[quoting Perry, 22 Oct 96] For years now, I have been concerned that our use of narration is not as affective as the use of text. My conviction is that students reading text to receive a message is a more active process than narration, which is a more passive mode. For now, I go on what I deem is common sense.
Chase down the Furnham and Gunter studies if you want. Their findings apply directly to the kinds of situations you are talking about.
[quoting Hall, 22 Oct 96] You demonstrated that media can be important, not that learning processes aren't, or even that media is the thing we should pay the most attention to.
Actually, I believe that learning processes make the difference, in the sense that it is what goes on inside the heads of learners that makes the difference between audio and text.
[quoting Morrison, 22 Oct 96] Does [hardwired humanc activity] mean our ID programs should really be focusing on brain surgery and electronic circuit repair and design? I can see it now, "Preparation of Inexpensive Materials" is replaced by wire cutting and soldering.
It has no implications whatsoever for instructional design, but it means you can't use constructivism as an EXPLANATION of why it worked.
[quoting Dehoney, 22 Oct 96] I'm confused on this point. It seems that to control for reviewability, you would want to do the opposite of the "Methods" quote above; in other words, match the time for each spoken sentence to a typical time a for single visual reading of the same sentence. Obviously, this would be difficult if the two conditions are matched word-for-word. But as it is now, I might read the sentence two or more times while my counterpart hears it once.
Interesting. I hadn't thought of this. It would require speaking abnormally fast, but tape recorder-compressors do exist. Timing reading speed exactly would be a little difficult, but a pilot study in which people pressed a space bar when they had finished reading the sentence would provide average reading speeds, I guess. In my study, I used the computer to time each recorded sentence and then used that time to display the sentences. My own subjective estimate was that I could read each sentence about 1.5 times in the time it took to speak it aloud. 1.5 times allows some reviewability, but it is not very satisfying because the sentence disappears before you are finished the second time. Audio is partially reviewable too because our brain has a short-term audio buffer (not to be confused with short-term memory) in which we can replay what we hear.
...three observations on the language lab example are (1) students are less likely to have recent experience learning in a language lab context than in an online context; (2) if you are hearing single sentences in language lab, it is usually for production practice, not for comprehension or recall; and (3) hearing sentences emit from a computer with no visual component would perhaps be unusual in a language lab, but reading sentences with no aural component would be typical in a computer lab.
Possibly. But my sentences were presented end-to-end within the limits of the computer to sequence audio. It was pretty natural, I think. My audio would be equivalent to hearing a narrative on the radio, which most people have some experience with. Anyway, Furnham and Gunter's subjects simply listened in groups to the audio track of TV shows in some cases or taped narrations of texts in others. It's true that we don't listen to a lot of stories on the radio nowadays, but I doubt that lack of experience is a problem. Surely reading flashed sentences on a computer screen is equally unusual. Furnham and Gunter's situations were more natural, but less controlled.
At the risk of self-contradiction, I have just finished listening to about six to eight hours of narration of Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage (the story of the Lewis & Clark Expedition) (for non-Americans: Lewis & Clark were sent by President Jefferson to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and find an all-water route to the Pacific Ocean. They were the first persons to cross the continent and their journals are an encyclopedia of information about the land and the Indian tribes.) I had previously read the book, but listening to it again on my car cassette player was very satisfying. It may be that audio makes a good review technique, as a medium of convenience. In the same vein, I have Six Easy Pieces by Richard D. Feynman, six lectures given in the early 60s by the Nobel physics prize winner. The lectures are in the form of a book and six CD-ROMs. I listened to all six lectures this summer by playing them in the background while I was working. This was convenient, but if you asked me about the content, I would have trouble giving you more than a few generalities.