For adults who are seeking a job, LiteracyLink's Workplace Essential Skills provides interviews with a diverse set of employers who tell the viewer how the employment process works and what characteristics they are seeking when they hire new employees.
For adults who need to be motivated to work on their writing or math skills, ALMA's TV411 provides compelling stories of undereducated adults who have overcome their deficiencies in writing. One man is writing poetry in jail; a woman is running a profitable art business despite her dyslexia.
For ESL students unfamiliar with American customs and idioms, and needing to learn survival English, Crossroads Café shows realistic interactions among the employees in a new café opened up by an immigrant and staffed by a group of people of varying backgrounds and aspirations struggling with daily life in America.
For adults aspiring to take the GED test, ESD101 provides regular broadcasts of a GED preparation course so students can have access to this form of instruction even if there are no opportunities for regular classes in their home community.

These video series are the result of millions of dollars spent by the federal government and private foundations to improve literacy instruction in the U.S. It is appropriate to ask--why video? What can video contribute to literacy instruction? How should it be used in the classroom? What role should the human teacher play if students are going to derive the most benefit from this video?

Learning vs. Teaching

This paper focuses on dimensions of video instruction that make for high quality instruction. Before looking at instructional qualities of these video series, it is useful to review a few well-established principles of human learning. Learning is an active not a passive activity. To learn requires more than just opening the door to one's mind and letting new knowledge flow in. The best-designed videos cannot make a person learn; they are only resources that learners interact with. For learning to occur, an individual must choose to engage the materials, activate prior knowledge to understand the materials, understand the instruction presented, and perhaps respond to corrective feedback from a mentor. Learning is influenced by the social context as well. The insights and responses of fellow learners play an important role in what a person derives from a set of learning opportunities. (See Johnston, 1987, for a further discussion of learning.)

Three Media: Audio, Video, and Print

It is useful to begin answering the questions about these video series by examining how various media--audio, video, and print--differ from one another. Some people view the World Wide Web as a fourth medium. But the Web can be viewed as a technology that permits the combining of audio, video and print in a single delivery device.

Of the three media, audio is perhaps the most limited medium for instruction. Lacking the visual elements found in both video and print, there are only a limited number of ideas that can be developed in an oral presentation. Imagine trying to teach someone over the telephone about topics such as how to accomplish a complex task on the computer, how to calculate a percent, or how to write up a report about some aspect of a job assignment. It is possible to use the audio medium to accomplish these tasks, but not very efficiently. On the other hand, audio is very good medium for teaching the essence of audio--a new language or a song. But even here, many communicative acts depend not just on aural components, but on visual cues that carry part of the meaning. "Bring me that book over there" is a message whose full meaning is best understood when the listener can see where the speaker is pointing.

A medium's value for instruction is further shaped by the technology used to deliver it. When audio is broadcast on the radio and the listener fails to grasp something that was said, the listener can not ask to have it replayed. When audio is recorded on an audio tape, the message can be replayed, though it is sometimes difficult to cue up the tape to the precise spot that was missed. When audio is recorded on a digital medium, such as a CD (Compact Disk), the message can be cued quickly and exactly if the listener knows the track number where the information is stored.

Video as a medium can contain much more information than audio. It is an ideal medium for capturing an event or process and bringing it into the classroom (or into a learner's home). The event and commentary can provide stand-alone instruction for an isolated viewer. When shown in a class setting, it can be an invaluable springboard for a lesson led by the teacher. One of the challenges of classroom-based instruction is the isolation of the classroom from the very life events that form the topic of the instruction. The "Finding a Job" videos in the Workplace Essential Skills series show a number of employers talking about what they expect from a prospective employee, and what they look for when hiring a new employee. These segments can make an invaluable contribution to a lesson about the interview process. A similar role is played by Crossroads Café in the ESL classroom. One of the most difficult tasks in language instruction is bringing into the classroom the visual and aural components of common communicative acts in everyday American life.

As with audio, the contribution of a particular video is shaped by the technology used to deliver it to the viewer. Learners have different learning possibilities depending on whether the video is available through open-circuit broadcast, analog videotape, digital media such as CD and DVD, or digitized "clips" stored on a computer. The LiteracyLink project will distribute the videos for Workplace Essential Skills in several ways. Programs will be broadcast by PBS stations in their full half-hour format. Cassette copies will be available for teachers to play in their entirety or in segments in front of a class of students. Digitized segments of 60-90 seconds length will be available on a learner Web site as part of a collection of exercises built around the video. On the Web site, the learner selects a lesson, plays the clip and then answers questions about the content in much the same way that a teacher might show a short clip in class and ask questions aimed at furthering understanding of the video or leading learners to solve the problem posed in the video.

But video is limited by the very richness it provides. It is not the best medium for providing explanations of complex concepts, or providing targeted practice of particular skills. It is for this reason that many instructional videos are accompanied by workbooks. Text is a very versatile medium. It can be used to explain very simple or very complex concepts. It can be used to provide exercises where a learner takes a self-test and then turns to a different place in the text to find the correct answer. Text can be supplemented with graphics and pictures when words fall short of capturing the full essence of a complex concept.

Programming

Media characteristics and the technologies that deliver them establish limits on the possibilities for learning and instruction. But the effectiveness for instruction depends less on the particular medium that is used and more on the programming carried by the medium and the needs of the audience that views it. In Workplace Essential Skills, the video medium is used to bring employer interviews to the classroom. The utility of those interviews for a particular audience depends on the particular employers who are interviewed and the relevance and clarity of the message they provide.

In designing TV411, the producers spent months trying to find just the right adult learners whose stories of overcoming obstacles would appeal to the "typical" ABE student. When it came to direct instruction, they carefully crafted a segment designed to explain how to use percentages to figure out the final cost of two television sets that are on sale. The effectiveness of this segment depends on the clarity of the script and the accompanying graphic that explains how to use percentages to figure out the savings. In short, the effectiveness of video depends not on the medium, but on the instruction recorded there. The criteria for judging the quality of the instruction are the same ones a teacher uses to judge face-to-face instruction.

Dimensions for Judging Video

There are six dimensions that are useful for judging the role and value of a particular video program for a particular audience. Two dimensions relate to the stated purposes of the video--content and instructional role. Four concern characteristics of the presentation--appeal, comprehensibility, pacing, and clarity of graphics.

Content and Instructional Role

The first dimension to use in judging a video is the match of content coverage with the instructional goals of a particular course. The best video in the world can waste students time if they don't support the central goals of instruction.

Assuming the match is a good one, the next question is what role the videos are designed to play in instruction. ESD101's GED preparation series is designed to carry a great deal of the burden of instruction. It uses an on-camera instructor who provides a fully structured lesson in the various topics covered on the GED. The video is designed to be stand-alone instruction for viewers. The other three series mentioned above are quite different in character, however.

The "Finding a Job" videos in the WES series are designed to set the stage for further instruction provided by other media: a workbook, an online component, and direct instruction by the teacher. The video stories can play several roles: they can inspire by providing models of people with whom the audience can identify. They can instruct by showing people performing desired behaviors and commenting on that behavior.

As instruction, videos are often incomplete because they are designed following many of the conventions of entertainment television. The strength of entertainment television is in storytelling. Stories play an important role in motivating, and in providing insight about complex behaviors and situations, but stories cannot easily carry the burden of explanation necessary for full understanding.

For example, in Crossroads Café, Brashov, the restaurant's owner, has a heart attack and is taken to the hospital. The scenes in the hospital are designed to familiarize immigrant viewers with broad notions about medical care in the U.S.--e.g., health care for serious illnesses is provided in a hospital, the patient stays in the hospital alone and the family visits, and there are various kinds of health care workers. But this information is embedded in an interesting story about Brashov. The points about U.S. health care are not stated explicitly in the story, so there is a chance that viewers would not learn these three points on their own. The value of this show can be enhanced for many learners when the show becomes the basis for a classroom discussion.

In Finding a Job, a typical video has a combination of stories and interviews. The stories have a "lesson" which is delivered by one of the characters in the video. For example, one story is about a woman applying for a job. She is very unsure what to put on her application since most of her "job" experience has been in volunteer positions. A friend suggests ways she can describe the volunteer activities that demonstrate that the volunteer positions have required skills quite similar to paid employment. The dialogue between the two people is interesting and the story convincing. A teacher, however, might see the lesson as complete only after taking another step: helping viewers in a similar situation describe their own volunteer activities in terms of valued job skills. In other words, the story is invaluable, but also less than complete for some learners.

The Strengths and Limits of Stories for Instruction

Using the story genre with adult learners is a common choice for instruction for two reasons. Stories are of great interest to almost all audiences. It is for this reason that so much of entertainment television is based on stories. Given an audience that is not inclined to furthering their education, a video series that uses the conventions of entertainment television is more likely to capture their attention. In addition, many adults, far removed from formal schooling and textbook learning, have developed a learning style that favors stories. In their years since school, they are accustomed to looking at life and deriving lessons from it.

But stories have limited opportunities for direct instruction of complex concepts. Consider a segment from TV411 that teaches about averages and how to calculate them. The instruction features Olympic figure skaters Tai Babolonia and Randy Gardner at a skating rink. (Figure skating has such broad popular appeal with the U.S. public that the TV411 producers judged it to be an ideal topic to get the attention of adult learners.) At the rink, an interested onlooker wants to know how, in a competition, the skating performance is given a single rating when there are multiple judges. Tai and Randy accommodate by doing a few routines and pretending when they finish that five judges have just rated their performance. Using a combination of graphics and commentary, they explain how the scores of individual judges are added together and divided by the number of judges to get an average score. When they finish their explanation, the show moves on to the next segment.

When adults see this segment, those who don't know about performance scoring will often exclaim out loud--"so that's how they do it!" When questioned further, they say they now understand how averages are used in figure skating. They are less sure they have learned how to calculate an average with confidence. For a few, viewing this segment is sufficient to learn the skill of calculating an average. For many others, the lesson has gone by too quickly for them to master the rules and steps entailed in calculating an average. Their attention was split between understanding what is done in figure skating and watching how to calculate an average. The story plays an important role in providing a context for a lesson on averages. The graphics and commentary provide clear instruction, but not necessarily sufficient instruction for all viewers. The more complicated the skill or concept, the more difficult it is for story-based instruction to provide complete instruction.

These examples illustrate the strengths and limits of videos for instruction. For an audience that is not inclined to seek out formal instructional opportunities, video series such as Crossroads Café, Workplace Essential Skills, and TV411 provide a mix of an engaging story line that captures the attention of the reluctant learner and direct instruction that provides carefully articulated instruction. Each of these series will be much more effective for learning if they are supplemented by the workbooks and web resources that accompany them. They will be even more effective if skilled teachers use them as part of a careful instructional plan that couples the video and other resources with the explanations, diagnosis, and feedback that characterizes live instruction.

Instructional Characteristics

Several criteria can be used to evaluate a particular video. Judgments on these criteria can affect both the decision of whether or not to use a particular video at all, and what kind of instructional wrap-around is needed to make the video a useful learning experience for adult learners.

Inspiration: Do your students need inspiration to engage the tough task of learning the skills covered in the video? If the answer is yes, any one of these new series will serve to capture the attention of learners in ways that are superior to the entertainment skills of most teachers. But a teacher always needs to judge whether a video is appealing to the particular audience.
Clarity of the messages: will the instructional messages be clear to the target audience?
Pacing: A message can be clear, but the pace at which it is delivered can be too fast for a given group of learners.
Graphics: When graphics are used to explain a concept, do they clarify the concept? Do they appear on screen long enough to be comprehended by the learner?

After evaluating a video using these dimensions, a teacher can plan instruction that accommodates the needs of particular learners and compensates for aspects of the video that fall short of providing a complete instructional message.

Telecourses

What about a series like ESD101 that couples a rich set of video resources with an on-screen instructor who provides what most teachers provide--direct instruction? This series does not buy into the conventions of entertainment television. It is an example of high quality, face-to-face instruction. In judging its value for a particular audience, the same criteria can be used. But now the focus shifts to the instructor and the clarity and inspirational qualities of the presentations. While such a course is likely to provide more complete instruction than the other series discussed above, this type of course is still limited in one important way. In live, classroom-based instruction, a central responsibility of the teacher is to make judgments about the learning needs of a very particular set of students. During instruction, a good teacher makes continual judgments about how well each student is comprehending the instruction. No matter how skilled the on-camera teacher is at gauging the needs of typical students who take a course, they cannot know how one particular class of students is responding. They also have limited power to require viewers to do homework assignments and evaluate the completed product. In other words, while a video-based telecourse can fill an important need, realization of the full potential of a telecourse is more likely when learners watch the instruction in the company of a facilitating teacher who can provide additional explanation, structure and feedback.

Conclusion

The new video resources for adult literacy present great opportunities for learners and teachers alike. But before adopting them for an adult literacy program, teachers should review the content and instructional characteristics of the programs and develop a strategy for using them that matches the unique needs of the learners being served.

References

Crossroads Café. Intelecom, Plaza Center, 150 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 300, Pasadena, CA 91105. http://www.intelecom.org/intelecom1.asp

ESD101 General Education Diploma (GED) Preparation. http://www.esdtcom.wednet.edu/esdtcom/Default.html

Johnston, Jerome (1987). Electronic Learning: From Audiotape to Videodisc. Hilsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

TV411. Adult Literacy Media Alliance, 96 Morton St., 7th Floor, New York, NY 10014. http://www.edc.org/ALMA/

Workplace Essential Skills. LiteracyLink, Public Broadcasting Service, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA. http://www.pbs.org/adultlearning/literacy/

Copyright © 2002 National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL), University of Pennsylvania/Graduate School of Education. All rights reserved. This website is based on work funded by the U.S. Department of Education/Office of Vocational and Adult Education under grant number ED-01-R-0023. The content does not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the U.S. Department of Education, nor does mention or visual representation of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the federal government.