Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

7.27.11 | Facing History evaluated its digital media program, surveying the 578 participants of the online workshop, with a 49% response rate (for a total of 255 respondents). Students ranged in age from 13 to 19 years old, and were, on average, 15 years old. Here’s a look at some of the results.

The full report, “Making Media, Making Sense, Making Change” by Anna L. Romer and Meaghan Mingo, is available from the authors.

The following open-ended questions elicited the following responses.

Impact of creating a Facing History project using new media

Tell us what you learned as you created your own project (or worked on a group project), before the online event. (238 respondents to this question)

94% of all responses described positive learning. The remaining 6% were evenly divided between responses that were simply “unclear,” and those describing either something negative or indifferent.

Six main, sometimes overlapping themes emerged from analysis of the 94% of responses that describe some constructive learning. These themes (number of responses coded in this way, percentage of all responses, that is, 238) are:

1. New knowledge or skills (99 responses, 41% of all responses)
2. Learning from others/ about multiple perspectives (67, 28%)
3. Learning more about oneself, strengthening one’s voice (55, 23%)
4. The learning process (47, 20%)
5. Pleasure in learning, increased academic motivation and engagement (26, 11%)
6. Idiosyncratic positive comment about learning, or ethical component (23, 10%).

Impact of viewing others’ work

What did you learn from viewing or listening to other students’ projects on this web site? (n=247)

92% of all of these responses described positive learning. Analysis of these led to 8 themes. The remaining 8% were evenly divided between “unclear” and “negative or n/a.”

1. Discovered commonality and sense of community with other students, similarities and differences; learned from the perspectives of others (121, 49%)
2. Learned about issues, or made connections between issues (42, 17%)
3. Feedback engendered respect, openness to difference, tolerance, and emotional engagement (34 responses, 14%)
4. General learning, general positive response (32, 13%)
5. Awareness of voice, agency, that others care about ‘these issues’, in some cases students reported being inspired to civic engagement (25, 10%)
6. Learned about global issues (16, 6%)
7. Learning process (quality takes hard work) & technical information (12, 5%)
8. Learned about self (10, 4%)

Impact of public feedback

Other students viewed and commented on some of your class’ projects. How did this public sharing and feedback influence your learning? (232 responded)

81% described positive impacts of receiving public feedback. Seven themes emerged among these positive impacts.

Themes Depicting Positive Impacts

1. Deepened understanding (91, 39%)
2. Inspired to improve own project (48, 21%)
3. Pride, fun, confidence, good feelings about work or process, enhanced academic motivation (43, 19%)
4. Fostered sense of connection, diminished sense of isolation, valued virtual community (23, 10%)
5. Student learning: inspired self reflection, or gained new content knowledge (14, 6%)
6. Ethics, made me a better person (4, 2%)
7. Generic positive (1, < 1%)

Themes Depicting Negative Impacts

1. Question not applicable, I don’t know, or had technical difficulties (16, 7%)
2. Not helpful/ no impact (15 responses, 6%)
3. Unclear (8, 3%)
4. Feedback offensive or troubling (8, 3%)

Most Surprising Learning

What was the most surprising thing you learned during this project? (233 responded)

1. Surprise at shared opinions, experience, new awareness of difference (54, 23%)
2. Gained specific content knowledge (53, 23%)
3. Gained awareness of the value of collaboration, discussion, feedback (46, 20%)
4. Increased self-knowledge, self-confidence (22, 9%)
5. Civic engagement: increased concern and knowledge of world and community issues combined with a sense of commitment to make a difference (21, 9%)
6. General positive experience of learning (14, 6%)
7. Gained media literacy (13, 6%)
8. Miscellaneous (15, 6%)
9. I don’t know, nothing (12, 5%)