By Tony Bates. This was a fun one to do, mainly because I ignored any previous research on this topic, because I rarely, to my shame, read articles in journals on computing and education. When I have done, the articles seem to be about another world of education in which I don’t – or didn’t – work. So I deserve your criticisms of this post, and, if I’m honest, I would welcome direction to any references that I ought to take account of, so long as they will enable me to help faculty in their teaching. See more...

By Tony Bates. The alternative of course is video available as an open educational resources, and good luck with that. I had great difficulty in finding suitable open educational resources to use as examples (although there are talking heads in abundance). If anything, the availability of good quality video OERs has declined recently, with much of the material previously available through Open Learn and other sources such as iTunesU and even YouTube now removed. Copyright of good quality educational video is still pretty restricted, probably because of the high cost of producing it. See more...

By Tony Bates. We have seen that oral communication has a long history, and continues today in classroom teaching and in general radio programming. In this section though I am focusing primarily on recorded audio, which I will argue is a very powerful educational medium when used well. See more...

By Tony Bates. However, with the increasing availability of other media, what is so special about text? How does it differ from other media? I have found writing about this particularly difficult. I have lots of empirical evidence on the pedagogical influences of audio, video and computing, but almost nothing on text, because in a sense it is the default medium for academic learning, the base against which other media tend to be judged. See more...

By Tony Bates. Most teachers and instructors would put the effectiveness of a medium for teaching and learning as the first criterion. If the technology is not educationally effective, why would you use it? However, if a student cannot access or use a technology, there will be no learning from that technology, no matter how it is designed. Furthermore, motivated teachers will overcome weaknesses in a particular technology, or conversely teachers inexperienced in using media will often under-exploit the potential of a technology. Design decisions are critical in influencing the effectiveness of a particular technology. See more...