Advanced Instructional Design & Education Technology - Discussion 6 - Smaldino et al. (2005)

Saudi Students Know Smaldino's Visuals

I really liked how the authors refer to creating visuals as “encoding.”  Although, I did think that it was rather quaint that they refer to “video camcorder [as] a convenient tool for students to practice creating and presenting ideas and events” (Smaldino, p. 55).

Rather than have my students perform PowerPoint presentations or English oral exams, I would have them create video projects demonstrating performance on their individual modalities, i.e. turbines, electrical, pumps, instrumentation, personal protective equipment, etc.. I really had to guide and coax them the first semester that I taught this. Students had never received this kind of assignment before. But the results were fabulous. (ANd, of course, the second semester I simply had to show the previous semester’s project to my new students and the competition was really on!)

Most of the students used their own iPhones, which I thought was a brilliant use of technology in the classroom. Without my asking or prompting, many included fading in titles, cool transitions, background music, dramatic skits, and even gag reels up there bloopers while filming their projects.

A brilliant and unconscious intuitive leap that the young men made was that their projects included the six types of visuals which can be encoded, as per our clever authors:

1. Realistic: Their presentations were quite realistic. They would use real footage of the pumps or turbines that they were demonstrating use up. And of course it was really them, the students, though some of them used some really cool photoshopping to dramatize their productions.
2. Analogical: By creating dramatic skits of how they might perform on the job, say for a personal protective equipment demonstration, they were making an analog of what could actually happen, though it was only similar to what would happen.
3. Organizational: Some would show instrumentation that would demonstrate maps and charts of their potential future worksites for their audience to get a better understanding of how this project was practical.  One young gentleman who did this with great facility and professionality received an instant promotion from his future employer - as he shared the video on YouTube with his company!
4. Relational: Some students might even give statistics on how things might be safer if their performance was better. Modeling the whole “96 days on the job and no accidents” banners.
5. Transformational: Of course, since the projects were videos they were illustrating movements and change - sometimes in dramatic ways. For example, students might show how to disassemble an impeller on a pump. And then reassemble it. Or, one group simulated an accident, using fake blood, no less!  Very creative.
6. Interpretive: The vocational school, of course, had an electrical modality. So, they often would include either the actual schematic diagram of an electrical circuit, or they might insert (somehow, I didn't even understand the video apps they were using at the time - but as they say, necessity is the mother of invention) actual graphic printed visuals into their videos.

I was not aware at the time that they were actual applying the six types of visual. But it just shows you how students can actually teach you more, sometimes, than you can teach them sometimes. Bravo boys!