DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 093 387 IR 000 895

AUTHOR Molenda, MichaelTITLE Instructional Television in Higher Education.INSTITUTION Indiana Univ., Bloomington.PUB DATE Jan 74NOTE 11p.; Paper presented at the Conference on Cable

Television and the University (Dallas, Texas, January29-31, 1974)

AVAILABLE FROM Proceedings of the Conference on Cable Television,EDUCOM, P. 0. Box 364, Princeton, New Jersey 08540($6.00)

EDRS PRICEDESCRIPTORS

MF-$0.75 HC-$1.50 PLUS POSTAGE*Cable Television; Closed Circuit Television;*Educational Development; *Educational Television;Programing (Broadcast); *State of the Art Reviews;Televised Instruction; *Television Research;*Universities

ABSTRACTDespite the voluminous array of comparison studies,

educators have little for purposes of administrative decision makingor for the establishment of scientific generalizations about howstudents learn from television. Of interest to cable adherents is theoff-campus home viewer of instructional television (ITV) offerings.Research evidence indicates that at-home TV students tend to performbetter than their on-campus counterparts and t.hey frequently have amore favorable attitude toward learning via the TV. Cable offers atleast two technical capabilities which are unique to cablecasting:(a) multiple channels for simultaneous communication with multiplesmall audiences; and (b) two-way interaction betyeen the teacher andthe learner. However, these opportunities can also be seen asproblems. First, mOtiple-channel opportunity evokes educational TV'shistorical inability co produce sufficient software to fill theexisting, limited channels. Second, the opportunity fon tyo-wayinteraction is clouded by the rather obvious failure te date toidentify and perfect teaching methods which captialize on thiscapability. In essence, educators must decide what it is we wantcable to do for our institutions. (RCM)

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Instructional Televisionin Higher Ecucationby Michael Molenda

INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION IN HIGHER EDUCATION

This paper trill deal. from the educator's viewpoint. with thespecifically hrstrcii,wal applications of television what higher

education institutions Ir,,ve been doing with TV, how successful their usagehas been (according to the findings of instructional TV research), and howthese practices and research I indings may !elate to cable TV.

1 his will be a quick overview of a very broad universe. Let's begin bysurveying the major motics in which TV is utilired in higher education;

Broadcast Beginning with the commercial networks' carrying"Continental Ciassroom- and "Sunrise Semester'' in the 1950s, sehave come today to the point that at least 42 higher educationinstitutions operate some 60 broadcasting stations in the VHF andUHF hands. The primary role of nrost of these stations is that of apublic television outlet, transmitting lire resources of the university tooficampus audiences. They typical:y carry instructional programming,for the elementary and secondary school .levels, plus programs ofgeneral cultural or educational interest to the local community.Ati,forwre hi addition to conventional broadeasting-channels. somedo /erns of other institutions use the more speciali/ed Instioctional

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Television Fised Service ri's) and microwave frequency bands toreach specific off-campus groups which are especially equipped toreceive these signals. One of the best-known and most active examplesof tir'' tatter Is

the ri\('LR l'Icrowavc tw(wol.k, headsitrat le red inDallas. which facilitates sharing of resources among nMe colleges andtransmits graduate engineering classes to on-the-job workers at severalnoishhortng industrial plants.Cbrscd-Ortrit /1" ((CTI') Even IMMe widespread than either of the311ove tit. cs, though. is the practice of conveying regular courseworkto on-campus students through local cable lines which mayinterconnect two rooms in the same building, several differentbuildings. or the entire campus.

The installation of CCTV systems appears to have progressedsteadily from the early 1950s through 1972, doubling in numbers;.1.)pro\iiriately every five years. (See Figure 1) A survey by the GreatPlains National ITV Library ( (973) located some 725 CCTV systemsin higher education. My guess is that thiii growth has probably reached

plateau at this time. There are nut that many colleges kit whichcould support a wire-up which have not done so already. besides that,many of the functions which CCTV originally served are now fulfilledby competing delivery systems such as microwave, portable video tapeunits, and video cassettes.

The relevance of these CCTV systems to our present concerns isthat they represent not just a delivery system, but also a productioncapability Vhich could conceivably be interlaced with cable TVheadends.Other Modes Finally ,to complete this video overview, passingmention must be given to a couple of highly localized forms of TVuse. One iS dial-access video, in Which an individual student in a studycarrel may dial up any given title from a remote bank of stored videotapes; this still tends to be a rather exotic technology, expensive toinstall, debug. and iced with courseware. It has caught on at only ahandful of campuses.

Another localized video tool is the portable videotape unit, or-porta,pak,- which is now virtually ubiquitous. All the indications arethat there are probably very few campuses which do not have aportable unit around somewhere, if only locked in the AV director'scloset. They are particularly prevalent in education and physicaleducation departments, where they are heavily used for-mkt-ow:idling- and other forms of self-observation.

ITV RESEARCH FINDINGS

What have we learned from these 20 years of glowing cathode ray

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tubes? What do we know for sure? Unfortunately. not as much as we!night. considering the hundreds of research studies that have beenpublicly repotted. The problem. in the view of research methodolog,ists,has been that the great preponderance of these have been comparisonstudies compating the local version of "televised instruction" with thelocal version of "conventional instruction," in other words, it is askedwhether canof worms A is better or worse than can-of-wouns B. Each isso full of wriggling, slippery mysteries that no !natter what the answer, it isneatly impossible to explain the significance of that answer, to use it toimprove practice, or to generalize it to other situations.

Many researchers are, of courso, cognizant of this problem and theyhave striven mightily to match the two treatments exactly on everycontrollable variable, changing only the means of transmission (TV vs.faceo-face). But when this is successfully done we find that both formsof instruction have been compelled to fight with both hands tied behindtheir hacks, neither having been allowed to do what it can do best. Theinevitable result: no significant difference. As Mielke's7 recent critique soforcefully points out, this voluminous array of comparison studies has leftus with little either for purposes of administrative decision making or interms of scientific generalizations about how students learn fromtelevision.

Our overview of ITV research, then. is approached with considerablecaution, because we don't know exactly how to interpret "no significantdifference" or a finding favorable or adverse to televised instruction.Nevertheless, several Major attempts have been made to collect andanalyze the findings of studies related to on campus relevised instructionin higher education.

The first, a comprehensise survey by Godwin Chu and WilburSchramm,' reached this general conclusion:

So far as we can tell from present evidence, television can heused efficiently to teach any subject matter where one-waycommunication will contribute to learning.

kVithin that genera' pattern. though. it appears that results have tended tofavor television inure frequently at the elementary-secondary level than inhigher education (See Figure 2).

A more tecent analysis, conduct ed by Robert Dubin and o:liers3 at theCenter for Advanced Study of Educational Administration, reached asimilar conclusion:

In the most intensive analysis across many studies yetmade, we can find no evidence to ,dispute the conclusionthat one-way television is as good as other collegeinstructional media.

It is important to -emphasize Dubin's distinction between one -way and-two-way uses of II V. Tice results of these two treatments were analyzed

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separately, for reasons which will become clearer as we plocciod. First,Figure 3 indicates the slightly proTV trend they found among tireorrci-curt' television comparison studies in higher education. But morestartling, particularly in light of our great expectations for vastimprovements :/ernining from cable TV's two-way transmission capacity,is Dubin 's conclusion that face-to-face instruction is significantly superiorto twoway television (See Figure 4). We see that out of sS independentcomparisons, favored the face -to -face treatment.

How can this anomalous finding be accounted for? It really doesn'tseem likely that being able to communicate with the 'IV teacher somehowitibibits learning. In most of the cases studied, feedback was enabled byplacing a ttliCrophotle the remote classroom: one particular study of thistype was conducted by Lorimer and Sinclair.' at Penn State. They foundthat interaction among students was inhibited, negative attitudes arose, andlower grades were attained by the remotely located students. We can onlyspeculate as to why these effects oce.urred: technical problems with theaudio system that nui,te it clumsy and unreliable to use, heightenedexpectations which could not be fulfilled, or possibly an instructionalmethod which was simply not well adapted to receiving and usingfeedback. In the absence of definitive reseaicli results, we are left onlywith hypotheses. All we know for sure is that there is nothing magic aboutan I pi system that simply allows for audio feedback. Perhaps such asystem can be turned to good advantage; we have not found the best wayto do that yet.

CURRENT TRENDS IN RESEARCH

In recent years. there has been a decided drop-off in the use of the'.comparison method. The emphasis nowadays is on Prmatirc, ordevelopmental. evaluation. This approach says, "We're not concerned withwhat TV is better than.. we just want to find ways of improving itseffectiveness here and now."

One example may suffice, Faye Dambrot2 reported on a decade ofdevelopmental evaluation regarding a televised general psychology courseat the University of Akron, a course which had enrolled some 2.0.000students in that time span. Dalltbriat'S modest claim at the end of herreport is that "In a ten-year period, through trial and error learning, anefficient and effective course has eilierged which is sell received bystudents.- This result was achieved by means of constant evaluation andmodification semester by semester. hot instance, the course was present,:ilfive limes, with constant revision of content and methods, before it wasvideotaped the first time in 061. According to her report, comprehensisecognitive testing and attitude measurement still continue, feeding in datafor periodic revision. (By the way, for the bmelit of administrators, it

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should be noted that some 3,700 students now lake this course annuallyunder 111: supervision of one faculty full-time-equivalent.)

THE OFF-CAMPUS AUDIENCE

Of greater interest to cable adherents, but the subject of vastly lcssresearch, is the offcampus home viewer of ITV offerings. The researchevidence we have, again gleaned from the Chu and Schramm surveymetioned earlier, indicates that at-home 1V students do learn; in fact, theytend to perform better than thier on campus counterparts and theyfrequently have a more favorable attitude toward Wining via the tube.Chu and Schramm speculate that this may be a product of their generallyhigher overall level of motiviation. They are viewing because they want to,not because they have to.

More of the research on oircainpu TV learners falls into the categoryof audience analysis examination of the personal characteristics of theusers of this service. Perhaps the most systematic long.term body of dataon voluntary home use of ITV has been compiled by Chicago City College,which has operated an extensive broadcast ETV system for about 20 years.James Zigere11,9 Dean of the IV College, reported several years ago on thecharacteristics of their typical home viewer:

must likely a woman ( of their students are)age, late 20stypically. a teacher (40Yr are now teaching or plan to)is highly motivatedis cm oiled for credit, and is vitally interested in attaining"credentials"

TYING IT ALL INTO CARL:: TV

One of our ultimate concerns here is whether or not there is a

confluence of interest between higher education and cable 'IV. Ourexperiences to date, although still in an embryonic stage, yield at least atentative "yes.- Indeed. a recent publication of the National CableTelevision Association (NC-TA) lists sonic 65 institutions of highereducation which rise their local commercial cable TV systems for thetransmission of educational material. So the enterprise has already begun.The range of possibilities is obviously great. For an in- depth analysis oftwo i;ther different approaches. I recommend to your attention: (.1rhicTelerisioit and Higher tihnution. Two Gmrasting Everiences by I elandJ olinsons

Cable undoubtedly title's higher education an outlet to a new /earner,the ofrcampus, part-time student. but besides this difference in targetaudience, cable offers at least two technical capabilities which arc unique

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to cablecasting: (a) It can provide multiple channels t'or simultaneouscommunication with multiple small audiences: (b) it can allow two-wayinteraction between the teacher and the learner.

As is so frequently the case, if viewed from a slightly differentpoint-of.view, these opportunities can also be seen as problems. First, themultiple-channel opportunity evokes educational TV's historical inabilityto produce sufficient quality software to fill the existing, limited channels.Part of the problem here lies in college educators consistent reluctance toproduce material jointly and. more especially, their resistance to usingcourseware produced outside their own campus.

Second, the opportunity for two-way interaction is clouded by therather obvious failure to date to identify and perfect teaching methodswhich (apitalite on this capability.

My message, I suppose, is that we educators had better get the horseout in front of the cart to decide just what it is we want cable to do forour institutions. We have encountered the electronic media before. We'vemade mistakes. It is hoped that we'll learn this time around, the alternativebeing Anthony Oettinger's' woeful observation:

Mindful of past fiascoes of educational radio and television,contemptuous of mass media, finding no significantdifference, featherbedding, or oblivious, the schoolingestablishment so far has done little dreaming or thinkingabout CATV, leaving the field to others.

REFERENCES

1. Chu, G. ('., & Schramm, W. Learning from teletision: What the research says.Washington, D.('.. National Association for Fdiicational Broadcasters, 1965.

2. Dambrot, E. General psycliolos2y over closed-circuit television: A decade ofexperience NNW) 20.000 students. AI' Communica:ion Rcsiew, 1912, 20(2),181-193.

3. Dubin. R. & 11 dki. , R. The medium may he related to the message Collegeinstruction by ie. 1 ucene, Oregon: Center tor the Ads n ced Study of ((MotionalAdministration, 1969.

4. Instructional tack 'Won service in the United Stator: rf composite profile. Lincoln,Neb.: Great Phins National Instructional Telovision Library, 1972.

5. Cable tilevicion 4.101,4:her education: Two contraving experiences Santa Monica,Cal.: RANI/Corporation, 1971. (Publication :4(-8211-M1r) 53.00.

6. Latimer, G. S., & Sinclair, W. W. Some Oleos of two-s ay television on socialinteraction. Communteation Review, 1969, / 7(1),52-62.

7. Mietke, K. Research and evaluation in I TV. In R. Arnow. it'd.), Educationaltele; policy critique and guide for developing countries. Stanford, Cal.:Stantord University, 1973.

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INSTRUCTIONAL TELEVISION 49

B. OcIlinger, A. G. Will infortnation technolozies help learning'' ('ambridF.e Mass.:Harvard Univs:isity, Prorrmll on Tcchnology and Sockty, 1911.

9. tiecrcll, J. J. Universitks without %sails and with no illusions. Educationallelevisiwt, '971, 4(10), 17-18, 26.