Broadcasts and recordings

Many courses now make use of video and audio broadcasts and recordings.

Clearly, this is a very different experience from sitting studying a book or listening to a lecture. So, what skills do you need? If you are asked to watch a programme on the life-cycle of an insect species, the performance of bridges in high winds, or experiments with subatomic particles, is it enough just to watch and listen and ‘absorb’?

X Is there any difference between studying and casual watching or listening?

X What are you supposed to be able to do with what you learn from these programmes?

TV and video-cassettes

By combining high-quality pictures and sound, TV and video give you a sense of actually ‘being there’, of looking at things directly. Even when you are looking at something you could never see using natural vision, such as the magnified inside of a living human organ, you get a powerful sense that you are looking at the ‘real world’. With a book or a lecture, you have to struggle to focus your attention on a sequence of words, symbols and diagrams, and then to connect these abstractions to the ‘real world’. But with TV and video,

all your most basic processes of experiencing the world are brought into play more or less effortlessly. Meanwhile, the ‘voice-over’, discussing and explaining what you are being shown, has a powerful aura of ‘authenticity’.

The message seems to be almost transmitted directly into your mind, with scarcely any thinking required from you. Is this learning, or is it just seeing and absorbing? Is there a difference?

It is learning, in the sense that you get a chance to see the world in new ways.

But it is not a very profound learning unless, when you switch off, you are able to recreate that way of seeing the world for yourself. The real learning lies in using what you are shown in order to build on what you already know.

It is the studying and thinking you do before and afterwards that turn

‘viewing’ into substantial ‘learning’.

TV is excellent for showing you the world through an alternative frame of reference (for example, showing you how to understand the movements of objects in terms of the forces operating on them). The TV programme does all the work of holding the frame of reference in place, so things can seem

‘obvious’. This can lull you into thinking that there isn’t much to it. Then, when the programme ends and the frame of reference is gone, the clear understanding evaporates with it. (You can’t remember where the force arrows should go, or how to add the forces together.)

At worst, TV’s capacity to take on all the work of ‘framing’ our thoughts leads to a habit of passively accepting knowledge instead of understanding it properly for ourselves. If you want to be able to think for yourself, you have to gain some mastery of the underpinning frames of reference. You have to make some effort to ‘make sense’ to yourself of what you see on TV. You can do this in a variety of ways.

X Take down a few notes as you view.

X Read around the subject.

X Make use of what you see on the screen in your assignments. (Remember that Pam re-watched some TV programmes as a way of getting into the right ‘frame of mind’ for her assignment.)

TV and video are especially good at showing and explaining complicated processes in which there are many different aspects to be considered at the same time. You can follow a process – for example, a volcanic eruption – as it happens. What is more, you could watch a film of the eruption and look at an animated diagram of movements in the Earth’s crust and examine a table of seismographic readings and ground temperatures and listen to a verbal

explanation. TV can cut back and forth quickly between all of these sources of information, or even superimpose them on each other.

Dynamic knowledge

TV and video are particularly valuable in explaining the dynamics of processes, where writing or speech would take many words. Moreover, cross-cutting and superimposing allow many facets of a process to be explored simultaneously. Thus TV and video can develop a different kind of knowledge from ‘book knowledge’ – a more rounded, dynamic and multilayered understanding.

With such exciting possibilities, why have TV and video not displaced printed text? In fact, it isn’t as easy as it sounds to learn from TV. Images, information and arguments are presented simultaneously to your eyes and ears, so it is hard to attend closely to any one thing, or to stop and think, or to take notes – there is just so much to think about. And when the programme is over, so much has happened that it may be difficult to pin down exactly what it was all about.

Moreover, the knowledge gained has a fluid quality (an advantage during complicated explanations) and the details soon begin to recede in your memory as you go on to watch other programmes. You really need something written down as well, either printed programme notes or your own notes, to ‘fix’ the knowledge in a more simplified, ‘encapsulated’ form – something you can look at, ‘operate’ on yourself, and go back to to remind yourself when you need to.

TV and video excel in giving a broad, rounded understanding. Perhaps, in the future, if course assessment involves interacting directly with a screen image, this fluid, ‘holistic’ mode of understanding will predominate. But for now, as a student you have to translate these broad insights and use them within the more specific and detailed format of written words and symbols. TV and video tend to be used as aids to understanding – not as primary channels for delivering higher-level education.

Video-cassettes

Many students record TV broadcasts on to video-cassettes in order to watch them more than once and so absorb the full richness of the message. Indeed, teaching material is increasingly being recorded directly to video-cassette, rather than for broadcast. With a video-cassette, you can work at your own pace. You may want to replay the explanation of an idea that was confusing the first time around. Moving images can be stopped and replayed repeatedly, so the medium can be used interactively. For example, you might analyse a small segment of an important process (say, lava spilling out of a volcano) by replaying it several times, and answering questions about it, before moving on to hear what the

‘experts’ say. This could be a way of developing your skills of observation. You could replay the lava hitting a village and make detailed observations of the impact. Or, having done the ‘cress-seedling’ experiment in Chapter 8, you could be asked to make observations from time-lapse video-recordings of other plants growing under different conditions. This facility to ‘replay’ processes and study them in depth provides a powerful new way of developing insight and skills.

Radio

In education, radio tends to be used for discussion and analysis. In other words, it is used mainly as a ‘verbal’ medium – as an extension of text-based study, a spoken version. It can be used to bring the equivalent of a short lecture, or a discussion between ‘experts’, into your home. This enables you to hear the language of the textbook spoken as a living process of creating meaning. Radio is a less intense medium than TV (that is, less is happening simultaneously), so it is easier to sit with pad and pen and take notes. You can concentrate on abstract arguments without being distracted by visual images. With nothing but the words on which to focus, a debate between rival scientists can be riveting. In fact, radio encourages you to give your whole attention to exactly what the speaker is saying.

Radio is also used for ‘chat’. It is less expensive and complicated to produce than TV, so it can be used more informally. Magazine programmes can keep you up to date with new developments in your field. The programme makers simply invite a researcher into a studio to comment on a recent news item regarding space exploration, genetic engineering, global warming or whatever.

Audio-cassettes

Audio-cassettes have the advantages of convenience and flexibility. They offer access to the spoken word at a time of your own choosing. You can listen on your way to work, or while you are peeling potatoes, or during a lunch break, or in bed at night. Thus they open up new areas of study time. However, when audio-cassettes are used more interactively, with stops, replays and activities, you need pen and pad and somewhere to write. You may also need your books, since audio-cassettes are very effective for ‘talking you through’ a section of text. Key points can be read out and discussed; you can be directed around complicated diagrams or tables of figures; and you can be ‘walked through’ mathematical workings. Then you can be set questions to work on with the audio-cassette switched off. In this way, an audio-cassette can be used to guide you through your studies.

Hints and Tips

X To gain full benefit from TV and radio broadcasts you need to prepare in advance by reading programme notes and skimming relevant sections of the course.

X It is hard to take notes as you watch TV, but you will learn more if you write down key points afterwards.

X It is easier to take notes as you listen to the radio, although some follow-up notes will help to consolidate your learning.

X Recording TV and radio broadcasts reduces the pressures involved in learning from these sources, as you can replay the programmes in your own time as often as you want.

X With audio- or video-cassettes, simply follow the instructions. Allow sufficient time to study the programmes, but guard against letting the time run away with you.