Learning from Television, What the Research Says

REPORT RESUMES ED 014 900 EM 005 628 LEARNING FROM TELEVISION,WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS. BY- CHU, GODWIN C. SCHRAMM, WILBUR STANFORD UNIV., CALIF.,INST.FOR COMMUNIC. RES. PUB DATE DEC 67 EDRS PRICE MF...$1.00 HC-$8.96 222P. DESCRIPTORS.... *INSTRUCTIONALTELEVISION, *RESEARCH REVIEWS (PUBLICATIONS), *LEARNING,*ATTITUDES, *STUDENTS, RESPONSE MODE, STUDENT TEACHERRELATIONSHIP, PRESENTATIONFACTORS 60 PROPOSITIONS IN 6AREAS CONCERNING THECONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE LEARNING FROMTELEVISION ARE DEVELOPED FROMA SURVEY OF THE RESEARCHLITERATURE.--(1) HOW MUCHPUPILS LEARN FROM INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION,(2) EFFICIENT USE OF THE MEDIUM IN A SCHOOL SYSTE4g(3) TREATMENT, SITUATION,AND PUPIL VARIABLES, (4) ATTITUDESTOWARD INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION, (5) TELEVISIONIN DEVELOPING REGIONS, (6) LEARNING FORM TELEVISIONCOMPARED WITH LEARNING FROMOTHER MEDIA. EVIDENCE FOR EACHPROPOSITION IS BRIEFLY SUMMARIZED. LITERATURE SEARCH DEPENDEDPARTLY ON ABSTRACTS,PARTLY ON COMPLETE DOCUMENTS, ANDINCLUDED FOREIGN AS WELLAS U.S. RESEARCH. IT IS CONCLUDEDFROM OVERWHELMING EVIDENCETHAT TELEVISION CAN BE AN EFFICIENTTOOL OF LEARNING AND TEACHING. WHEN IT IS NOT EFFICIENT, THE REASON IS USUALLY INTHE WAY IT IS USED. EVIDENCE FAVORSTHE INTEGRATION OFTELEVISION INTO OTHER INSTRUCTION, SIMPLICITYRATHER THAN "FANCINESS", EMPHASIS ON THE BASICREQUIREMENTS OF GOODTEACHING, INTRODUCTION OF THE MEDIUMSO AS TO MINIMIZE RESISTANCE,AND TESTING AND REVISION OFPROGRAMS. WHETHER THETELEVISION MEDIUM IS TO BE PREFERRED, AND WHETHER IT IS FEASIBLEFOR DEVELOPING REGIONS, DEPENDSON OBJECTIVES ANDCONDITIONS. A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF303 TITLES IS INCLUDED. Cs) C:) Ei4too662.11 r-4 C:) C:3 1.10, LEARNING FROM TELEVISION: What the Research Says by Godwin C. Chu and Wilbur Schramm a report of the INSTITUTE FORCOMMUNICATION RESEARCH STANFORD UNIVERSITY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION &WELFARE OFFICE Of EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCEDEXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT.POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIALOFFICE Of EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. LEARNINGFROM TELEVISION: What the Research Says by Godwin C. Chu and Wilbur Schramm FINAL REPORT TO THE U.S. OFFICE OF EDUCATION CONTRACT 2 EFC 708 94 Institute for Communication Research Stanford University 1967 The study xeported herein was performed pursuant to a contract with the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education. Contractors undertaking such projects under Government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment in the conduct of the project. Points of view or opinions stated do not, therefore, necessarily represent official Office of Education position or policy, and the manuscript has not been subjected to regular editorial review given Office of Education staff publications. DRAFT FOR CRITICISM Stanford, California: December, 1967 CONTENTS Foreword iv I. DO PUPILS LEARN FROM INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION? 1 Learning in general 1 Learning by educational level 12 Learning by subject matter 14 II. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED ABOUT THE EFFICIENT USE OF TELEVISION IN A SCHOOL SYSTEM? 23 The context of television 23 The need served by television 28 The planning and organization 35 III. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED ABOUT THE TREATMENT, SITUATION, AND PUPIL VARIABLES? 40 A. Physical variations 41 Magnification and screen size 41 Color 44 Subjective angle 47 Technical variations 48 Attention-gaining cues 50 B. Pedagogical variations 50 Humor, animation 50 Subtitles 52 Dramatic vs. expository presentation 53 Questions and rest pauses 56 Television's position in period 58 Repeated showings and teacher follow-up 60 Shortening the program 63 ii Eye-contact 64 Problem-solving techniques 66 Lecture, interview, discussion 67 C. Viewing_ conditions 68 Viewing angle and distance 68 Classroom teacher and viewing angle 71 Noise 72 Small vs. large viewinggroups 73 Homogeneous grouping 75 Home vs. classroom television 77 Permissive attendance 82 Motivation 83 D. Problem of two-way communication 87 Feedback to instructor 88 Testing and revisingprograms 90 Student questions and discussion 91 Knowledge of results 94 Contact with teacher 97 E. Studentresponse 101 Overt vs. covert practice 101 Note-taking 107 IV. ATTITUDES TOWARD INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION 110 By grade level 112 Administratorsvs. teachers 116 Home vs. classroom 117 By class size 119 The Hawthorne effect 120 By subject matter 122 Liking aad learning 123 Factors in teachers' attitudes 124 Factors in students' attitudes 127 iii V. LEARNING FROM TELEVISION IN DEVELOPING REGIONS 132 Learning from television in developingcountries 132 Motivation by television 135 Learning pictorial conventions 137 Training for media use 140 Resistance to television 143 Importance of feedback from classroom 145 Television for in-service training 147 VI. LEARNING FROM TELEVISION; LEARNING FROMOTHER MEDIA 151 Learning from media other than television 151 Television and film 156 The problem of deliverability 157 Cost considerations 158 Control by the classroom teacher 161 Usefulness of visual images 162 Usefulness of moving visual images 169 Controlling student response 172 VII. A NOTE IN CONCLUSION 176 VIII. BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 Foreword A year from now let us hope it will be easier to do the job we have tried to do in this monograph, and it can be done better. Within a year the new ERIC clearinghouse on educational media and technology will have in operation a computerized index to virtually all the research on television and the other teaching media. We are keenly aware of how much difference this will make, because the presence of this clearinghouse at.Stanford, although it has been operative cAly for two months or so, has made a considerable difference in the amount of scholarly literature to which we had access, and the ease of getting it Let us make clear at the outset that we are dealing with instructional television only. A great deal of learning from non- instructional television undoubtedly occurs, but that is another story and another monograph. This review can be described as a wide-angle view of the field with reasonably low definition. Many studies in the field have not come to our attention, and we have not been able to get access to some of those we have known about. In a number of cases, we have had to work with abstracts or summaries rather than the entire research report. For those reasons, and because we have had only about six months to work on this in order to have it available for the forthcoming Office of Education Study on Instructional Television, we have not been able to give detailed attention to iv studying and reinterpreting thesomewhat puzzling findings inmany areas. This is the next step thatmust be taken. Following upon this broad survey, there isneed for a series of muchmore detailed, less hurried "state of the art"papers focused on a number of the key areas and questions whichwill be found in the followingpages. That, and a great deal of additionalresearch following along the roads of greatest promise andneed. Meanwhile, we hope that thisreview will be useful, both to the Office of Education andto the broadcasters, educators, and scholars who will alsosee it. It is the broadest study yet made of the research on instructionaltelevision, and covers several times as much research as any of its predecessors. We want to express our gratitudeto the ERIC clearinghouse at Stanford and its staff; toour colleagues in the Institute for Communication Research; to the scholarswho have made our work easier by the syntheses and abstractstudies they have made in years before -- for example, Arthur Lumsdaine,of the University of Washington, Mark May,formerly of Yale, J. Christopher Reidof Purdue and Donald W. MacLennanof Brooklyn College, J. A. Harrison of London and his Europeancommittee, Charles Hoban of theUniversity of Pennsylvania, and C. RayCarpenter and Leslie P. Greenhill of Pennsylvania State University--; and to Mrs. Linda N. Miller, of Stanford, who typed this beautiful jobin her own specialmanner. Wilbur Schramm Stanford, 23 November, 1967 Godwin C. Chu I. DO PUPILS LEARN FROM TELEVISION? 1. Given favorable conditionschildren learn efficiently from instructionaltelevision. There can no longer beany real doubt that children and adults learn a great amount from instructionaltelevision, justas they do from any other experience that can be made toseem relevant to them-- experiences as different as watching someone rotatea hula hoop or reading the encyclopedia. The effectiveness of televisionhas now been demonstrated in well over 100 experiments,and several hundred separate comparisons, performedin many parts of the world,in developing as well as industrialized countries,at every level from pre- school through adulteducation, and witha great variety of subject matter and method. Much of this report willbe concerned with whatwe know about the nature of "favorable conditions" for learningfrom television, and, in particular, what conditionsare more favorable than others. Here we must say something, however, about whathas been done to measure the "efficiency" of learningfrom television. In general, this has beenmeasured either by comparisonwith conventional instruction,or by comparison withsome absolute or assumed standard. Television instructionhas frequently beencompared with no instruction. In other words, doesthe student learnat all from television? A surprisingly large number of experimentshave been done this way. For example, Sykes (1964)compared 58 education majors

Load more