Running Head: MULTIMEDIA and WORLD WAR II

8

Multimedia and World War II

Running head: MULTIMEDIA AND WORLD WAR II

Integrating Multimedia into Teaching

World War II to Secondary Students in the United States

Chris Inman

The University of Alabama

September 17, 2006

World War II as Traditionally Taught in U.S. Public Schools

The study of World War II in U.S. public school classrooms has traditionally been an exercise in memorizing dates, famous battles, and key figures. However, these teaching methods are not exclusive to the study of World War II, but instead reach out to all historical topics and subjects. Such teaching and learning methods are not new, as rote memorization has long held as the traditional method of instruction. Furthermore, these techniques have crossed content areas and cultural boundaries over time.

Recently, institutions in the United States have attempted to shift instructional techniques to methods concerned with improving critical thinking skills and conceptual learning. These shifts have also occurred in the social sciences, history included. Still, teachers often resort to rote memorization for various reasons. One such reason is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The act requires school districts and schools to make adequate yearly progress, or AYP. Failure to meet the AYP standards means that schools and school districts are “subject to improvement, corrective action, and restructuring measures aimed at getting them back on course to meet State standards” (U.S. Department of Education, 2007). In an effort to insure that students meet AYP, states have moved to high-stakes standardized testing, for example the Alabama High School Graduation Exit Exam. Students must pass the examination to graduate from high school. Reacting to these expectations and mandates, teachers have, in some instances, resorted to teaching to the test. In other words, studying social sciences has largely become an exercise in memorizing facts and trivia.

A problem unique to history, however, is that content, which in this case is World War II, lends itself to the rote memorization teaching method. Students must know key dates, prominent figures, crucial battles, and various other facts. Often, the study of history becomes the boring, repetitive act of opening the next chapter to get the newest set of terms to define and questions to answer. While learning these facts is important, and in some cases do require memorization, they are not always placed within the context of the history made at the time. In other words, facts do no occur in a bubble. Every aspect of history is connected. One event leads to another and the trend continues. For example, students learn about the bombing at Pearl Harbor, but not necessarily why the Japanese felt forced to make such a desperate move. Students memorize that the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they probably do not understand the decisions behind what led to the U.S. decision to drop the bombs. In closing, the previous two examples exemplify how World War II is generally taught in our public schools.

Integrating Multimedia into the Teaching of World War II

Differing definitions of multimedia exist. The Multimedia Project defines multimedia as the “integration of media objects such as text, graphics, video, animation, and sound to represent and convey information.” (San Mateo County Office of Education, 2001). Richard Mayer, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, defines “multimedia as presentation of content that relies on both text and graphics.” (Shank, 2007). Finally, a more comprehensive definition comes from Mao Neo and Ken T. K. Neo, faculty members at Multimedia University in Malaysia, defining multimedia as “the combination of various digital media types, such as text, images, sound, and video, into an integrated multi-sensory interactive application or presentation to convey a message or information to an audience.” For the sake of this particular article, I shall follow the rather broad definition provided by The Multimedia Project.

In the traditional teaching of World War II, teachers generally begin with establishing a timeline of events, with key dates and important battles as the main points on the timeline. Students usually create these timelines with paper, pencil, and perhaps some colors, and design either an actual line graph or a graphic representation. Imagine instead a timeline which is interactive and completely student generated. Using a program such as Adobe Captivate, students could be placed into teams, given a specific topic, and asked to create an interactive multimedia timeline with sound, text, graphics, and even video. Different groups could create different multimedia timelines focusing on different aspects of World War II: the rise of Hitler and Germany, the advancement of Japan throughout East Asia, Mussolini and Italy, relations between the United States and Great Britain before U.S. entry in the war, and the U.S. home front. While navigating, students would select different points on the timeline to see content in various formats, thus providing a more enriching learning experience in comparison to pencil on paper. They would then click on a button directing them to a question asking them to recall information they previously examined. At the end of each interactive timeline, a short quiz would be available to provide direct assessment.

Continuing with the project-based learning theme, students could also create interactive multimedia modules using a wiki such as pbWiki.com or Wikispaces.com. According to Angelo Fernando, wikis are “the ultimate collaborate tool for a group of users” (Fernando, 2005, p.8). Essentially, wikis are easy-to-edit websites perfect for collaboration. Students could be placed into teams and once again assigned various topics concerning the Second World War: important battles and figures on the European Theater Eastern Front, important battles and figures on the European Theater Western Front, the war in the Pacific Theater, and the beginnings of the Cold War. Teams would be required to create modules in a wiki provided by the teacher using various multimedia elements. For example, the team researching the war in the Pacific Theater could begin their module with Pearl Harbor, and include actual pictures of the damaged ships at Pearl Harbor, text explaining and detailing the pictures, a radio clip of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous “Date Which Will Live in Infamy Speech”, links to other relevant information on the Internet, and even a video clip of the movie “Pearl Harbor” showing the initial attack. The module would continue, focusing on important conflicts such the Battle of Midway, Iwo Jima, and the dropping of the atomic bombs. Using a broad range of instructional multimedia tools would give students multiple perspectives and opportunities to learn in comparison to using only a textbook and memorization techniques.

Advantages of Incorporating Multimedia into Teaching History

Several advantages come into focus when using multimedia in teaching history or any other subject. Such advantages, or positive aspects, include students becoming better consumers of multimedia documents, learning in greater depth due to the creation of the presentation, and learning from multiple perspectives, as researchers, authors, designers, and writers (Moursund & Smith, 2000). Research also suggests that students learn new content more efficiently when pictures are used together with words, rather than text alone (Mayer & Moreno, 2007, 2). Studying World War II, or history generally, requires placing content within context, and placing history into context is often difficult to achieve when using standard memorization and textbook methods. In short, students using multimedia to study World War II are more likely to remember, recall, and use information they learn due to the added depth and richness of the instruction.

Using multimedia in teaching instruction also provides different types of learning and interaction. From a teacher-centered perspective, teachers can provide presentations, demonstrations and tutorials with content in presented in different media (Neo & Neo, 2000). Students will then have the opportunity to engage interactively with drill and practice activities and tutorials which enhance learning and retention (Neo & Neo, 2000). From the student-centered perspective, students can interact with multimedia products on their own time and move at their own pace if the content is packed in a DVD or CD-ROM, or is placed online (Neo & Neo, 2000). From the mixed methods perspective, both perspectives can be combined to create a situation in which students engage with the multimedia and interact with the teacher through video-conferencing in real time (Neo & Neo, 2000). In summary, incorporating multimedia into teaching enhance teaching and learning from multiple perspectives, and make the learning of history more complete.

Disadvantages of Incorporating Multimedia into Teaching History

Though integrating multimedia technology into the teaching of history has advantages, disadvantages are also present. It takes time to teach students how to use different multimedia tools, and teachers may not have the luxury of using their classroom time to covering these tools instead of teaching actual history content. In addition, once students know how to use the technology tools, they must be consistently monitored to ensure they don’t abuse or misappropriate the tool. If a student team uses a wiki to teach fellow students about the beginnings of the Cold War, they should confine the wiki to this topic only. Technology glitches could also appear, as technology is not perfect. All of these issues take time to resolve, and teachers may feel that taking time to address them is taking time away from actual instruction covering World War II, or any other history topic. Furthermore, teachers may fear that students will have fun using the technology, but will instead focus on the technology and not the historical content.

Research also suggests that students must view text and images at the same time, the contiguity principle, to maximize learning and retention (Mayer & Moreno, 2007, 3). There is also the split-attention principle which says that words in a multimedia presentation should be presented as “auditory narration” rather than as “visual on-screen text” (Mayer & Moreno, 2007, 3). Perhaps most importantly, these principles are far more important for low-knowledge learners than high-knowledge learners and for high-spatial learners rather than low-spatial learners (Mayer & Moreno, 2007, 4). Finally, the coherence principle says that multimedia presentations should contain fewer words and images as compared to many (Mayer & Moreno, 2007, 4). Should teachers fail to follow these guiding principles, then actual learning could be hindered, obstructed, or damaged. In such cases, traditional methods using a textbook with imbedded pictures could offer a better opportunity to learn when compared to a multimedia product which lacks consistency, contains far too much information, and has elements which do not fit together properly to form coherent stream of information.

Conclusion

While concerns exist about the validity and efficacy of using interactive multimedia in education, such concerns are outweighed by the positive outcomes the technology produces with students. Students studying history using interactive multimedia will remember more content because the content is taught with context, instead of as disjointed and disconnected facts. Certain issues, such as they layout of multimedia elements, can be addressed successfully to ensure students achieve their maximum learning potential in that given learning event.

References

Fernando, Angelo. (2005). Wiki: the new way to collaborate. [Electronic Version] Communication World, 22(3), 8-9.

Mayer, R.E. & Moreno, R. (2007). A cognitive theory of multimedia learning: Implications for design principles, 1-10. Article retrieved September 18, 2007 from Roxana Moreno: http://www.unm.edu/~moreno/PDFS/chi.pdf

Moursund, D. & Smith, I. (2000). Research on multimedia in education. In Research on Technology in Education, by the International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved September 18, 2007 from the International Society for Technology in Education:

http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Research/Reports/Research_on_Technology_in_Education_2000_/Multimedia/Research_on_Multimedia_in_Education.htm

Neo, M & Neo, T. K. (2000). “Multimedia Learning: Using multimedia as a platform for instruction and learning in higher education”. Proceedings of the Multimedia University International Symposium on Information and Communication Technologies 2000 (M2USIC’2000), PJ Hilton, October 5-6, 2000, pp S3-1.1 - 1.4. Retrieved September 19, 2007: http://www.icte.org/T01_Library/T01_103.PDF

San Mateo County Office of Education. (2001). The multimedia project: Project-based learning with multimedia. Retrieved September 17, 2007 from the San Mateo County Office of Education: http://pblmm.k12.ca.us/PBLGuide/model.htm

Shank, P. (2007). The value of multimedia in learning. Adobe Design Center Think Tank.

Retrieved September 17, 2007 from Adobe Design Center Think Tank: http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/valuemedia/

U.S. Department of Education. (2007). Overview executive summary. No Child Left Behind.

Article obtained on September 17, 2007 from the U.S. Department of Education:

http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/execsumm.html