Media Fusion
Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow Research
Report Number 20
Media Fusion: A Tool that Supports Learning through Experience, Reflection,
and Collaboration
Authors
Rachel Bellamy
Wayne Grant
Eric Cooper
Rick Borovoy
Steve Adams
Apple Computer, Inc.
Apple Computer, Inc..
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
Abstract
Media Fusion is a tool that seeks to support learning by linking video and data analysis tools. The video motivates students and provides them with vicarious experience. The data analysis tools extend video from a purely vicarious experience to a reflective one. In addition, because we recognize the inherently social nature of human learning, the system also supports collaboration. This paper provides a formative evaluation of Media Fusion.
Introduction
"The trick to teaching is to entice and motivate the students' excitement and interest in the topic, and then to give them the proper tools to reflect, to explore, compare, and contrast, to form the proper conceptual structures" (Norman, 1993)
Don Norman's statement captures our design goals for Media Fusion. We use
video to motivate users and then provide data and data analysis tools to
allow them the opportunity for deeper reflection on the issues presented
in the video. In addition, because of the social nature of human learning,
we provide support for collaboration.
When we watch a "good" video we are transported into the situation
it depicts. In this way, video provides vicarious experience. This kind
of experience is a vital part of learning because it enables learners to
see how abstract concepts are made concrete in a particular situation (Lave,
1991). Video can also motivate students' interest in a subject, both because
the narrative structure makes it easy to follow and because topical videos,
such as current events programs and news broadcasts, deal with authentic
issues, activities, and events. Collins, Brown & Newman (1989) have
stressed authenticity as an important component for the learning process.
As Norman argues, an educational tool must provide more than just an interesting
and motivating experience; it must also provide students with the opportunity
for reflection. Linking video to data and data analysis tools supports reflection,
because it allows students to view, explore, and manipulate the kinds of
data that are being used to support opinions presented in the video. Through
reflection, learners can change their knowledge structures--an important
part of coming to understand a subject in depth (Bruner, 1960; Greeno, 1988).
Reformulating knowledge is not a passive process, but an active one. Research
suggests that successful learners actively seek to reorganize their existing
knowledge (Resnick & Neches, 1984; Bereiter, 1985; Chan & Burtis,
1985; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Scardimalia & Bereiter, 1993). They actively
seek to prove or disprove their beliefs based on new information they discover
in the world. The exploratory nature of Media Fusion supports such active
construction of knowledge. Students can explore both the existing messages
and the data in any order they wish and at their own pace.
Our design work extends Norman's view of what is required to support learning.
We hypothesize that to support learning an environment must, in addition
to providing tools that are motivating and support reflection, provide tools
that enable the formation of a community of learners. Such a community is
important because knowledge is socially constructed (Roschelle & Clancey,
1991; Pea, 1992). Through collaboration, the community negotiates an understanding
of an issue. Compared with an isolated individual learner, the community
has access to a much more varied and rich pool of information, because all
of the members of the community can pool their knowledge and cognitive resources
in order to understand an issue.
Media Fusion enables such collaborative discussion of the data by supporting
users in making their own video or text messages and by allowing them to
embed "live links" to the data, in the form of graphs, in their
messages. The links are live because the receiver not only can inspect the
graph embedded within a message, but also can manipulate that graph. These
graphs serve as conversational props and, as such, are central to scientific
conversation (Pea, 1992). In Media Fusion, the graphs that students fuse
with their video or text messages serve as a scaffold, because users come
to understand a message through direct manipulation of a graph contained
in it.
This paper describes a formative evaluation of Media Fusion. In the study,
Media Fusion was used by students in California and in Washington, D.C.,
to collaborate on issues related to global warming. To initiate the collaboration
and exploration, a video message consisting of a debate about global warming,
taken from the "MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour," was sent to all the
students. Pointers to real-world data about variables that might affect
global warming were placed in the video. Students watched the video and
explored the data in order to come to their own understanding of global
warming. Using Tabletop (Hancock, Kaput & Goldsmith, 1992), a data analysis
tool, students constructed views of the data to argue their point of view
as they engaged in discussions, via video or text messages, with the other
students involved in the study. This study served to investigate a number
of hypotheses we had concerning how Media Fusion supports the learning process:
- Video that is timely and deals with authentic issues provides a vicarious
experience and motivates students' interest in a subject.
- Linking video to data analysis supports reflective learning because,
through exploration and interpretation of the data, students can actively
construct an understanding of the opinions presented in an accompanying
video clip.
- Sending and receiving video and text messages supports the social construction of knowledge; being part of an authentic community motivates learners; and peer-assessment encourages greater self-assessment.
A Formative Evaluation of Media Fusion
Formative evaluation seeks to influence the design of technology by studying the use of initial prototypes in realistic situations. It discovers what is good and bad about the prototype with respect to its initial design goals. This information is used in the subsequent redesign of the technology, which is then subjected to further study. We recognize that it is not just the nature of the technology itself that is important in determining usability and usefulness; the context and participants are also important factors. Thus, our formative evaluation process starts with participatory design (involving researchers, teachers, students, collaborative partners, and more) of both the technology and the situation in which the technology will ultimately be studied. In the following sections, we describe this formative evaluation of Media Fusion.
The Technology
Media Fusion is a tool that integrates a number of separate technologies:
video, data analysis, and communications.
Model-Based Communication (MBC) 1: A major component
of this technology is called Model-Based Communication (Borovoy & Cooper,
1992). It provides a means of constructing digital video (or text) messages
that can contain embedded pointers to various applications. For example,
in Figure 1 the video message titled "MacNeil/Lehrer
News Hour" contains two pointers, which are positioned along its scroll
bar. As the QuickTime digital video clip plays, the scroll box moves along
the scroll bar. When the scroll box reaches the first pointer, it launches
a data analysis application, called Tabletop, and configures a prespecified
graph derived from a particular database. All this information (the application,
the file, and the various parameters that describe the scatter plot) was
encoded into the pointer when the message was created.
With MBC capabilities, users who have a video camera and a digitizing board
can create their own video messages. Clicking on the "New Video"
button brings up a live video window that shows exactly what the camera's
viewfinder shows. The user also gets a "Record" button, which
will start recording a digital video when pressed. (During recording, it
turns into a "Stop" button.) Users can also specify various analyses
of the data (in Tabletop). These analyses can then be dragged onto the QuickTime
digital video2. The pointers can be moved around or deleted.
When the user is satisfied that the video message conveys the appropriate
information, it can be saved.
MBC allows the user to create a narrative that explicates a path of reasoning.
For example, a single video message might have several pointers. All might
refer to the same application and the same database file, but each of them
might show a different way of looking at the data. In some cases, this might
mean plotting different fields against each other. In other cases, this
might mean changing the scales of an axis. In still other cases, this might
mean highlighting certain data points in one view and others in subsequent
views. Collectively, these graphs can be used as evidence to support a line
of argument delivered in the message. The receiver of such a message not
only can inspect the graph embedded within a message, but also can manipulate
that graph. This lets users come to understand the data not only in terms
of the graphical view constructed by the sender of the message, but also
in their own terms. In turn, the receivers of a message can create their
own view of the data (through direct manipulation of the graph that they
have received) and can embed their new view of the data in their response.
Users can discuss issues shown in the video, use data to augment their reasoning
about those issues, and share their understandings with others. The collection
of messages developed in this manner serves as a history of the community's
inquiry and documents its understanding of the issues being discussed.
Video: For this study, we decided that the video should be
taken from a current events television show, because the authentic issues
such a show presents would be of interest to the students. "MacNeil/Lehrer"
was chosen for a number of reasons: we were working in collaboration with
PBS, this particular show treats issues in depth, and it represents an issue
from multiple perspectives--a format that invites response.
Once selected, the video clip is digitized and pointers to views of the
database are then linked to it. In this study, for example, segments from
a recent "MacNeil/Lehrer" video clip on global warming were digitized
and then fused with a database on global warming. This resulted in a short
"MacNeil/Lehrer" video message on global warming, which contained
two live graphs supporting two of the points discussed in the video.
Data Analysis Tools: Tabletop, a data analysis tool designed
at the Technology Education Research Center, in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
was chosen to be used in Media Fusion. Tabletop is ideally suited for this
use because it has been designed specifically to enable students to make
authentic inquiries of data. Tabletop provides a simple, nonrelational database
that can be viewed via Venn diagrams and scatter plots. Tabletop is highly
interactive in that views are constructed via direct manipulation of the
interface. For example, a scatter plot is created by selecting the variable
name specified for the axis and then choosing one of the list of possible
variable names that appears on a pop-up menu. When a change has been made
to an axis, the points on the screen gradually move to their new positions.
By showing the plot reorganization as a gradual process instead of an instantaneous
one, Tabletop gives students feedback on the way in which changing the graph's
specifications affects the data.
Databases: The databases were designed to serve as a common
pool of information upon which students could draw. One function of the
databases was to tie into, and expand upon, points presented in the digitized
video clip. For example, in one digitized segment of the "MacNeil/Lehrer"
video clip, a scientist comments on ways of reducing warming trends and
C02 production. He points out that the economies of Japan and Germany are
more than twice as energy efficient as the economy of the United States.
When students replay this section, a graph derived from the database, and
showing a comparison of the energy efficiencies of these countries, automatically
appears on the left side of the screen.
The databases, not narrowly restricted to topics presented in the video,
also provided students with other pertinent data. For example, the database
used in this study of global warming addressed factors relating to the production
of greenhouse gases, which are released by the burning of fossil fuels and
other industrial processes. Along with information about C02 and methane,
the database included such economic variables as whether a country's economy
is developing or industrialized, the amount of its gross national product,
the price of gasoline, and the number of automobiles. Because Media Fusion
is not limited to a single database, multiple databases can be used, and
the data can be structured in different ways. In this study, most of the
data were organized by country. However, to facilitate comparisons between
countries, the databases contained fields such as the location of a country
and its type of economy.
A characteristic of the databases that has been implicit in this discussion
is that they contained "real" data. This is consistent with our
argument that, to be motivating, learning situations should be authentic.
The use of real data makes working on this project different from using
the storybook situations sometimes invented for textbooks. Here, students
are given access to the same kinds of data used by analysts and policy-makers.
For example, the data sources for this study included reports from the United
Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, technical
journals, and almanacs of environmental data.
Asynchronous Communications: Messages are exchanged via satellite.
Through our collaboration with PBS, we had access to a VSat connection.
Currently, the messages made in Media Fusion are not automatically and immediately
exchanged. Rather, this exchange happens overnight and is directed by a
researcher at each site.
Preparing the Situation
Two schools took part in the study; a middle school in Marin County,
California, and a junior high school in Washington, D.C. At each site, three
teachers and approximately
12 students participated.
During the technology development stage of the project, we visited the schools
to observe students working with a preliminary version of the Media Fusion
software. We used this visit to confirm the validity of our design goals,
iron out technical issues, and collect feedback from teachers and students
about the design. It became clear at this point that the students' lack
of familiarity with the Tabletop data analysis tools was affecting their
ability to exploit the potential of Media Fusion. Also, we realized that
the teachers needed to have more experience using Media Fusion before they
could think about it from a teacher's perspective.
To address these issues, we conducted a Media Fusion workshop a few months
before the actual study was to begin. In the workshop, teachers learned
how to use Tabletop and how to make Media Fusion messages. They had time
to explore the technology, and they became sufficiently familiar with it
that they could prepare their students for the user study.
Following the workshop, we collaborated with the teachers to develop the
Media Fusion curriculum for this study. The domain of inquiry, for example,
was constrained by a number of factors: which topics would be of interest
to students, which could we get sufficient data for, and what video clips
PBS could give us access to. After much consideration, we chose the topic
of global warming.
We also discussed the activities that should be part of the user study.
One particular discussion focused on whether we should have an activity
in which students were able to add their own data to the database. Although
we agreed that this was a good idea, we decided not to implement it for
this study. (Students could, however, write or talk about other data in
their messages.) There were three reasons for our decision: we realized
it would be difficult to resolve differences between the databases, we wanted
to observe what happened when students interacted with existing data, and
we thought that limitations in the dataset would provide teachers with the
opportunity to discuss more general issues about possible limitations of
datasets.
Together, we developed databases about global warming and a set of database
explanation sheets. These explanation sheets listed the name of each field
in the database, its definition, its units, and the source from which it
was obtained. Prior to the user study, the students reviewed these sheets.
During the user study, the students had access to them and were encouraged
to consult them.
"Seed messages" were also developed to introduce the database
and to provide some relevant background information, as well as to illustrate
sample analyses that could be done and to give examples of ways of using
the data analysis tool. The seed messages consisted of a composite of a
textual or video message with an accompanying graph derived from the database.
To involve an expert in the community of users of the system, we asked an
expert on global warming and environmental issues to develop some of the
seed messages.
It was important that students at both schools be familiar with the Media
Fusion software and, in particular, with the Tabletop component. With this
in mind, teachers involved the students in a number of preparatory exercises.
By the time the user study began, the students had at least an initial familiarity
with both the Tabletop and the Media Fusion software. They knew how to make
scatter plots and Venn diagrams using Tabletop, as well as how to compose,
read, and respond to both text and video messages.
The Study
The user study took place over four days, for two hours per day. Students
working in groups of three, four, or five used Macintosh Quadra 700 computers
outfitted with 20 megabytes of RAM, a 13-inch color monitor, a video digitizing
board, and a video camera.
The study commenced with the students watching the full "MacNeil/Lehrer"
video from which the digitized video clip had been taken. Following this,
the teachers led a discussion of global warming. The discussions differed
slightly between schools. At the California school (School 2), the discussion
focused on what was presented in the video clip, in particular on the structure
of the arguments offered by either side. At the Washington, D.C., school
(School 1), the discussion was organized around the central issues of global
warming. There, the students considered the big issues in global warming
and discussed the possible questions that they might investigate using Media
Fusion.
Following the discussion, students at both schools worked with Media Fusion
for the remainder of the session. They could look at the messages existing
in the system--the "MacNeil/Lehrer" clip and expert seed messages--and
compose their first video or text messages. That evening, the messages the
students composed were exchanged.
For the remaining three days of the user study, students received messages
from one another, discussed them, and composed new messages that were exchanged
the following evening. Each session started with a brief discussion to draw
the students back into the activity. Then the students worked with Media
Fusion, reading messages that had been received and composing responses
or messages on a new topic.
A number of different methods were used to collect data during the user
study: pre- and postusage study questionnaires, pre- and postparticipant
discussions of global warming, and interviews with both teachers and students
after the user study had finished. We also had video recordings of students
using Media Fusion as well as the entire collection of Media Fusion video
and text messages.
Analysis
The data collected are being subjected to many different kinds of analyses.
Currently, a database of the students' messages has been developed that
categorizes the messages in terms of the argument structure. The pre- and
posttest questionnaires have also been put into a database. Transcripts
of all the interviews have been obtained, and an initial review of the video
data has been performed. The preliminary results from these analyses are
discussed in the following section.
Video as a Motivator and Provider of Vicarious Experience:
Being able to create video messages was particularly motivating. Out of
66 messages created, 48 were video messages. In fact, the excitement surrounding
the receiving and sending of video messages was so great that teachers found
it hard to keep students away from the machines during the hours when they
were not participating in the study.
Teacher 4: "Sometimes I think they don't even realize what they're doing, that they are actually in school and it's actually studying or learning, because they see it as fun."
In our original design goals for Media Fusion, we hypothesized that several
factors--including timeliness and authenticity--affected how motivating
an initiating video might be. As expected, both students and teachers thought
that these were important factors. In addition, students felt that the video
needed to be relevant to their own lives and to provide lots of real-world
examples, rather than just talking heads.
It is difficult to assess whether the video provided students with a vicarious
experience. In their poststudy discussion, students recalled specific examples
that had been used in the video to illustrate how people contributed to
greenhouse gases--one of the major causes of global warming. They also frequently
reviewed parts of the initiating video when they were trying to understand
the specifics of the data. However, as mentioned earlier, students felt
that the initiating video did not provide enough examples of the effects
of global warming.
Supporting Reflection by Linking Video and Data Analysis: As
expected, the students gained a more detailed and integrated understanding
of global warming issues by exploring the data. The following messages,
though made by different groups of students, show how exploration of the
data helped students come to a deeper understanding of the issue. The first
message was made immediately after students watched the video clip--before
they explored the embedded data. The second was made after the students
had explored the data.
School 2, Group B: "...I agree with Oppenheimer more because I think that we shouldn't spend more billions of dollars on something we are almost positive about. I think that if we do not stop global warming now, we will not be able to stop it twenty years from now."
School 1, Group C: "...Aren't the industrialized countries guilty on two counts (the burning of fossil fuels and industrial purposes) of destroying the atmosphere? And, if this is so, should they not pay for the Earth's atmosphere according to their C02?
The first message indicates that, though video may have engaged the students,
it had not provoked them to think deeply about the issues of global warming.
However, the second message shows that, after exploring the data, students
were able to think much more critically about the issue.
In addition to learning about global warming, students also developed a
good understanding of what it meant to use data to support a view, and they
learned how to investigate hypotheses using the data analysis tools. This
is shown in the following protocol taken from the poststudy discussion.
Researcher: "... if you had both those different graphs, the automobiles with C02 and the bicycles with carbon dioxide, what would you expect to see?"
Student 15: "I'd expect that countries that had a lot of bicycles--that those had low C02 emissions and countries that had a lot of cars would have high C02 emissions."
Researcher: "So the greater the number of bicycles the lower the C02. And how would it look? Would they look like, the opposite of each other, the graphs, the automobile one and carbon dioxide?"
Student 15: "I don't think there would be too much difference because one of them has bikes and C02 and the other one has cars and C02, but the one with bikes isn't only bikes in that country, there's also cars giving out C02."
In this example, the student is exhibiting an understanding of what the
graph actually means. The student argues that there are other variables
that can affect the graph, variables that are not shown on the axes. This
is a vital concept in understanding correlations. Our data show that several
students grasped this concept directly through interaction with Media Fusion.
Students had also developed an understanding of what questions to ask, and
how to answer those questions using the database. For example, when trying
to respond to a message about a correlation between the amount of C02
produced and the amount of energy consumed by a country, one student said:
Student 3: "I think that to find out about C02 Industry 89--what kind of industry that's based on--you might want to look at cars, transport, population, you might want to look at gas, stuff like that. Let's see how much that contributes to what is called C02 Industry 89."
In general, using Media Fusion gave students the opportunity for deeper
reflection on the issues related to global warming. It also allowed students
to understand the power and meaning of data analysis as a tool for making
sense of opinions and encouraged them to think about how to use data to
support an argument.
Supporting the Social Construction of Knowledge Through Collaboration:
Being able to send messages about issues enables the formation of a community
of learners. Such a community is important because knowledge is socially
constructed. Through collaboration, the community negotiates an understanding
of an issue. As one student put it:
Student 1: "Well, because with this you learn differently than you would learn in a classroom. In the classroom, you sit there and listen to your teacher and do your work. But here you can exchange opinions about this, you can disagree with each other, like the teacher, the teacher's right all the time... but with this, you learn from them, they learn from me, and we learn together."
Having to negotiate an understanding may have been a factor in students'
ability to reason about the data. In previous studies of Tabletop, researchers
noted that students held onto their own opinions--even in the face of data
that seemed to contradict them. That was not evident in this study. Also,
when a student stated something that was not shown in the graph, other students
would notice and correct the view, and the first student would then reevaluate
the original statement in light of the correction.
Three things were required before a group gained further understanding about
global warming issues: someone else's message, the arguments it expresses,
and the graphs that prove those arguments. In this way, the members of the
community scaffold one another's learning. One of the most difficult things
for students to grasp was learning how to continue a discussion on an issue
while supporting their arguments with data from the data set. There are
two reasons why this might have been so difficult. First, Media Fusion did
not provide an adequate model of this behavior. We used the expert seed
messages to model the kinds of behaviors that we though were important,
(for example, using different kinds of graphs to support different points,
and using text messages to make some points and using video messages to
make others.) A surprising result in our study was that students didn't
much use these seed messages. Maybe this resulted from lack of time, however
one would have expected them to look at them more on the first day. Maybe
it was due to the quality of the sound, although sound quality did not stop
students from listening enthusiastically to one another's messages. Maybe
it was because our expert was quite gruff and frightened the students, however
this seems unlikely. Most likely is that the expert wasn't part of the community,
though this separateness had been a conscious design decision. (We were
worried that if the expert had been part of the community, expert-student
conversations would detract from the student-student conversations.) Seeing
the result, the teachers conjectured that expert communications are not
meaningful to the students unless the experts are part of the community.
A second reason that students found it difficult to have an ongoing discussion
about an issue was that the Media Fusion message browser simply listed messages
by title. As a result, the students had difficulty finding messages on a
particular topic. During the study, we reorganized the browser so that messages
were listed according to discussion topic. This reorganization made it far
easier for students to find messages and to continue an ongoing discussion.
Altogether we had four discussions: CFCs and GNP, C02 and GNP, Opinions,
and Social. These contained 7, 11, 5, and 10 messages respectively. There
were also two subdiscussions; a C02 and CFCs discussion that
arose from the CFCs and GNP discussion, and a "romance" discussion
that was a subset of the social exchanges. Out of the total 66 messages,
61 were messages that were part of a discussion. Apart from the opinion
and social discussion, these discussions centered on specific issues arising
from the students' exploration of the data. The students created arguments
and used the data to support their arguments. Much of the discussion centered
around alternative interpretations of the data or questioned whether the
data really supported the argument. In one example, the concept of GNP was
discussed in detail because one student made a video message containing
a graph that showed the total GNP for a country. The student sending the
message said that GNP was defined as millions of dollars per person. The
students receiving the message, noting that this did not make sense, suggested
a different definition of GNP. The original author acknowledged the appropriate
definition of GNP and revised his interpretation of the graph accordingly.
Compared with an isolated individual learner, the community has access to
more information, because community members can pool their knowledge and
cognitive resources in order to understand an issue. For example, in the
discussion about GNP described above, the student who sent the original
message found one of the responses hard to understand. However, he reflected
in the poststudy interview that this was not a problem because the explanation
in the second response was very clear. In retrospect, however, the amount
of knowledge available in this study was not as great as it could have been
had experts been fully integrated into the community. Other studies have
shown that experts provide valuable resources to learners when they are
part of a networked learning community, though careful measures must be
taken to ensure that expert-student discussions do not detract from the
valuable peer-peer discussions (Woolsey & Kerns, 1993).
Discussion
As our economy becomes increasingly information centered, the ability
to rapidly understand new information becomes a critical skill. We need
to provide tools that allow people to grasp, and then reflect upon, that
information. Tools like Media Fusion not only motivate students through
the use of compelling video, and give them access to different interpretations
and presentations of information, but also support students in exploring
the information relevant to the opinions, events, and phenomena presented
in a video. To be effective, such tools must also provide access to a community
that is constructing a deep understanding of that information. This study
has shown that Media Fusion has the potential to become a tool that can
support such activities.
We have also discovered certain aspects of Media Fusion that need to be
redesigned so that it better supports learning. In particular, future versions
of Media Fusion should provide more appropriate support for the organization
and retrieval of messages. We are currently working on a concept of dynamic
viewers to address this issue. A second important area on which our redesign
work concentrates is the development of guidelines for appropriate video
and data to use to stimulate Media Fusion discussions. For instance, the
video must contain examples of phenomena that are pertinent to students'
topics of study and that are closely tied to the data in the database. Finally,
we have realized that a community of learners needs to contain experts who
can provide important insights to novices. Future studies of Media Fusion
need to fully integrate experts into the learning community.
From a formative evaluation perspective, this study has shown the importance
of designing not only tools, but also tasks and situations. Much of the
effort in this study was placed on designing the situation in which the
technology would be used. This was important because it enabled us to go
beyond a purely technological focus to incorporate details about supporting
materials and social issues in our evaluation. We think that expanding the
design space beyond examining how the tools support learning--to look at
how the tools function in the context of the task and the situation--is
an important aspect of this work. And it is critical when the tools are
to be placed in organizations, such as schools, that have entrenched approaches
to the use of educational support materials.
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1 The MBC technology was developed by Apple Computer,
Inc.; U.S. Patent pending (Borovoy & Cooper, 1992).
2 It is important to point out that this type of embedding in
significantly different from other seemingly similar types of linking. Some
applications allow the user to insert bitmap images of other applications,
but these are static pictures that do not support exploration. Some applications
allow the user to create a "hot link" to another file (possibly
opened by another application), but these typically take the user to a fixed
document, (such as a word processing document or a HyperCard stack).