

Maybe start with a folk tune or a two-part invention.

Heck, even just plunk out a single melody.

In the theory and practice of learning, there are many names for this.

• One is “curriculum design” or "curriculum theory": the way you sequence tasks and goals to make them achievable.
• There’s another concept called “self-efficacy”: this means that if you think you’ll be able to do something, you’re more likely to be able to. It sounds like ‘the power of positive thinking,’ but it’s actually well researched. So if you can prove to yourself “yes, I can do this,” even in a small way, that can build your sense of self-efficacy.
• Maybe most on-target is the notion of scaffolding. Scaffolding mean: the structure around the learner that helps her to reach the goal. Briefly: instead of jumping upward ten feet, break that leap into ten one-foot steps.

(In a sense, it doesn't matter why starting small, simple and easy is a good idea--any more than it matters why too much salt makes things taste bad: it's just something you need to deal with.)

Sadly, much of the discussion of scaffolding is mired in very paternalistic forms of instruction: the teacher scaffolds by explaining, demonstrating, coaching. Okay.

• But the center of the process should be the learner, not the teacher.
• And the conceptual basis of scaffolding in this sense has to do with psychological and cognitive development: it’s not appropriate for adults--or really even teens.
• Finally, what many people called "scaffolding" sounds more like methods of instruction--tell them, show them, help them, etc. Nevertheless, the general term is probably good enough for us.

“Start from small, simple and easy and work to big, complex and hard” is a kind of scaffolding. It’s very common in practical arts like cooking or sewing, games and art forms that amateurs enjoy--like playing the guitar or the piano. (I discussed that here.) And so as we teach or plan learning (even our own), practical arts and games can guide us: they give us clear images of ways to make something more learnable.

Cooking provides excellent examples. The boss is coming to dinner, and you need to make a four-course meal with a gourmet dessert. (I know: it’s not the 1950’s, but go along with me for a minute.)

Let's say you can handle the first three courses. It's the dessert you want to focus on: you figure if that wows them, any earlier sins will be forgiven.

Let's say you settle on Tiramisu. You know: it's that lovely Italian dessert consisting of little cake-y cookies soaked in coffee, syrup, maybe liqueur, and layered with some kind of creamy eggy mixture. It's a big, complex task. How should you proceed?How can you break it down into a series of smaller tasks that will build your skills and give you confidence?

• You could start by tasting a lot of tiramisu.
• You could work separately on the cake, the icing, the syrup.
• You could practice making the dish for two instead of eight.
• You could make a simpler version without the syrup.
• You could substitute some easier ingredients--like a cake that’s simpler, maybe a quickbread. Or you could just throw the elements into a bowl (like strawberry shortbread) instead of layering it carefully.
• You could make a few using storebought ingredients.
• You could just work on the flavors by mixing liqueurs in a cocktail, trying to get just the right balance of coffee and cake and chocolate and rum (if you even like that).

What I’m thinking here is: making one whole thing that’s big, complex and difficult is often also assumed to be:

• 100% original and embedded in a specific discipline--like cooking vs. mixology.
• And the “making” part is the opposite of: using, analyzing, criticizing.

Taken together, this gives us a neat-enough distinction amongst seven dimensions or axes along which difficulty can be scaled.(The "big, complex, difficult" elements I've already flagged are shown in silver, so you can see clearly the other dimensions I'm pointing out.)

	earlier: preparation	later: goal
1. analysis vs. synthesis	make & take apart aka “cross-training”	make
2. wholeness	whole or part aka 'component' skills	whole
3. scale/scope	smaller	bigger
4. complexity, number of dimensions	simpler	more complex
5. difficulty	easier	harder
6. originality	partly pre-made	more original
7. disciplinarity/domain	non-discipline-specific or from another domain	discipline-specific within the target domain

Training for sports and practicing various games all have ways of doing these things.

• Athletes watch films of their games and their opponents.
• In tennis, we might practice just the service or just the backhand.
• Young people playing baseball sometimes just use the infield.
• One-on-one basketball is a smaller version of the full-team, full-court version.
• Whiffleball and T-ball are ‘scaffolded’ versions of baseball: they focus on making the hitting part easier.
• Chess players can start playing an historical game, to see how they can handle that situation. (It’s not their own game played from the get-go.)
• Athletes sometimes do strength or endurance training that’s completely separate from the specific skills of their game.

Whether this is doing curriculum design, promoting self-efficacy or scaffolding hardly matters. What matters is: the arts of teaching and learning are very practical affairs. And any desired behavior or goal can be made more do-able by using these seven axes.

--Edward R. O’Neill

P.S. One thing I've done here is to break learning out of the disciplines which claim to study it--instructional design, psychology, etc.--by comparing the planning and implementation of learning to other domains where the practical organization seems more obvious.

The idea is: to make methods of planning learning 'portable' or transferrable from one domain to another. Whatever theories we apply or whatever psychological or social processes underly them, teaching and learning are still practical activities: you need to unlock the classroom door before you can go in and learn. Hence, learning is susceptible to the kinds of common sense planning we do everyday.

In a sense, the common sense of practice is not conceptual enough to be discussed 'seriously' in most of the fields that claim to study learning. But if you want to help people learn, a little common sense sure helps.

Four Steps Towards Student Video Literacy

The media landscape is changing faster than it ever has. Each week it seems a newspaper or magazines is sold or folds. Corporations and government agencies alike increasingly communicate in 140-character tweets or videos.

Our college students will of course need to be able to read these messages critically. But a good step in that direction is for students to communicate thoughtfully using those same platforms.

Video is perhaps the most challenging such platform. In terms of hardware and software, it’s much easier to make a video than it used to be: you can probably use your phone or digital camera to do so. But still, your students won’t become expert at making videos in a single step.

Nevertheless, there are some strategies you can use to weave videomaking into your course so students become effective communicators using video. But this should not be a separate activity: to be efficient and meaningful, using video should merge and engage with the key problems of your discipline.

1. Use vernacular technology: what a student has in her backpack.

The simplest way to do this is to survey students to find out what they already have and know. You can ask them:

• Do they have a device that can capture video?
  • Is it HD (high-definition) quality?
• Do they have a device that will capture audio?
• Do they have experience using iMovie? Some other video editing software?

In my experiences working at the University of Southern California (a large private university), one third to 90% of students have the relevant equipment.

• 75–90% of students have a smartphone.
• 30–40% have a still camera that shoots video.
• 85% have a laptop with a webcam.
• One third of students know they own a device that shoots HD.

In addition, one quarter to half the students I work with have relevant editing experience.

• 40–50% have experience using iMovie.
• 30–50% have experience using other video editing software.
• 40–50% have experience editing audio.
• 25–40% have significant photographic experience.

This implies that when we put our students in groups of two, three or four, equipment and skills will not be a problem. In short: rather than you teaching the students, they will be sharing skills with each other.

2. Ask the students to master a simple workflow–and stick to it.

Not all video and audio toys “play well” together.

Recently, I recorded some audio on my phone. The video editing software I was using would not suck in the files. So I had to find a workaround: using a free piece of software to change the file format. Once I had the workaround, I was ready to go. But what if I had changed equipment partway through? I might get stuck.

This is the idea of workflow. Camera A may not shoot footage that can be imported into Software B. So once Marilyn starts shooting video with her phone and importing it to iMovie in the lab, she should stick with that. If Marilyn tries to use footage from Joseph’s phone, it may not work.

So the key question is this.

• Can your students capture video footage, transfer it to a computer, and ‘publish’ it–e.g., to Youtube?
  • Many smartphones upload video directly to Youtube.
  • The most useful privacy setting for Youtube is “unlisted” or “share by link.” This means that the student can share the link with the instructor and fellow students (in the campus LMS, for instance), but the video is not indexed and not searchable–hence very unlikely to be stumbled across.

There are challenges in just capturing, editing and publishing video footage. But once those are mastered, the students can move on to more substantive challenges. This implies giving students multiple assignments which are similar and which build on each other.

3. Start simple and integrate technology with routine class activities and core scholarly values.

The most basic form of editing is: trimming. This means cutting off the ends of a clip.

• Think of a home video. You captured your child practicing her swing, going up to bat, not swinging on a couple of balls, swinging and missing a couple of times, then getting a base it. You really just want the base hit and running to first. You can trim the rest.

Likewise, your students need to be able to isolate some important part of their footage. What is “important” or “interesting” is determined by your discipline and the course topic. So the formal exercise of trimming footage actually aligns with disciplinary concerns.

• Can your students find the most important parts of their footage?
• Can your students trim their footage and share only the ‘important’ bits?
  • Youtube actually has this ‘trimming’ function built-in. So students don’t even need any special software. They can capture video on a phone, upload to Youtube, and trim the footage there.

4. Try pairing video with discussion and reflection assignments.

• I frequently suggest instructors ask students to discuss course topics with each other or to reflect upon their responses to course materials.
• Video can be used to capture these discussions and reflections, so students are exploring how to capture clear pictures and sounds at the same time they are engaging with the course material–just as our students improve their prose writing skills.

A basic discussion assignment can be modified to combine technical and substantive issues which students need to master in order to move onward. E.g.,

Consider this question: “Should we consider Moby Dick a part of the transcendentalist movement or no?” Interview your peer for no more than 15 minutes and then post three of the most relevant one-minute clips. Interview her in three different lighting situations: direct light, diffuse light, shadow.

• Your in-class discussion about the video discussion can then also address how which lighting is more and less problematic.
• The same assignment can be done with sound using this modification: Interview her in: a quiet outdoor space, a noisy indoor space, a quiet indoor space.

Will these four steps turn your students into Orson Welles? No. But that’s not the point. As with so many skills: start small, build on what you already have, make the tasks meaningful.

–Edward R. O’Neill

In Search of Scalable Video Support; or: "Would You Like that Instructional Design To Go?"

It's pretty easy these days to get a meal To Go. But how about learning?

Oh sure, we can download videos or ebooks. But that alone is no more learning than a turnip is a meal. A bit of cooking is needed to make the turnip edible (if then). And by itself a video or an ebook will no more make a student learn than a piece of chalk or a plain old paper-and-ink book.

In theory, we know a ton about learning.

• Psychologists know stuff.
• Instructional designers know stuff.
• Teachers know stuff.

But how do we move it around? How do we get that knowledge from one place to another? How do we take what we know about learning and make it portable? Where's our "learning To Go"?

If you think about it, it's rather tragic, since learning is transfer: I know x, then you know it, too. So if all these folks who know so much about learning can't pass it on easily to others, what does that say? Either we don't know so much, or (what I'd rather believe): we don't practice what we preach.

We are not very good at this. So many conversations about learning, so much talking without listening, so much hypothesizing without evidence, so much wanting to do something 'new'--when we don't even get the 'old' stuff right.

If we were good at bundling up what we know about learning and putting it to work, every college student would enjoy every class and succeed mightily. And MOOC's would not have an attrition rate of 80%.

Sometimes a question or an analogy can focus the mind wonderfully. Take for the moment this question.

What is the file format or container format for learning design?

In the world of computers, we have file formats and digital container formats.

• File formats are things like .doc, .docx, .zip, .epub, .ibook, .kindle, etc.
• File formats are types of information, structured in certain ways, and readable by certain software and devices.
• Digital container formats are things like .mp3, .mp4, .wav, etc.
• Container formats are not just a question of compression--how stuff is squeezed in there--but of how it's bundled up and what kind of "meta-data" allows software to know what's inside--if it's a song, who the artist is, and whatnot.

And what follows aims to answer two questions.

• How can we bundle and transfer and share what we know about learning and technology?
• And how can we support video literacy and other '21st-century skills'?

What follows aims to answer these two questions together.

So first, what's the "container format" for instructional design? For ideas about teaching and learning effectively?

There are a couple of clear candidates:

• The Tool.
• The Learning Concept.

These are both wrong--but for different reasons.

The Tool. The tool does not carry any learning design or principles with it. The hammer does not automatically build a stable or attractive house. The chalk does not know the answer to the equation.

Likewise, Twitter is not an idea about learning. Video is not a specific way of learning. The technology neither defines what is learned nor how. So sharing tools and information about them is not enabling effective teaching or learning: it's enabling use of the tool; it may even be distracting from teaching and learning. (There. I said it.)

The Learning Concept. This sounds good on its face. Engagement. Self-efficacy. Motivation. Cognitive Load. The Events of Instruction.

All these are powerful ideas about learning, about under what conditions learning does or doesn't happen, what might promote learning or prevent it. Sounds nice.

But they are all many, many steps away from actual learning. They're abstractions. They still need to be applied, and they can be applied well or poorly--or not at all, as I fear is all too often the case.

I've been cooking jams and preserves recently, and I read that food stays unspoiled when canned below a pH of 4.6. Great! This is just dandy, but I have no idea how to tell if what I'm cooking is pH 4.6 or 8 or 1. They give you recipes and say "don't adjust or change anything," and when it comes to cooking, that is just not how I roll.

So what is the container format for learning?

The Assignment.

And the assignment carries with it the support model for video literacy, visual literacy, multimedia literacy, and all the other menu items everyone wants in our cafeteria-style 21st century university.

Consider how writing is supported on many college campuses.

• Writing centers focus on particular assignment types: largely prose argumentation somewhere between five and 30 pages.
• Existing courses either focus solely on this type of assignment (such as writing courses) or expect students to have mastered this skill.
• All the instructors offering this type of assignment share very similar expectations--
  • about argument,
  • about evidence,
  • about persuasion,
  • etc.
• The writing center is staffed with people trained to meet the expectations of writing instructors and other scholars.
  • Often the writing center is run by the writing department.
  • Writing instructors are also scholars who study writing and its teaching.
    • They not only do scholarly communication, they are scholars of it.
• Students may get drop-in support or schedule an appointment.
• Students show up for help with definite types of problems based on their instructors' expectations.
  • Is my argument clear? Can it be supported in the scope I have?
  • Am I representing an opposing viewpoint fairly or distorting it?
  • Am I balancing the sources of my rhetorical appeals--reason and emotion, for instance?
  • Am I giving the reader enough evidence to come to an alternative conclusion?
  • Am I using organizational patterns effectively? Inadequately? Excessively?
  • Etc.
• Students get support which fits hand-in-glove with the expectations of faculty.

One of my repeated points about the theory and practice of teaching and learning is: do what works. You don't need to understand all the relevant theories and then "apply them." No one knows how to do that. And chances are the prototype works in the first place because those theoretical principles are already baked-in.

A far better idea is:

• Take what works.
• Treat it as a prototype.
• Build another instance of the same type.

(Of course, this implies actually knowing what works: not just doing things because we've always done them.)

The logic of practice is the logic of types and instances.

• I can write many letter A's, because I know the features of the general type, and I can write one instance--which means I can write many.
• I can write many argumentative prose essays, because I know the general type, and I've written many instances.

That's what practice is: making and modifying instances of a known type. Creating a new type is a separate thing. That's innovation or creativity. One of the complexities of start-up's is: they are sometimes creating a new type and using the logic of practice, such as prototyping, to build the instances.

If we know something works, we can treat it as a prototype.

• I know that this muffin recipe has one part liquid to four parts flour.
• So I bet--and it is indeed a sort of wager--that if I use the same proportions, I can change the liquid and the flour and still get something muffin-ish.
• And if the batter doesn't look right, I can jigger it as I go.

This is not science, because practice is not a controlled experiment. And practice is not the first-time-ever application of a purely abstract principle. Practice is doing what we did before--under similar or different circumstances, possibly with some conscious changes.

So how do you support video literacy? The same way you support argumentative prose writing. The first steps involve getting to the place where we already are with argumentative prose writing.

• Focus on a particular video assignment type--e.g.,
  • the interview,
  • the persuasive video,
  • documentary observation,
  • the critical re-mix.
• Identify instructors and courses who can use this assignment type to meet current course goals.
• Get together with the instructors to converge on similar expectations.
  • Look at existing prose assignments.
  • Look at videos and critique them from the same perspective.
  • Build a shared sense of the grammar of the medium.
  • Transfer existing scholarly values and ideals to the new domain.

Then you're just building another writing center.

• Create an ad hoc "video communication center" on the model of the writing center.
• Staff the "video communcation center"
• Train the staff to meet the expectations of the instructors giving the supported types of video assignments.
  • Unlike traditional writing assignments, not all scholars share a set of assumptions about 'video writing' of the same kind they have about scholarly writing.
  • Therefore, there is a stopgap type of work that needs to be done: getting everyone on the same page about what each assignment is, should be and does.
  • But there is a leverage point: when video communication serves as scholarly communication it shares many of the same values. Therefore faculty are not starting from scratch: all their scholarly values still hold.
• Set up drop-in and appointment support.
• Students show up for help with definite types of problems based on their instructors' expectations.
  • Is my narrative clear?
  • Am I representing the interview accurately? Or distorting?
  • Am I balancing the sources of my rhetorical appeals--reason and emotion, for instance?
  • Am I giving the viewer enough evidence to come to an alternative conclusion?
  • Am I using visual patterns effectively? Inadequately? Excessively?
  • Etc.
• Students get support which fits hand-in-glove with the expectations of faculty.

How do you get there? One course at a time.

• Build a program to 'mediatize' courses.
• Start with a small number of assignments.
• Recruit faculty whose courses goals fit well with the assignment types.
• Support the faculty the semester or summer before the course being revised.
• Measure the support per course and per student.
• Plan to maintain the existing courses when they are next offered.
• Scale up by adding a mix of staff and student staff as demand grows.
• As more courses offer the same type of assignments, less support will actually be needed because student have had most of the support they need in a prior course.
• Add new assignment types on the same pattern.

Of course, teaching visual communication skills may be at least as delicate as making jam, if not more so.

• If you change the jam recipe, won't the jam fail to gel?
• Isn't it possible to poison your family in friends with improperly-canned jam?
• Isn't it possible our students' work "won't gel"--because we changed something important in the assignment package or support model?

We should likely assume that with most practical processes we find effective, they are so reundantly, overlappingly: for many reasons.

• We preserve foods with vinegar (the pH part)--but also with salt, sugar, heat and vacuum sealing.
• Likewise, we should assume the way we support argumentative writing won't be 'broken' by changing a single element--the medium.

Or so we hope. Practice is art, not science. So judgment and care both help. And we should check the better as we go.

Sharing what we know about teaching and learning doesn't have to be complicated. We just have to do what works: bundle good teaching & learning into assignments.

And then, yes: you can have your video literacy To Go.

--Edward R. O'Neill

Vernacular Pedagogy: Learning from Julia.

How To Cook An Egg.

Vernacular pedagogy is enjoyable popular teaching that takes place outside the classroom. It's part of everyday life, notably in the media, commonly in books, on TV, even on records.

This is not the kind of "training" we do at work or even in college to prepare formally for work.

Vernacular pedagogy is largely for pleasure, although we also know when we're doing it that we're growing, too. But the Big Trick of vernacular pedagogy is: it doesn't seem like work; it's not drudgery; it's actually fun.

Writing about this topic before, I mentioned (among others):

• Julia Child
• Ken Burns
• Carl Sagan

These folks made learning exciting. They drove eyeballs to TV shows and to books. And they brought people to other places--restaurants, faraway countries, planetaria, museums, historic battlegrounds.

Wouldn't You Like To Know How Vernacular Pedagogy Works?

How do the pieces fit together in a terrific bit of teaching that large numbers of people enjoy without any special incentive or incitement--apart from the pleasure in learning and the promise of many kinds of benefit?

For one thing, vernacular pedagogy is often very practical and social. There's something you can do afterwards, and the learning connects you to others who care about the same stuff.

Learning to cook or sew may have a practical benefit. But when we learn to cook or sew, we usually get additional benefits and pleasures.

• We take pride in our achievement.
• We share our work with friends, neighbors, guests, colleagues, even strangers.
• We take pleasure in reaching new heights, however humble.

And the same can be said when we visit a planetarium or a museum or historical battleground. We feel connected to others, to history, and we're out physically doing something we care about.

Teaching and training which promise only utility or earning a grade and not inherent pleasure will never beat the activity and community vernacular pedagogy bring to the table. More reasons for learning, more kinds of pleasure, more benefits, as well as social connections and reasons to leave the house: these will always be better than "so you can pass the course, so you can operate a drill-press, so you're qualified for job x."

Luckily, we can 'reverse-engineer' what popular teachers like Julia Child do. That's what I'll do here.

And I'll tell you right up front that two secrets of vernacular pedagogy are: let folks know what they will learn and smoothly combine different sorts of learning.

The first is technically called a learning objective. The second is a bit more involved.

Learnables.

In the theories of learning and designing learning, professionals separate out three kinds of things you can learn. Technically, they're often called "learning domains." But practically they're just different kinds of stuff you can learn. I like to call them "learnables"--kind of like "Lunchables."

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom suggested three such domains: cognitive, affective and psychomotor. We can be less fancy and call them:

• knowing, valuing and doing; or
• thinking, feeling and doing; or
• what's, why's, and how's.

Combining, you could say there's:

• what you might know,
• why you might care, and
• how you might do something.

In short, if you're gonna learn something, you can learn to:

• talk about it, define it, recognize it, and the like;
• care about it, value it, feel motivated by it; or
• do it, practice it, apply it.

If you want to be philosophical, you could call these buckets:

• cognitive,
• practical and
• moral.

The first bucket--cognitive stuff, stuff you can know or think about--has in it things like:

• facts,
• definitions,
• principles, concepts and rules,
• ways of solving problems,
• strategies for figuring things out, etc.

The Big Thing you notice pretty quickly about vernacular pedagogy is: great popular 'teachers' mix the three kinds of learning very thoroughly and consistently.

• It's not all the facts, definitions and rules--and no "how-to."
• It's not strictly "do this first and this second and that third"--without understanding the underlying logic.
• And it's not a sales pitch: it's not "this is great!" with no facts or how-to.

Already, you can see where higher education often fails its learners.

College courses usually focus mostly the first and the third: it's often All The Stuff You Need To Memorize, or All the Reasons You Should Care. The procedural aspect of "What do I do first, second and third?" is kind of left off. It's not "intellectual" enough.

Of course, colleges have lots of information to impart. But if you make knowledge purely abstract, it's harder to internalize: there's nothing I can do that cements what I think or how I care.

Watch Any of Julia Child's Old TV Shows.

Take the one on omelettes.

1. The very first shot of the show is Julia pouring the eggs into the pan. And after about 15 seconds of dexterous hand movements, she plops an omelette onto a plate. It's practically like a magic trick.

What a great, economical visual way to speak to the audience: 'this is what you'll be able to do after watching this show.'

It's a learning objective! But it's concrete, vivid and mouth-watering. (Did you ever have a college course where an image brought home to you so clearly what you would learn?)

2. Julia goes on to talk all about omelettes "the French way." She talks about how delicious they are, about how easy they are, about all the things you can do with them--build a light lunch around them, etc.

This is the "why" part: it's about valuing, caring, attitude. She is motivating you. Do you want to be able to make an omelette? Does it matter to you? Do you recognize the benefits?

Just about every show Julia seems to say "your friends will be so impressed," "it's very lovely," "people will ooh and ah," "it tastes delicious" and other similar things. She really wants you to care.

3. The rest of the show is the "how": here's how to do it. This goes step-by-step. It's a demonstration.

But if you watch closely, Julia does something cool.

She compresses a long process into a 30-minute show. She's pre-made the end result, or various steps along the way. She may have pre-cut or pre-measured some of the ingredients.

All of these tricks are familiar now: Julia pioneered these techniques which allow a live, continuous 'performance' to be more like a movie: a long period of time is compressed into a shorter 'running time.'

What's surprising is that many teachers don't do this. They start every demonstration from the very beginning and go through to the very end. They don't focus on the hard part first, nor start with the simplest example.

Going by Julia's example, you might show people how to do one part of a long procedure--but only the most interesting part, the part that bears demonstrating. Language instructors do this cleverly: when they offer a sentence with a blank, and the learner needs only to add that one word--conjugate the verb or whatever.

How-to is very easy to watch. It's actions.

She does this, she does that. It's sequential. It's a little story. And you can see the progress: it's very visual. She also assumes you're taking notes, but she also seems to assume that visual repetition will help you impress the actions on your memory.

There's likely a part of our brains that's activitated by hearing about or watching physical actions--probably because some part of our brain needs to 'give directions' to our bodies as we do things. You can feel this process very dramatically when learning a new physical skill--such as a new posture in yoga class. It can take time to figure out "wait, my hand goes where?" You have to watch the instructor, put a hand here, look at how others are doing it, look in the mirror, etc. It's challenging but involving.

4. Inside the step-by-step instructions, Julia adds in facts, principles and definitions--the cognitive "what's" (and also "why's").

• She shows you which eggs to pick.
• She might show how to check for freshness.
• She shows you different pans you can use.
• She explains why these pans will work and others won't.
• She shows you how to season the pan with oil and salt, and she warns you not to wash or soak it.

All these involve principles.

• Why is a fresher egg better?
• What does "freshness" mean vis-a-vis eggs?
• What's the chemical structure of an egg that makes a fresh one different from a stale one?
• Etc.

5. And so problem-solving is woven in between the lines.

The famous part of this episode is where the omelette doesn't flip back into the pan and instead lands--plop!--on the stovetop. Julia bravely puts it more or less together, and then she shows you how to top it with tomato sauce and sour cream and cheese and put it under the broiler.

What's implicit is: different things can happen here; there are eventualities, and you need to be prepared for them.

She does something similar when she's teaching how to make mayonnaise or hollandaise sauce. Those sauces can curdle or fall apart, and there are tricks for getting them back together into a smooth sauce. So she tells how--and also explains the underlying principles (of emulsifiers, for instance).

Vernacular Pedagogy Is Not a Lecture.

Here's what Julia Child does not do.

• She doesn't start with the history and defintions.
• She doesn't explain all the theories and principles.
• She doesn't short-change the benefits of what she's doing.

In short, Julia avoids entirely what a very good college lecturer would do routinely.

• She does not make all the content cognitive--facts, principles, definitions, etc.
• She does not explain her subject historically.
• She does not start from theories and first principles.

While it is popular now to imagine that a video lecture on the internet would make learning better or easier, it really depends what's in that lecture. If it's just the history of the topic from Day One and every fact and principle and no reason for caring and no steps you can take, no social or physical activity or reward, then there is little reason to imagine learning will follow.

What Julia does do is a model for popular pedagogy. She blends why you should care, how to do something and what is really happening beneath the surface.

So if you really want people to get involved and excited by learning, steal a page from Julia Child's playbook. Give a clear target, and mix the three kinds of 'learnables.'

--Edward R. O'Neill

Models for Multimedia Writing? They're Right There in the Discipline.

How can we model multimedia production based on genres native to the discipline we are supporting?

As one semester recently wound down, I was winding up for another semester, and I had the chance to sit down with a terrific theater professor. She was teaching playwriting in the coming semester, and she wanted her students do work with multimedia.

So based on some recent experiences, I had two sets of issues around genres I thought could be worked out to support student multimedia authoring in two steps.

First, what is multimedia authoring within the discipline? What genres exist within the discipline? And what kinds of work do they do?

Second, how can we give the students some pre-made forms or genres–specific configurations of formal elements such that students know “how to put together” an assignment?

Since this was a playwriting course, the instructor and I developed some justifications for embedding multimedia writing in a playwriting course–which is ostensibly about “live” theater.

Namely, theater and playwriting are disciplines with their own internal ways of writing and reading.

1. Theater has always been a combination of written and live elements.
   • What’s written and what’s live are constantly changing–and it will likely to keep changing.
2. The stage’s physical borders have always been porous, and writers have always played with these borders.
   • Every era’s theater has both used and played with spatial distinctions.
     • Shakespeare had trap doors and balconies.
     • Writers and composers have long used sounds and dialogue “offstage.”
       • Several operas feature ‘heavenly voices’: Aida and Don Carlo to name two.
3. Theater at its heart involves adaptation.
   • A written play is made new when it's performed.
   • Old plays and stories are re-written. (Shakespeare did mostly adaptations.)
   • A staging is an adaptation.
   • Acting a role interprets and adapts the role to the actors and the production.
4. Theater was always “multimedia.”
   • There have been special effects and stage illusions.
     • Wagner expected dragons alongside his singing heroes.
5. While there is still a zero-tech, turn-the-lights-on-and-let-the-actors-work approach, there are also sophisticated multimedia productions.
   • It makes sense to prepare writers for the theater as it actually exists and will exist, as much as for most stripped-down 'poor theater' approach.

So the question of how to embed multimedia in the teaching of playwriting is already given in an understanding of the art and discipline at hand.

• Theater will still be theater, but the fixed ‘written’ text may be an audiovisual recording.
• Theatrical performance may also adapt a written text onto a multimedia platform as part of a live performance.

These precepts suggest five implications for bringing multimedia authoring into a theater playwriting course.

1. Theater students should continue to explore and experiment with the relationship between a written document and a live performance.
2. There is no reason video and music cannot be part of the ‘written’ elements which performers adapt and interact with live in real time.
3. Live remote performers–who Skype in, call on cell phones, are brought in by live remote video feeds–are the new ‘offstage.’
4. Theater students should be learning how to incorporate media in their work, both written and live, whether it’s turning on and off the room lights, directing flashlights at the performers or the walls, playing mp3’s from their phones, etc.
5. Student who know how to work flashlights and phones and Skype and mp3 players will be better prepared to work with whatever multimedia technology comes next–which we cannot foresee but should expect.

A playwriting course that asks students to write and perform can thus be a space in which different forms of writing and recording–fixed, captured messages, whether written words, moving or still images, sounds or music–become fodder for live performances which may “adapt” or “remix” the fixed, written or recorded text–just the way a live theater performance adapts and remixes a written play.

Theater in its broadest and least-fussy sense already knows many genres which mix recorded and live media with the performance of a written play.

• Drag queens lip sync to recorded music.
• Rocky Horror fans act out a live accompaniment to a recorded film musical–: sometimes amateurs perform live right next to filmed professional performances.
• Singers sometimes perform live to a pre-recorded back-up tape.
• Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape revolves a man starting, stopping, listening to and commenting on a tape recording.
• Lear wanders through a storm that is not only poetic but often also an opportunity for the sound and lighting teams to have a rollicking good time.
• Increasingly, theater productions incorporate live remote elements.
  • Anastomotic* theater connects two live performances with a digital remote hookup–aka the “new offstage.”

The theatrical modes of adaptation, orchestration, synchronization, pantomime, integration are easy enough to bundle into performing genres which students can base on their written work–the plays they write.

Such genres might be:

• synchronizing live behavior with a recording–e.g.:
  • one character is pre-recorded and others respond live,
  • the play is recorded and then accompanied by a live performance–maybe just gestures;
• collocated live performances from at least one external locations–e.g.:
  • some actors perform remotely via videoconferencing software;
• a live performance embeds and interacts with a recording, possibly including turning it on and off–e.g.,
  • the play might actually involve live actors replaying a prior recorded performance;
• a visual or audio track accompanies a live performance–e.g.:
  • actors perform a play live but with a music or visual track that is pre-recorded, perhap even giving cues to the live performance.

By using existing genres as models, we can support students in writing using multimedia–writing in its broadest sense. And we can also help an art or discipline (like theater or playwriting) to adapt–even simply to expand upon what it already does.

–Edward R. O’Neill

*An anastomosis names (among other things) a narrow passage between two larger bodies–whether lakes or organs. J. Hillis Miller has used “anastomosis” as a figure for intersubjectivity in fiction. The figure is noticeable in Matthew Barney’s Cremaster films.