Tutkimusraportteja — Working Papers 2
http://www.uta.fi/hyper/julkaisut/b/fitv03b.pdf
Edutainment
From Television and Computers
to Digital Television
Sari Walldén
Anne Soronen
sari.wallden@uta.fi
anne.soronen@uta.fi
May 2004
University of Tampere Hypermedia Laboratory
http://www.uta.fi/hyper/
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Executive summary
Edutainment refers to entertaining TV programs and computer
software, which are primarily meant for educational purposes.
We define the concept as educational material utilizing entertainment methods and used via information technology.
In this report we describe edutainment’s characteristic
properties on television and computers, and its usage in various forms of formal and informal education. Typically the
structure of edutainment material on television includes narrative subsections and, unfortunately, their contents are often
fragmented and/or incoherent. Material of the edutainment
computer software is more personalized, because learners can
choose the tempo of usage and the level of difficulty. However, the learnability and entertaining means of edutainment
software are often too separated from each other. To combine
the features of these product lines in digital television demands changes in edutainment production.
When television and computer edutainment are connected
in digital television, it causes problems but also new possibilities. Edutainment in digital television could and should be targeted especially to learners who are not capable or willing to
use the present educational programs. These target groups include, among others, immigrants and low educated adults. We
consider new ideas of television edutainment for these groups.
In producing interactive edutainment, learner-centered design is the advisable approach. It focuses on building interactive educational material that supports learners as they engage in unfamiliar activities and learn about a new subject
matter. Involving learners from the beginning of the design
process forms the basement in learner-centered design.
Edutainment in digital television brings new challenges to
teaching and learning. In the future, non-formal and informal
education will likely be emphasized. In the context of formal
education, we describe a vision of multi-form teaching, which
includes contact teaching, distance teaching and self-learning
with the help of various new media. In addition to content in
multi-form teaching, the learners have to learn the usage of
the chosen media, which is evaluated with the concept of usability. The importance of usability should be stressed especially with children, senior users and various special groups.
The advantage of informal education is a close connection
to the whole life of the learner, which makes it easy to apply
to knowledge and skills learned. The disadvantage is the lack
of control, so nobody checks the possible misunderstanding of
learners or activates the transference of learned material. As
a consequence, edutainment material in digital television
must contain portions to guide and tutor the learners.
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Table of contents
Executive summary
2
1. Introduction
4
2. Present edutainment types
2.1. Education and entertainment together
2.2. Edutainment on TV
2.3. Computer edutainment
2.4. Edutainment on the Internet
2.5. Interactive television
6
6
9
12
15
17
3. Edutainment in education
3.1. Design approaches
3.2. A vision of multi-form teaching
3.3. Teaching outside formal education
3.4. Learning aspects
3.5. Learning contents
3.6. Different learners
19
19
23
29
32
37
39
4. Key issues for planning digi-TV edutainment
4.1. Challenges for teaching and learning
4.2. Challenges for designing edutainment
4.3. Challenges for the present edutainment programs
4.3.1. How to make good edutainment programs
for schools?
4.4. Challenges for new learners and content
42
42
45
47
5. Ideas for program types in digital television
54
6. Summary
57
References
59
Appendix 1: Educational television programs
in some countries
Appendix 2: Examples of educational television programs
Appendix 3: Examples of educational computer software
Appendix 4: WebQuest — a net edutainment idea
Appendix 5: Usability of remote controller
Appendix 6: Links to edutainment products
64
66
67
69
71
72
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1.
Introduction
Edutainment refers to entertaining TV programs and computer
software, which are primarily meant for educational purposes.
The educational purpose can be related to formal education in
different school institutes or to informal learning in different
daily life contexts without systematically organized education.
Edutainment often stirs opposition among educational professionals because the general trend of increasing entertainment is considered a problem [52]. Already Postman [47]
noted on the 1980s that we are amusing ourselves to death.
He argued that television has become an intoxicating “command center” of the Western culture that has distracted from
and trivialized seemingly important aspects of our lives.
Many authors and teachers share Russell’s [52] fear that
there is a shift from vertical breadth knowledge (deep wisdom) to horizontal breadth (unrelated scraps of information),
which leads to lack of continuity in cultural understanding.
Learning is a psychological process, which always takes place
in one’s mind, and complicated matters cannot be learnt easily and quickly [10]. In the context of edutainment we do not
consider entertainment or amusement to have any inherent
value if it does not benefit learning. On the other hand, edutainment does not need to be “funny” but it can still be
“interesting”. This property is certainly not bad for learning.
The unequal global availability of information technology
has caused justified worry about a digital divide. We consider
the digital divide a big problem also at national level (in
Finland and in the other countries). Knowledge is accumulating by its nature, and the rapid technological development has
made faster and faster accumulation of knowledge possible —
so worsening the inequality both in the world wide and national distribution of information and knowledge. It is possible
that edutainment decreases this problem because it is easier
to approach edutainment material than more traditional
learning material. When learner’s cognitive skills, media literacy, and expertise on the contents increase, she can start using also more demanding learning methods.
This report is organized as follows. In Chapter 2 there is a
short survey of the present edutainment and educational program types in analogical television, computers and the Internet. Next, the suitability of interactive television for transmitting edutainment programs is discussed. Moreover, we sharpen
the definition of edutainment. However, this is problematic
since there are only a few scientific studies on edutainment,
and it is not even a very commonly used concept worldwide.
For example, in Britain the phrase ‘educational games’ is used
instead.
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Chapter 3 considers edutainment in education. It includes
the whole process from design to use. Every part of the process is considered from television’s and computer’s viewpoint.
(The considerations are made for the purpose of this report
only.) The key issues when designing edutainment content are
to know the target group and its needs, to achieve the educational goal, and to find out the suitable means to get learners
enjoy themselves. At present, formal education emphasizes
near and distance learning, but we believe that in the future,
the focus will be in distance and self-learning. It is important
to study how this change will affect the form of interaction
used in educational material in different media and with
different contents. In the future a more prominent role will be
given to non-formal learning (which takes place alongside the
mainstream systems of education and training and does not
typically lead to formalized certificates) and to informal
learning (which is a natural accompaniment to everyday life).
[61] With the general trend of increasing entertainment, the
focus of the content will move towards edutainment.
In Chapter 4 some key issues for planning digital television
edutainment are introduced. Despite the general ideas of
information society and EU’s principles of equal education
[16], there are several target groups not reached with the present education programs. These groups include low educated
adults and various special groups, like immigrants. Similarly,
young people over 18 years old and those over 16 years old
and not in school use computer programs and the Internet, but
they do not watch television’s educational programs. Also the
continuing education for adults uses the net a lot. Interactive
television provides several possibilities to reach these groups.
The main issues are the changes in different parts of the planning processes from the new target groups’ point of view.
Moreover, we deal with improving edutainment program types
for the present user groups as well. Chapter 5 outlines some
program ideas meant for the present and new target groups.
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2.
Present edutainment types
2.1.
Education and entertainment together
Teaching can be defined in numerous different ways, for
example, as “an intentional interaction obeying the educational goals whose aim is to cause learning” or, following Toiskallio [57], in a more concise form as “intentional tutoring of
studying and learning”. Education, in turn, can be defined as
“a human activity aiming at establishing prerequisites for humans’ versatile development and growth” or shorter as “target-oriented development of personality” [57]. Toiskallio
stresses that a proper learning means permanent changes in
conscious and action. We could add that the permanent
change must be caused by experience.
Learning can be divided into four forms according to its
context and purpose:
1) Formal learning takes place in education and training
institutions, leading to recognized diplomas and qualifications and uses structured and organized learning
situations.
2) Non-formal learning takes place alongside the official
systems of education and training and does not typically lead to formalized certificates. Non-formal learning may be provided in the workplace and through the
activities of civil society organizations and groups (such
as youth organizations, trades unions and sport clubs).
Non-formal learning activities can also be produced by
the learners themselves.
3) Informal learning describes a lifelong process whereby
individuals acquire attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educative influences and resources in their environment, from family
and neighbours, from work and play, from the market
place, the library and the mass media (life as learning).
4) Accidental learning happens when in everyday activities
an individual learns something that she had not intended or expected.
According to another classification, learning can be divided
into cognitive (knowledge), affective (emotions), and psychomotor (skills) (see Chapter 3.4).
One could argue that it is not possible to define entertainment because to be entertained is always a subjective experience. In the context of edutainment it is fruitful to grasp the
entertainment in a broad sense. Instead of entertainment it is
better to talk about a pleasure or positive experiences that a
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learner (hopefully) gets from using edutainment. The pleasure
can result not only from the entertaining and interesting content itself, but also from the satisfaction of getting problems
solved (especially in games), the social interaction (relating to
the content) with other learners, or progressing in learning,
just to mention a few possibilities. In addition, material that
is meaningful and motivating for the learners and relevant in
their own life, often works as a great source of pleasure.
Anyway, when we talk about television programs, the word
‘entertainment’ is normally used for referring to the style of
the program where the content is represented using
characteristics and means of certain genres, like a sit-com
comedy, a soap opera, a quiz or a talk show. Although the
viewers can read the texts of television programs in many
ways and give them their own (even resisting) interpretations,
we use ‘entertainment’ here to refer to programs that are
meant to be amusing and/or entertaining by the content producer. This is to say that if the edutainment program is
successful, the target audience should feel the program as
engaging and enjoyable representation about the topic in
question. The aim is to activate the learner and to make interaction between the learner and the teaching material possible
(cf. the simulation games of the Sim series). This obeys the
principles of constructivism. Edutainment programs educate
with entertainment methods.
In this report, ‘edutainment’ refers to programs with clear
educational purpose and entertaining character, such as a
Russian language television program Kapusta. Sometimes we
refer to the act of teaching and learning, and sometimes to
the corresponding material. We do not want to make any
distinction between these two meanings since in the case of
interactive television they are inseparable.
Along with edutainment, infotainment was one of the first
genres that came up with the revolution caused by interactive
multimedia in the late 1980s [25]. Infotainment material (e.g.
on TV) often resembles edutainment, especially when different kinds of quizzes and talk shows have become more common. However, from the pedagogical point of view the difference between infotainment and edutainment is clear, since
giving single facts separately from their contexts is not teaching, although it might cause informal learning. We here require that in order to be edutainment, a material, say a TV
program, must be produced for educational purposes. This often ensures that there are also other educational elements,
such as a goal, a possibility to get response, evaluation, and at
least implicit interaction, related to the material. A typical
difference between edutainment and traditional material is
that edutainment often employs a narrative approach.
It is also important to distinguish edutainment and the socalled technotainment. The concept of technotainment is not
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as commonly used as edutainment and infotainment, but it
describes very well a certain sort of educational material
which is also said to be entertaining [38]. In this case entertaining refers to multimedia tricks, such as animations and
sounds. It is typical for technotainment that the used tricks do
not correspond to real world phenomena. This, in turn, is
against educational principles. A typical example of technotainment is a computer program based on Astrid Lindgren’s
Pippi (Longstocking) from 1995, which is meant for young children and in which various objects and animals make unnatural
sounds and funny unnatural motions when clicked by mouse.
Another example of technotainment is a reading program Opi
hauskasti in which tricks are used only to attract user’s attention without any pedagogical functions.
Edutainment is a new alternative to traditional education.
It can be divided according to its purpose and content:
1) Edutainment to improve users’ life control (informal
education). It is presented usually with discussion or
narrative forms.
2) Edutainment to give experiences (skills education). It is
presented usually with experiences, like simulations
(virtual mobility).
Edutainment can be divided also according to target group:
1) Motivation-oriented (users who have the same interest
regardless of their age, present knowledge level etc.).
2) Age-oriented.
A third classification can be based on the contents of the
material. This gives us such groups as school-TV programs,
games, and game tools.
A challenge in designing edutainment material is to keep
balance between education and entertainment. A desirable
aim is to implement an education material that is neither too
entertaining nor too laborious. For example, in some edutainment games, gameplaying and actual learning material can be
so separated from each other that a user can go through the
game without noticing the represented information contents
completely. In such a case the entertainment replaces the aim
of learning. It is easy to agree with Lars Konzack [28, p. 47]
who has stated: “Even though we are entertained and do appreciate to be entertained, or we might entertain ourselves,
edutainment must strive towards education.”
Our purpose is to study the changes in teaching, learning,
and designing programs and their contents, as interactive
television is becoming the main platform for electronic educational material. More specifically, we ask whether edutainment can allure new user groups for educational material.
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2.2.
Edutainment on TV
In the year 2000 the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle)
broadcasted about 700 hours educational programs on television, of which about 70 % was meant for adults and the rest
30 % for school and preschool children. Many programs have
multimedia teaching packages (radio, television, books, WWW
pages), which make it possible to choose the proper medium
for different kinds of contents. The most popular educational
television programs are language programs which are viewed
regularly or somewhat regularly by over 200 000 people. Up to
76 % of Finns know Yle’s language programs. Television is also
used to promote other educational material than television
programs, such as WWW sites. For example, the web sites (by
the name Abitreenit) for those preparing for their matriculation examination were “advertised” on television [38].
On television there are educational programs for all age
groups: for preschool children (e.g., Eskari-TV: Hoksaamo),
school children (Koulu-TV), young people (parts of Kieliportti
and Opinportti), adults and senior viewers. Among the viewers
of educational television programs there is a slight female
majority and the viewers are often in white-collar professions.
Hence, knowledge seems to be accumulating also in this
respect. Taito-TV is an exception often handling general civics
skills, like using the Internet, or specific skills, like origami.
All educational programs are sent via the Finnish Broadcasting Company but many of the programs are bought from
abroad (e.g. from BBC), so educational programs’ contents include both Finnish and international cultural elements. In the
other Nordic countries, the educational television programs
are organized much in the same way as in Finland. In the UK
and USA, also the commercial channels have educational and
edutainment material of their own. See Appendix 1 for a brief
survey of educational programs in some countries.
From the theoretical point of view, television’s educational
programs are not considered as independent educational material but as supplementary material. Moreover, programs are
often viewed for pleasure, in passing, or for updating and recalling existing knowledge [38]. Television’s educational programs can be divided into three categories based on their organizational teaching goals:
1) programs for those in school age are often meant to
support formal learning (Koulu-TV),
2) programs to be alternatives for traditional formal
learning which are tied to place and time (Etälukio,
Avoin yliopisto), and
3) programs to allure viewers to other forms of education
and training.
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1
http://www.sesameworkshop.com/
Popular themes in informal learning are media literacy (for example, Digi-TV’s ABC in Taito-TV, all-round education, and
programs dealing with hobbies. It is typical for most of these
programs that they aim at benefits in clear and often concise
topics, like in the language program Das ist Deutschland.
The first educational programs on television were, in practice, broadcast lectures, but viewers did not pay much attention to them. As a consequence, the style of educational programs was changed: educational contents were integrated into
program formats known to be entertaining. An early example
of narrative edutainment TV series in Finland was Nog blir det
bra by the FST channel. Its purpose was to advice viewers in
everyday life situations, such as unemployment, illness, and
various economic matters.
The internationally most well known TV program to be classified as edutainment is probably the American series Sesame
Street1. The idea behind the show was to present a limited
pre-school curriculum via television. It is said to improve the
linguistic and other cognitive skills of children in low educated
families. The multi-ethnic and racially diverse cast created a
positive, inclusive subtext for the show. It also taught, for example, food, dress, music and other habits of different cultures. In recent years, Sesame Street has been forced to face
funding issues like many other public television programs.
Ralph Nader criticized the show in 1998 for ending a 30-year
streak of commercial-free broadcasts. It is now sponsored by
Discovery Zone, the indoor playground manufacturer. Nader
argued that impressionable children will be exploited by the
“shameless” advertising. However, many people think that the
wholesome values and learning opportunities provided by the
show outweigh this potential cause for concern.
Compared with written learning material, the strength of
television is to concretize, vitalize and illustrate the content
using the tools of audiovisual narration. Edutainment television programs (and educational television programs in general) are mainly based on story telling. A typical way to represent content in edutainment television programs is to blend
facts and fiction. This means that fictive elements are used
for making the educative content lighter or easier to approach, and for keeping the interest of viewers.
When educational television programs can be categorized as
edutainment, the typical means of entertainment are utilizing
the characteristics of established entertainment genres and a
humorous or entertaining style of representation. For example, in children’s animation series Histeria! historical stories
are told in their entirety using visual and verbal humor and
funny characters. However, this kind of representation in history education may arouse a problem because it may be difficult for the viewers unfamiliar with the topic to distinguish
real and fictive events and characters from each other.
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To this day, the stories in educational television programs
have been linear and they have been aimed at fairly large audiences. This means that it has been impossible to take into
account differences in the interests and needs of individual
learners. The role of the audience, which seems passive in nature compared with using a computer, can be reckoned a difficulty within educational programs in the analogical television.
The viewers don’t have a possibility to select during the program what they see and hear, nor in which order the events
are told. Further, if the story is too gripping, the audience
easily ignores the educative content. If, on the other hand,
the story and its characters are unbelievable or too naive, the
audience usually prefers some other medium for learning the
content. And when the learner is interested in getting further
information, analogical television has no means to offer it.
However, many current educational television programs are
devised to be hybrids that distribute the content both through
television and through the Internet. This is the case, for instance, in programs Walking with Dinosaurs and Tää on seksii!.
Table 1: Edutainment types on television.
TYPES
EXAMPLES
LEARNERS
REMARKS
Comedic
drama
Kapusta
(Russian language)
Adults
An entertaining program that encourages starting the
studies of Russian and tells the basics of the language.
Adventure
story
Wishbone
(Classic literature)
School-age children between 6
and 11
The series provides an introduction to works of literature in
an entertaining manner; the aim is to encourage children
for reading.
http://www.pbs.org/wishbone/
Historical
drama
Hovimäki
(history)
Adults
A historical drama about the history of Finland; includes a
distinct part about historical facts concerning the period in
question.
Sketch
comedy
Histeria!
(history)
Children
An animated sketch comedy that tells historical events
using comic characters; fragmented information and hasty
pace of storytelling undermine the educational value of the
program.
Soap opera
Carita Pintada
(Spanish language)
Adults
A Spanish soap opera that has been subtitled in Spanish;
the series does not fulfill the requirements of edutainment
from the educative side.
NARRATIVES
SITUATIONALLY ORIENTED
Skills
Taito-TV
(practical skills)
Adults and elderly
people
The content of each episode is restricted to a specific
topic; the aim is to give advice and knowledge concerning
some concrete skills.
Travels
Molto Piacere!
(culture of Italy,
Italian glossary &
phrases)
Travelers going to
Italy
A series offering the basic knowledge of cultural habits and
typical Italian phrases needed when traveling to the
country.
Television +
net
Ups and downs
(English language)
Youngsters
The TV series consists of well-known stories of literature;
the web site includes pieces of grammar, exercises and
video clips from the series.
Television +
net
Tää on seksii!
(sexual education)
Youngsters
The content of the TV series is a mixture of facts and
fiction; the fictive part is presented as a soap opera; the
web site of the program includes further information, chat
room & quiz.
HYBRIDS
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2.3.
Computer edutainment
Computers are used in educational administration, research,
and teaching. Hence they can play the roles of both tools and
targets. These different roles of computers are referred to
with expressions such as Computer-Based Education (CBE) or
Computer-Based Learning (CBL).
An early stage of using computers in education was related
to the so-called programmed learning, which was a behavioristic learning method used in the 1950s. The purpose of programmed learning is to manage human learning under controlled conditions. Typically, a textbook or a computer presents the material to be learned in a series of very small
steps, called frames. Each frame contains some information
and a statement with a blank that the student fills in. The student then uncovers the correct answer before going on to the
next frame. In the 1970s, first computer terminals came to
schools, and at the end of the decade, micros came to
schools. The focus of the educational programs was still in
transmitting information and in controlling learning.
With constructivism in the 1980s, the learning process itself
was moved to the focus. The term ‘constructivism’ refers to
the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves,
each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning, as
she learns. Constructing meaning is learning; there is no other
kind. The consequences of this view are twofold: 1) we have
to focus on the learner in thinking about learning (not on the
subject or lesson to be taught), and 2) there is no knowledge
independent of the meaning attributed to experience (constructed) by the learner, or community of learners. Correspondingly, the educational programs emphasized acquiring,
handling, storing and using information and knowledge, and
the role of the learners became much more active. Still at the
end of the 1980s, the largest part of the computer usage in
teaching was based on individual learning and as a central reason for using computers was considered a possibility to individualize learning processes. This held true both in programmed learning and in many constructivist approaches.
In the 1990s there was a decisive turn. Most of the research
relating to the use of computing and information technology in
teaching began to concern the possibilities of technology to
improve social interaction between the teacher and the
learner and among the learners [34]. In the 1990s, working in
projects was the new educational trend. This meant that new
open computer-aided learning environments were developed,
and computers were integrated into other forms of learning.
There was a high demand for new teaching materials and welltrained teachers.
Very often an educational program is defined to be edutainment, if video clips, pictures, subsets of an art package in-
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cluding product specific clip art or stamps, video libraries,
music clips and some basic skills materials are used (see, for
example, [41]). In this report, we apply a stricter criterion for
edutainment, since nowadays most interactive games include
the mentioned activities.
Development of graphic and audiovisual expression in educational computer games has been slower than in “pure” entertainment games because the rules of design are different.
When software designers produced edutainment games in earlier days, they often emphasized the story. Here lay the danger that the role of the player is confined to making a few
choices during the story that proceeds independently. [19]
Another problem in some edutainment games is the fact that
the learner can go the game through by “trial-and-error” style
without any great mental effort. This is the case when you can
play the game by guessing and clicking between alternatives
without reasoning, absorbing new information or solving problems. If the degree of interaction between the learner and the
content of edutainment game is low, learners easily feel that
their action has only trivial effect on the game and this decreases their motivation. And particularly a high motivation
and intensity based on strong interactivity has been stated as
the strength of computer games when they have been designed for educational purposes.
Games are used more often in informal education than in
formal education. Types of educational software are divided
into the following classes [3, 23, 37]:
1) A tutorial teaches new things and tests whether students have learnt them.
2) A drill repeats a fixed set of questions until the learner
gives a sufficient number of correct answers.
3) A simulation tries to imitate phenomena such that the
learner gets a clear picture of what is happening in the
real world. A subcategory of simulation is a demonstration, which does not allow the learner to affect the depicted phenomena but keep her as a passive viewer.
4) A test is meant to check the results of learning.
5) Educational games are divided into several subclasses:
a) Maze, level and problem games (e.g., Aurinko in
which a game character moves from levels to levels
and collects objects and tries to stay alive). Timing
is often critical with heavy reliance on motor-skills,
memory and planning. [41]
b) Adventure games (e.g., Suomi-Seikkailu and Carmen San Diego in which solving problems helps the
learner to collect and utilize different objects).
c) Role-playing games (e.g., Elävää englantia, in
which the user can choose properties for her character and act in this role in different situations).
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d) Simulation games (e.g., the Sim series: SimAnt,
SimCity, SimPuisto, SimEarth), which imitate the
real world situations.
e) Strategy games (e.g., Mayor in the Sim series which
offers the learner a position in which she can rule
the world).
f) Shooting/arcade games where usually moving objects are fired and destroyed. These develop fast
hand to eye co-ordination [37].
g) Creative model building is often an independent
component of the game rather than the game in itself. (E.g., a component of Lego Alpha).
h) Traditional games, in which the player usually plays
against a computer player, like in chess or solitaire
[41].
There are no clear research results indicating the effect of
educational games. On the other hand, they are proved to improve learners’ motivation.
Many central properties of educational computer software
differ from the corresponding properties of educational television programs. Educational computer software is typically
designed for individuals. Typical problems considered during
the design process are usability of the programs, user model,
user’s workflow, and personalization. When educational software is used in formal education, the teaching factors are
controlled, the users are considered similar individuals, and
there is moderately interaction.
In the area of computer edutainment, a significant part of
the software is aimed at children. Sometimes edutainment has
been even explicitly defined as children’s interactive software
that combines playful activities with learning [33, p. 204]. In
children’s computer edutainment a general way to implement
entertaining content is to use characters that are meant to be
fun. In educational software they are usually animated creatures that are funny assistants of the user or occasional comic
characters or even essential characters in the story. A typical
way to use characters in children’s edutainment is to choose
animals that have many human features. For example in SimPuisto a player has a frog-like advisor called Risto who gives
both tips for the game playing and information about the
fauna and flora of the park (which serves as the settings of the
game). The characters can also be used as tutors who give
feedback about the learner’s progression.
When considering adult learners, the strength of computer
edutainment is the possibility to offer many viewpoints and
approaches to the same topic. It is difficult to name specific
entertainment features that are typical in adults’ edutainment
software because they depend so much on the educational
content in question. Roughly generalizing, the style of audio-
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Table 2: Some present educational game
types.
visual expression is usually more (photo)realistic and the narration is based more on verbal (audio and text) than on visual
narration. For instance, if the appearance of software is childlike or too “sugar glazed”, the adult learners easily feel that
the content is too light and simplistic or unreliable.
A problem with a considerable portion of educational computer programs in Finland is the quality of the localization. It
is not rare that foreign programs are simply translated into
Finnish without localizing them to Finnish circumstances and
culture. An example of the opposite is a CD-ROM based on the
Moomin characters.
GAME TYPES
EXAMPLES
LEARNERS
REMARKS
Adventure
Suomi-Seikkailu
(geography)
Children from 8
to 12
Knowledge is not structured enough; advancing in the game
easily displaces the educational side. (See Appendix 3.)
Quiz
[as a distinct part
in the content]
Multimedia Cats
(domestic & wild
cats)
From school-aged
children to adults
Interactive demonstration including video clips, photos,
animations and sound samples; a quiz concerning history
and characteristics of cat breeds forms a minor part in the
whole product.
Role-play
[as a distinct part
in the content]
Elävää englantia
(English language)
Adults
Versatile exercises for rehearsing reading and listening
comprehension, grammar, vocabulary, and speaking; a
speaking exercise is based on role-playing.
Strategy
Sokrates
(philosophy)
Students of upper
secondary school
and adults
The story of the game concerns the murder inquiry of Socrates; in the beginning the player has to choose the philosophical viewpoint of her action; advancing in the game
requires documenting one’s own reflections; includes a
data bank of philosophy.
Simulation
SimPuisto
(biology)
Children over 8
Aim is to construct a diversiform nature park; the game
requires the player to recognize species. (See Appendix 3.)
Experimental
drama
Valtakunta
[in preparation]
(theology & history)
Adults, especially
students of theology
The virtual reality environment of the game consists of
photographic panoramas that have been shot in original
locations in Palestine; alternative storylines and interchangeable narrative points of view. (See Appendix 3.)
2.4.
Edutainment on the Internet
Online education is the type of teaching and learning systems
which Web-based systems are part of. Two major trends can
be examined: 1) tele-teaching and tele-learning systems, and
2) web-based educational systems. Tele-teaching and telelearning have their origin in video technology, which was used
for recording and storing lectures on video tapes and thus
make them available independent of the live presentation.
The lack of interactivity (between the teacher and the
learner) and the broad availability of high power communication technology led to a change in method: video cameras and
audio facilities transfer lectures online and live to distant
places where students are able to take part synchronously.
First the Internet has been experimented with for transferring the lectures. New technologies, such as ISDN and S-ISDN
have opened a new possibility of high-speed communication
facilities where this educational method is not restricted to
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2
See, e.g., http://www.babloo.com/ or
http://www.prongo.com/
3
See http://www.activeworlds.com/
unidirectional use. Students are often not able to interact by
means of computer technology and/or video and audio recording and transmitting techniques. Web-based educational
systems are asynchronous, i.e., they do not require simultaneous presence of the teacher and the students [5]. Learners
often consider the Internet an inspiring learning environment,
but without properly structured tools, it is chaos where the
learner will definitely lose her way. Perrone et al. [46] compare the use of the Internet without proper tools with television with 500 channels without any help in navigation. As a
solution for this problem, Perrone et al. [46] introduced WebQuest, which makes the Internet a unique platform for searching and handling information.
Web-based learning environments and whole web courses
are popular nowadays but they are seldom meant to be particularly amusing. For example, features and the appearance
of the interface of WebCT, which is a multi-user learning environment, are not very entertaining. At any rate, the users of
WebCT can enjoy themselves through communicating with
other users in discussion groups or in a chat room. In that
case, the pleasure rises from the messages that the users have
produced on their own and not from the ready-made content.
A remarkable part of the actual web-based edutainment
consists of the sites targeted to children (e.g. FunBrain.com
and Kids Web Japan). They include mini games, puzzles, quizzes, tales and rhymes, and they often have a cartoon-like
colourful appearance. Instead of getting children interested in
subject matters the main goal of the sites is to offer them
“activating tools” for learning, such as playing games, doing
crosswords and exercising specific skills. These sites often
have their own subsections for different age groups.2
In a web-based 3D-environment called Active Worlds 3, the
ideas of collaborative and social learning can be tested in virtual worlds aimed at educational purposes. In Active Worlds,
avatars represent users. Active Worlds offers interesting possibilities for online communication, collaboration, role-playing,
the exploration of new environments and introducing learners
to simulations. Educators and students can also build their
own virtual worlds where a right to use can be limited to a
given group. The sense of belonging that is often absent from
distance learning has been considered a benefit of educational
three-dimensional virtual worlds [4].
The web sites that are meant to support or supplement the
educational material, which is delivered through television,
off-line products or textbooks, form one group of online edutainment content. They can be a central part of the material
entity (like in hybrids) or they can have a minor role that has
been restricted to, for instance, telling some additional or
background information about the topic or offering learners
additional activities that are impossible to implement in the
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4
http://www.ctw.org/
5
http://www.opintoluotsi.fi/
2.5.
main medium. An example of the latter is the web site of the
television language program Das ist Deutschland. The site has
extra information about sights that has been presented in the
series and a mini game called Makkarapeli that tests learners’
knowledge about Germany.
Sesame Workshop 4 has developed innovative and engaging
educational content delivered in a variety of ways — television, books, magazines and other printed materials, and
interactive media such as CD-ROM and video games — taking
advantage of all forms of media and using those that are best
suited to delivering a particular curriculum.
Opintoluotsi 5 is a Finnish educational portal for adults produced by the Finnish Ministry of Education. It contains various
net courses and tools for self-learning.
Interactive television
The tradition of broadcast TV and filmmaking is strongly
rooted in narrative. The best educational TV or film offers a
motivating, gripping and captivating variety of stimulating images. Those skilled in this medium know how to tell a story,
how to intrigue, and how to convey ideas effectively. In contrast, the developers of adaptive educational software have
focused on individualizing the content and its presentation,
and/or adapting the parameters within which the learner or
learners work.
In addition to their narrative nature, another key factor is
that educational TV programs are designed for groups. Typically, when educational TV programs are used as a part of formal education, the viewers are considered to form a large homogeneous user group. Teaching factors are controlled and
there is only little interaction. In self-learning, the user groups
are varying with varying teaching factors. Obviously, there is
no interaction when educational TV programs are used in selflearning.
The advent of digital television, and in particular its potential for interactivity (via software and hardware built into receivers and connection with other telecommunication systems, like telephone, cable, and satellite) provides the opportunity for richer edutainment programs.
According to a digital television study [7], the uptake of interactive TV learning services across the EU will be very uneven. The study considers that the prospects for the development of such services are high in only three countries — the
UK, Sweden and Italy — with medium prospect in another six
countries. However, this may not necessarily put the rest of
the European countries at a disadvantage compared with others because other competitive technologies like ADSL technologies may be more appropriate and have a more dominant
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6
http://www.yle.fi/teema/
role. ADSL will enable good quality full screen video and audio
through existing telephone lines. Interactive digital services
and learning environments are developed especially by BBC,
Channel 4, and Granada in the UK and DR in Denmark. [38, p.
181] Granada’s famous educational programs include, among
others, World in Action and Time Tales. (See also Appendix 1.)
Most of these interactive TV learning services are likely to
be in edutainment format. Early developers of interactive TV
learning services are likely to be public service educational
broadcasters and commercial operators who may wish to gain
a competitive advantage over their rivals. However, there
does seem to be a demand for language learning, which may
encourage the uptake of interactive digital TV. Interactive TV
may offer some innovative approaches to tackling the problems of basic skills in an informal and entertaining way. [60]
Separate interactive services, utilizing the return channel
independently of TV channel, are starting to emerge in the
form of learning resources related to the national curriculum
involving new alliances with traditional publishers. [60]
The viewers often complain that the current educational
television programs suffer from the following problems: unsuitable broadcasting times, the amount of detailed facts,
tempo, and lacking introductory and concluding sections [60].
Many of the common problems could be easily solved by digital television. For example, the program can be stored in a
set-top box to be watched in a more suitable time, concluding
material could be offered in channel’s text-television, and
auxiliary material could be found in the Internet. It could be
also possible to listen to learning channels from digital radio.
The Finnish digital television has a cultural and educational
channel, called YleTeema 6 with a new type of language program and several other new programs (cf. Opinportti). It is
likely that in the future the spectrum on educational programs
will widen along with the new technical possibilities. For example, a part of language teaching programs will be originally
meant for other purposes than teaching (see Appendix 2 for a
short presentation of soap opera Carita Pintada), because in
digital television it is easy to change language (both in speech
and in subtitles). There is a huge amount of material to be
used for teaching foreign languages. Similarly, it is easy to
augment various other programs (for example, cultural programs) with game portions that promote and test learning.
Watching television has by tradition been a social experience. People tend to watch in groups, and to discuss with
each other what they have seen. This poses interesting problems from a personalization point of view: instead of adapting
instruction to individuals, it should be adapted to small
groups. Instead of user modelling we may need group modelling.
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3.
Edutainment in education
3.1.
Design approaches
When television edutainment begins to approach the edutainment software, the methods of user-centered design (UCD)
and learner-centered design (LCD) are useful to be involved in
the design process. According to ISO 13407 standard [21],
user-centered design means a multi-disciplinary activity,
which incorporates human factors and ergonomics knowledge
and techniques with the aim of enhancing effectiveness and
productivity, improving human working conditions, and counteracting the possible adverse effects of use on human health,
safety and performance. The iterative activities of user-centered design are,
•
•
•
•
•
to plan the human centred process
to understand and specify the context of use
to specify the user and organisational requirements
to produce design solutions
to evaluate design against user requirements.
Learner-centered design is an approach that extends traditional user-centered design techniques. It is based on social
constructivist theories of learning (see Chapter 3.4). When the
main goal for user-centered design is to design interactive systems that help users complete their tasks easily and efficiently, learner-centered design focuses on building software
that supports learners as they engage in unfamiliar activities
and learn about a new subject matter [36, pp. 306—310, 48].
If the underlying presumption in user-centered design is that
the users are knowledgeable and motivated about their work
tasks, in the area of learner-centered design the assumption is
that the learners are work novices trying to learn about a new
domain through software and they aren’t often motivated in
the same way as experts [48]. When producing interactive
edutainment for any medium, learner-centered design is the
advisable approach.
Involving the target audience from the beginning of the design process constitutes the basement both in user-centered
and learner-centered design. After the target group or groups
have been defined, the designers must get to know the group,
especially its needs, motivations, attitudes, and usual procedures relating to the domain or task in question. When designing educational software, the typical problems in learning the
subject matter have to be taken into account and if possible,
the aim should be finding some alternative ways to approach
and represent the domain with the chosen technology.
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If the target group is not familiar with the intended user interface, it is essential to carefully evaluate if the efforts required in learning it are clearly worth pursuit compared with
using the conventional interface solutions. Along with efforts
relating to studying the subject matter, learning the user interface shouldn’t be cognitively too heavy. In addition, it’s essential to consider the main contexts in which the educational
material will be used. E.g., a classroom is quite a different environment compared with using the material alone at home.
Designing educational contents varies a lot depending on
the subject matter, the broadness of the content, the medium
in question, the main target group, and so on. As a starting
point, designers must consider what purpose the content is
aimed for and how the material is suited for different learning
situations. And when designing edutainment content, the designers should consider carefully how to support the amusement of users without disregarding the educative side of the
content. Designers of edutainment should know what kind of
customs and preferences the group has in the area of
entertainment consumption. The wider the target group the
greater the challenge to create content that is felt entertaining and meaningful. Instead of testing how the educational
goals of the material are realized, it is beneficial to test with
the target group the appropriateness of entertaining representation style, including (verbal and visual) humor, imagery,
audiovisual appearance and overall setting.
Sometimes the entertaining nature of edutainment becomes
clear already in the title of the material. Good examples are
the television program Molto Piacere! (in English something
like “Much pleasure/enjoyment!”), which is targeted at
travelers going to Italy, and Histeria!, the animated sketch
comedy aimed at children, in which the title refers simultaneously to the historical and “hysterical” (meaning here eventful
stories, exaggerated characters and fast story-telling) nature
of the program. This is one way to direct consumers’ and
learners’ presumptions.
Besides the title of the material, also the appearance of a
CD-ROM package, the front page of web based material, or
the advertorial of a television program should be planned well
because they constitute a first impression that is decisive
when people determine if they are going to familiarize with
the material. These features are emphasized in situations related to informal learning when, for example, people determine what kind of educational products or programs are appropriate to themselves or to their children as self-learning
material. Maybe the role of the title is more central in television edutainment, because the program choices of television
audience are often based merely on program guides that include the title of the program and the theme or title of the
episode and at most a very short description.
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Designing educational programs for television has been determined by the time limits of the program (which means often condensing the information into the main points), the impossibility to offer different levels of difficulty for the needs
of heterogeneous audience, the presentation of the information by telling and showing in a linear order, and the lack of
explicit interaction between television audience and the content. The duration and linearity of television educational programs have defined the pace where the topics should be
learned, although utilizing a videocassette recorder has facilitated the situation.
One of the benefits of educational television is the ability
to take learners to unfamiliar and novel environments. This
feature is emphasized, for example, in the educational programs of history and astronomy or in situationally oriented
travel programs. It is obvious that television is a suitable medium for a visually and narrative oriented content. On the
other hand, in the guidelines for using television as a distance
education medium published by Engineering Outreach [14],
the importance of showing and thinking in visual terms is highlighted instead of telling. The guidelines recommend to make
use of 1) pictures to show what things look like, 2) diagrams to
illustrate conceptual relationships, organizations, and structure of content material, 3) maps to show spatial relationships, and 4) graphs, tables and charts to summarize information. The guidelines also recommend to utilize the video photography to show movement for (among others) demonstrating
skills that learners are expected to emulate, for conducting
experiments in which the processes are observed, for analyzing change over time, and for revealing the spatial and threedimensional qualities of an object. [14]
In educational television programs, the entertaining side
has not been as strong as in the area of educational software.
This can be a consequence of the fact that educational television programs have often been meant to be supporting material within formal education, and the main target group has
been adults, not children. For example, the series of School
Television are designed to be viewed in connection with certain school subjects, and single episodes are connected to certain lessons of the curriculum. Educational programs that aim
to cross the boundaries of traditional subjects will probably increase with interactive digital television because it makes it
easier to product content where the viewer is presented with
any approaches to the subject matter and she is able to
change the language of the program if she wants simultaneously practice certain language.
Instead of giving illustrative information, educational software is usually designed to test the skills and knowledge of
the learners, to give the learners some hints for making progress, to offer them different levels of difficulty, to reward
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them when achieving some intermediate goals or answering
right, to give some kind of feedback about their advance, and
in some cases, to offer tools for constructing new knowledge.
Earlier edutainment off-line software was often designed
merely for practicing specific skills and offering restricted information chunks related to the subject area. E.g., early
mathematical computer games concentrated on the drill and
practice of simple number operations and concepts [27]. However, the predominant trend in current educational software
seems to be the products with broad content and many ways
for the users to practice skills and examine the issue, like in
the language program Elävää englantia. This often means that
the content is designed to present the subject area holistically, crossing the traditional borders between school subjects, and to support the idea of learning by doing. The current edutainment software is typically designed for a longtime use when the user can easily advance at her own pace.
Web-based edutainment software has focused on the content that has been aimed at the students of elementary school
and pre-school children, their parents and teachers. The sites
are typically designed to get students more interested in the
subject matter by offering them (interactive) activities, which
are impossible to implement in textbooks, and to offer topics
of discussion and hints to the parents and teachers for getting
children more engaged with learning. In addition, they offer
advice and help to students with their homework. When the
pre-school children are the main target group, the typical goal
is to get them familiarized with the letters, numbers, colors,
geometrical figures, and other “preparatory school stuff”
through stories and gaming activities.
According to Klawe [27], in design of educational games the
key issues are a high degree of interactivity, the representation of concepts, the interface (in the sense of manipulating
concepts and directing learners’ attention), a navigational
structure and sequencing of activities, a feedback and rewards
system, and entertainment elements by which she refers to
colorful graphics, animation, sound, characters and humor.
Klawe sees that most successful interactive activities of educational software are analogues of non-computer versions, like
simulations, problem solving, matching or grouping items, creating artifacts, conducting conversations, and exploring new
environment. She states: “If the activity is not motivating in
real life it is not likely to be motivating on the computer.” She
also emphasizes that activities with explicit goals work well
for most learners.
Usability issues have been strongly linked to digital media
and its products. There are also studies, where the goal is to
define one’s own criteria for pedagogical usability (see Chapter 4.2). After all, in the context of analogical TV the usability
has almost been ignored. TV has been thought to be so estab-
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lished and familiar to all, and functions enabled by a remote
control so simple that improving the usability of the user interface has not been considered as necessary. This is going to
change with interactive digital TV, when the audience has
more possibilities to affect the content and the user interface.
When designing educational content for digital television,
new possibilities in carrying out the content and adding the
learners’ activity during the program should be carefully considered. A central question is: when is it reasonable to modify
the linear narration that is one of the main characteristics of
the medium? For instance, we should consider thoroughly and
case-by-case whether it is more preferable to offer learners
“off-air broadcast” material that is interactive or to include
interactive elements in the stream of broadcast. If the producers of television edutainment are interested in offering
tests, exercises and puzzles as an additional material through
digital television, they have to consider what kind of interactive activities are meaningful to implement with the navigation and input methods of digital television.
3.2.
7
A vision of multi-form teaching
Multi-form teaching is a translation (by
Walldén) of the Finnish phrase ‘monimuotoopetus’. No established English phrase
exists.
Teaching with edutainment refers to the usage of edutainment
material in teaching, and not to the general entertaining
teaching methods like role-plays. Besides, edutainment material must be used via information technology.
During the last decades the rapid development of media has
caused strong needs for training teachers and changing theories of teaching and learning [40]. Different media are now
beginning to converge, and at the same time, the knowledge
and skills required by work markets are continuously changing
because of, for example, internationalization and the development of information technology [30]. In adult education, these
changes will likely emphasize the importance of multi-form
teaching 7, which flexibly in turn includes contact teaching,
distance teaching, and self-learning with the help of various
new media [44, 45].
Multi-form teaching is a concept mainly used in Finland. It
has no exact counterpart in the English terminology. The concept of ‘open learning’ is the closest approximation; it includes distance teaching, contact teaching, and various forms
of independent learning [62]. The Finnish Council of Adult
Education (Aikuiskoulutusneuvosto) defines multi-form teaching as follows [1]:
Multi-form teaching consists of planned schedule of contact and distance
teaching and self-learning for a specific target group supported students
tutoring and advice. If needed, multi-form teaching uses electronic communication technique, telematic services, and information technology.
Multi-form teaching can be organized by several adult education units together.
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Figure 1: Multi-form teaching in media
chain (Walldén). (In a media chain, the user
chooses the media that best fits to his/her
present needs and might even continue the
same task via different media when his/her
possibilities to use them vary during a day.)
The use of new media varies according to the form of teaching
(contact teaching, distance teaching, or self-learning).
Multi-form teaching has been used especially in open university teaching, which is motivated, for example, by the increased educational equality. In order to reach this goal, it
has become evident that teaching should be free from the restrictions of time and place. Another example of multi-form
teaching, the Etälukio project with Yle as a main organizer,
has become very popular.
Walldén believes that in the future, digital media will be
used according to their suitability for the teaching event in
question. This means that it will be built as multi-form teaching in the media chain (see Figure 1, below). As a down side,
this means that in addition to the contents, the learners have
to learn with the use of the chosen media. On the other hand,
teachers have to know how to use the media, and to be familiar with their possibilities and limitations in learning different
contents. The usage of media has various limits caused partly
by the properties of the devices themselves and partly by the
mistakes made when designing their usage in teaching. These
limits might imply that teaching of the contents is not successful. The use of media chain also stresses the importance of
good media literacy.
The ease of learning the use of a device, especially interactive media devices, is evaluated with the concept of usability. From the point of view of usability, Internet’s problems
are related to navigation (finding the information), being sure
Mobiles
Digital television
Self-learning
Distance learning
US-ABIL-
Small screens
Privacy
Remote controller
Using in groups
Learners
—
—
—
—
—
Visual
Auditory
Kinesthetic
Analytical
Holistic
Navigation problems
Validity of information
Web
Distance learning
Self-learning
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Distance learning
-ITY
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of the validity of the information found, and the fragmentation of the teaching experience. In the case of mobile devices,
the usability problems are related to the size of screen, the
restricted possibility of inputting text, and the difficulty of insuring the privacy of use.
When using digital television, a remote controller restricts
interaction. Namely, the interaction of application programs
requires the viewer to use the remote controller much more
actively than before (with analogical TV). The user interfaces
in digital TV often require heavy use of arrow keys, which, in
turn, requires the viewer to concentrate on the use of the device. (See Appendix 5.) The problems with the remote controller can limit or totally prevent both learning and entertaining
with digital television. The importance of usability should be
stressed with senior viewers (foreign language abbreviations,
uncomfortable buttons) and with various special groups, such
as left-handed and those with problems in reading. A majority
of viewers use the remote controller with one hand pressing
the buttons with their thumb. Also the remote controllers of
digital television should allow this popular “thumb interface”.
Digital television may also limit the possibilities of small
children to independently use television because of their weak
sensomotorius skills and reading ability. Also the effects of
computers on the psychological development of children have
been considered a lot. Many authors are afraid that we are
moving from logical to fragmentary thinking. When a child
spends much time with the computer, it is possible that she
will even have feeling towards the device. The goal of psychological development is to get free from emotional dependencies by becoming an independent individual, but a child stuck
with information technology may become, instead of independent, dependent on computers.
Interaction is an essential feature of teaching. Teacher’s
action in this interaction is called teaching and learner’s action is called learning. In a sense, learning is a result of interaction. However, it is obvious that all interaction cannot be
classified as teaching. The interaction in teaching can be direct (contact teaching) and indirect (distance teaching and
self-learning).
In contact teaching the teacher and the learner have a direct contact in the same place at the same time (see Table 3,
on the next page). Contact learning makes possible a personal
contact, not only between a teacher and a learner, but also
between learners. Contact teaching may contain, for example,
lectures using WWW pages, group projects in the net environment, teaching in a class watching television, or, in the future, learning environments in digital television using artificial
intelligence as sketched by Underwood [60]. (See Chapter
2.5.) The biggest obstacles in integrating edutainment material with formal learning are that 1) practical lesson planning
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Table 3: Interaction in multi-form teaching
and media (Walldén).
takes too much time as it can only be done through e.g. playing the game (the more complex games are, the greater the
need for more teacher preparation), 2) the mismatch between
the skills and knowledge developed in edutainment material
and those recognized explicitly within the school system, and
3) the mismatch between material content and curriculum
content especially in secondary schools. [39]
Distance teaching employs various kinds of devices to help
people to be connected to each other (for example, telephone, electronic mail, letters) and the connection may take
place at a different time or the same time. Interaction in distance learning is restricted [40], which implies that traditional
interaction (led by the teacher) plays a minor role and other
forms of interaction are used. It is also possible that tutoring
and study circles use the same devices as other forms of distance learning.
A popular television service is Etälukio, which includes
many of the subjects (sciences, history, psychology, etc.) of
the Finnish high school curriculum. Electronic mail and chat
channels could be used in connecting the teacher and the
learners of Etälukio. In digital television, a chat channel can
be on when an educational program is being watched (such a
product is already published by Sofia Digital). This allows a
viewer to take part in discussions while simultaneously watching the program, and so possibly receiving on-line help and tutoring from teacher and fellow learners.
The third part of multi-form teaching consists of self-learning periods. During these periods, a learner works with the
material presented in contact and distance teaching, does
homework assignments, and prepares for next teaching periods or study circle meetings. Self-learning can be seen to be
connected with distance learning when distance learning is
one-directional and requires self-learning, for example, in the
form homework assignment. In this case, self-learning differs
from that in informal learning where a learner works alone according to her own schedule and goals.
Organization
Form and
means of
interaction
Time and
place
Target groups
(see Chapter 3.6 for more
detailed information)
Examples of contents and media
Contact
learning
Direct or
personal
interaction
The same
— Visual learners (model
learning)
— Auditory learners (by
hearing, by constructing)
— Analytic learners
— Common use of television, computer or web in
class rooms and study circles, OR
— Digital television, mobile or web used in
tutoring
— For example, Yle’s Kouluportti or Kieliportti
Distance
learning
Indirect /
interactive
devices and
material
The same
or different
place, different time
— Kinesthetic learners (experimental learning), for
example, simulators
— Analytic learners
—
—
—
—
Digital television (Etälukio)
Audio learning
Video conferencing
Computer-aided teaching
Self
learning
Missing /
materials
and devices
Different
time and
different
place
— Kinesthetic learners
— Holistic learners
—
—
—
—
Digital television (Opinportti, Carita Pintada)
Literature
Computers, Web (EDU.fi, e-mail)
Audio-visual material
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Besides considering the time and place and means of mediated interaction there are many other possibilities to define
the ambiguous concepts of interaction and interactivity. It is
not appropriate here to go through the diverse argumentation
relating to interaction and interactivity, but it is beneficial to
introduce a few different approaches to these concepts. We
take as examples the illustrative definitions of Jens F. Jensen,
Pertti Näränen and Pirkko Raudaskoski.
Jensen [22, pp. 58—61] makes a difference between the
concept of interaction and the concept of interactivity. By interaction, he refers to interdependent actions and non-mediated communication between humans, while by interactivity
he refers to the media use and mediated communication. According to Jensen, interactivity can be gauged as “media’s potential ability to let the user exert an influence on the content
and/or form of the mediated communication”. He sees interactivity as a continuum and describes it using Bordewijk’s and
Kaam’s taxonomy of communication patterns as a basis. Jensen finds four dimensions of interactivity: transmission, consultation, conversation, and registration.
In transmissional interactivity, communication is one-directional and users can choose from a continuous stream of information without a possibility for making requests. This is the
case with the educational programs of analogical television. In
consultational interactivity users can choose, by request, from
a selection of pre-produced information in a two-way media
system with a return-channel. Many earlier educational CDROMs and web sites belong to this dimension. Conversational
interactivity refers to a two-way media system that lets users
produce and input their own information. For example, web
based learning environments such as Active Worlds Educational Universe and WebCT come under this sub-category. In
registrational interactivity, the media records user-related information and adapts and/or responds to a given user’s action. In some “intelligent” educational games there are features belonging to this dimension.
Näränen [42, pp. 57—59] categorizes the different forms of
television audience interaction. Firstly, he makes a difference
between viewer interaction and group interaction: viewer interaction refers to interaction between a program and a
viewer (including families as a unit), and group interaction
means interaction between the viewers within viewer groups.
Secondly, Näränen finds central variables concerning the nature of interaction:
1)
2)
3)
4)
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asynchronous automatic interaction,
asynchronous human interaction,
real time representative interaction, and
real time spontaneous (open) interaction.
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For instance, by real time representative interaction Näränen
refers to studio audience or viewer guests chosen in advance,
by asynchronous human interaction (in the group level) he refers to moderated discussion groups and feedback discussions
relating to program, and by real time spontaneous interaction
he means viewers’ text messages, calls and video connections
that are included in the direct broadcast through different
channels. In educational television programs, these forms of
interaction have been minor to these days. Especially the possibilities of the viewers to influence on the program content,
for instance, by sending questions and comments, seem to be
very rare in current implementations. Anyway, some of the
educational television programs (like Tää on seksii) include
asynchronous human interaction via feedback message boards
and moderated discussion groups on their web site.
It is interesting that both in Näränen’s and in Jensen’s definitions the starting point is to define the designed levels of interactivity in media (or on television) but they don’t tell a lot
about the interactivity interpreted and achieved through the
content by users. Using the methods of interaction analysis
(IA) Pirkko Raudaskoski has studied the actual and situated reception of television and computer media. In particular, she
has studied how the artifacts of interactive media and situations of use are constituted as interactive by users. She compares watching television and using a computer and finds differences and similarities: when using computers, the user is
much more involved in making sense of the interface, but in
both situations the intelligibility of the content is actively
achieved by the viewers/users. Raudaskoski [50] states:
When the TV media has its own flow that the viewers can “participate
in” but which does not accommodate to their interaction, the computer
media in this case is a different resource: it allows participation, but
more work has to be done to achieve the order of interaction.
Raudaskoski defines two types of interactivity related to
watching television: parasocial interaction and external interaction. The parasocial interaction means the instances in
which the viewer “takes part” in the interaction, for example,
by commenting or laughing at something that happens or is
told on the screen. The parasocial interaction is often induced
by hosts’ or performers’ direct address to the viewers through
gaze. External interaction refers to comments that don’t directly address the ongoing happenings on the screen but in
which happenings in the earlier episodes are remembered or
happenings in forthcoming episodes are predicted. Raudaskoski found that parasocial interaction fitted the flow of the
television program, whereas the external interaction was
sometimes a continuation from a parasocial comment or else a
separate discussion, topic of which came from the television
program. [50]
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Accordingly both parasocial and external interaction are actuated by the program content. In educational television programs, it is common means to induce parasocial interaction by
addressing the viewers by looking straight at the camera. Particularly this feature is emphasized in many situational oriented language programs, such as BBC’s Bon Voyage!. The program involves several scenes where the viewers are addressed
through a gaze. The viewers are also addressed as if people in
the program were speaking straight to them. For example at
the end of one episode, actors say goodbye to the viewers (as
if) by looking at them and using different French expressions.
In general, when inducing parasocial interaction by speaking
the common phrases targeted at the viewers are “Let’s go
next”, “Come with us” or “You at home”. This kind of direct
form of address to the audience actualises a feeling of “now
and here” and simulated closeness. It relates to the aesthetics
of television that is based on proximity, participation and immediacy [55, pp. 27—30].
Parasocial interaction between the viewer and the program
content resembles many features of human—human interaction. This indicates that the myth of passive television audiences is behind the times. While the flow of the television
program doesn’t necessarily need any contributions from the
viewers, they are often laughing and talking at similar points
that people would do in face-to-face communication. Moreover, it is common to watch television in groups, in which case
the social nature of viewing is stressed. Television watching is
also generally related to other activities, like surfing on the
Internet or using the mobile phone [15]. It seems that simultaneous usage of different media has already become a commonplace. Accordingly, it is time to call into question the passivating nature of television.
Multi-form teaching, which belongs to formal education, is
likely to be a prominent form of education in the future, especially for those target groups, which are reached by the present educational television programs (see Chapter 4.3). On the
other hand, multi-form teaching is not applicable to the new
target groups of edutainment programs (see Chapter 4.4, Figure 5), since these groups learn outside formal education.
3.3.
Teaching outside formal education
In the future, non-formal and informal education will likely be
emphasized (see Chapter 2). Non-formal learning refers to
learning activities produced by the learners themselves or by
others. Typically, non-formal learning does not lead to formalized certificates. Informal learning means lifelong learning, in
which individuals acquire attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience. As an advantage, this form of
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8
http://www.yle.fi/opinportti/
learning is closely connected to the whole life of the learner,
which makes it easy to apply to knowledge and skills learned.
On the other hand, nobody controls the possible misunderstandings of learners or activates the transference of learned
material, possibly implying too individualized and varying
learning processes. In order to overcome this, edutainment
material must contain portions to guide and tutor the learners.
In this report, the role of edutainment programs is defined
by the goals of producers, and not by the actual purpose of
use. For example, a school-TV program meant for formal education can be used as a self-learning material, but we consider
such a program as originally meant by the producers.
So far, edutainment material in different media has had a
passive role — excluding some prominent pilot experiments.
Educational television programs have mainly been viewed silently in classrooms making notes, and various computer
games have been played pair-wise in the back of a classroom
or in separate computer classes. The Internet is used, for example, in adult education as an open learning environment
(see Chapter 2.4).
The use of the Internet in the spirit of edutainment begun
with different kinds of “Trivia Hunts”, which aimed at improving the learner’s skills of searching information. A typical example was The Internet Hunt by Rick Gates [12]. This application made use of the most important strength of the Internet,
its open and unlimited nature. Contrary to simulation games
with limited contents, the Internet games can use the practically unlimited store of topics and information.
WebQuest [46, 65] is a popular form of connecting interactive simulation games and the Internet. It follows the constructivist theories of learning, for example, by allowing the
players to change the rules and topics of the game. This
makes it possible to learn not only design and programming
skills but also to think reflectively about one’s own learning
process. There are ready-made WebQuest games on various
topics available in the Internet [65]. Although most of them
are meant to be used in primary schools, there are also WebQuest games for adults to be used in informal learning.
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or
all of the information used by learners is drawn from the Web.
WebQuests are designed to use learners’ time well, to focus
on using information rather than looking for it, and to support
learners’ thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and
evaluation (see Chapter 3.4 and Appendix 4).
Opinportti 8, maintained by Yle, is a Finnish educational
web service with the widest target group. It contains, among
other parts, Kouluportti, Kieliportti, Senioriportti, Etälukio,
Open University, and a portion for pre-school children. Kouluportti is meant for the pupils and teachers of primary schools.
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9
http://www.edu.fi/
10
http://www.internetix.fi/
11
http://www.studium.helsinki.fi/
12
http://www.studium.helsinki.fi/
kurssit/kouke/index.asp
Kieliportti contains all the material for Yle’s language programs and other material for learning foreign languages, such
as Abitreenit for those preparing for their matriculation examination. Senioriportti contains information, hints, and advice to senior viewers. It is a joint effort of Yle and an organization on adult education (Kansalais- ja työväenopistojen
liitto). Etälukio helps adult learners to plan their studies and
informs them about the programs to be broadcast in Etälukio.
Other Finnish net services for learning and teaching include
EDU.fi by the National Board of Education, Studium environment by Palmenia Centre for Research and Continuing Education (University of Helsinki), and Mikkeli Internetix Campus by
Otava Folk High School.
EDU.fi 9 is a portal meant for teachers and containing webbased teaching material and information on net learning.
EDU.fi also contains a virtual network for teachers’ discussions. Internetix 10 is an open learning environment for distance learning, self-learning, teaching, preparing various
teaching events, networking, and searching information. Currently, it contains the services for students in formal (preparation for matriculation examination, technical colleges, Open
University) and informal education (courses for adult education on various subjects).
Studium 11 is produced and maintained by Palmenia Centre
for Research and Continuing Education (University of Helsinki).
It offers various services in extension studies. Studium’s virtual classroom in the Internet includes various tools, like chat
channels, internal mail, diary, calendar, learning material and
assignments12.
Manninen [37] has divided web-based learning environments
into four levels:
1)
2)
3)
4)
a slide and information store,
a medium for interaction,
a hypertext structure, and
a virtual classroom.
The first level means that the Internet is used as a channel for
transmitting slides and other material. The second level emphasizes Internet’s possibilities as a means of communication
and the availability of real-time information via the Internet.
Hence, the second level contains chat channels and mailing
lists and link lists to sources of information available in realtime. At the third level, a web-based learning environment is
a hypertext structure supporting learning and studying in
which the links and structures build up materials suitable for
self-learning. At the highest level (level four) the metaphor of
a classroom or school is virtually implemented. These virtual
classrooms have been constructed since the 1970s on the basis
of the so called Computer-Mediated Communication Systems
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13
http://www.studium.helsinki.fi/
kurssit/kouke/kesk/contents.asp?ryhma
3.4.
(CMCS) [19], like in Virtual Classroom [19, 43]. The present
applications in the Internet, like Lotus Learning Space, Top
Class, and WebCT provide, among other services, a possibility
to establish chat channels for discussions.
In the above classification by Manninen, Opinportti and
Edu.fi mainly belong to the second level, while Studium environment includes all the levels (Vinkkivekotin is at the first
level, chat channels are at the second level, and VirtuaaliPubi 13 is at the forth level).
More links to web pages containing edutainment material
can be found in Appendix 6.
Learning aspects
Table 4: Bloom’s taxonomy of educational
objectives.
There are no scientific results on the effects of educational
television programs and edutainment in learning [38], and the
existing results on the effects of educational computer programs are not applicable for the purposes of the present report. Naturally, for obtaining valid results, it is important
what educational programs are used in teaching and in what
way. Because of various practical problems in formal education, the tests are usually insufficient. For example, a program is used for such a short period that its affects cannot be
measured, or old-fashioned programs are used, which means
that the interface can be unsatisfying, the contents can be too
concise, or the usage can be drill-like. Only a few design
groups have used pedagogical expertise. However, there
seems to be a consensus about the result that educational
computer programs have no effects on the learning results but
they improve learning motivation.
Learning can take place in the following three areas: cognitive (about knowing), affective (about attitudes and feeling),
and psychomotor (about doing). Bloom’s taxonomy describes
the deepening of learning in the cases cognitive, affective,
and psychomotor learning (see Table 4).
COGNITIVE DOMAIN (knowing) [8]
AFFECTIVE DOMAIN (feeling) [8]
PSYCHOMOTOR DOMAIN (doing) [6]
1) Knowledge, recalling specific items.
1) Receiving.
1) Reflex.
2) Comprehension (“in own words”).
2) Responding (accepts the worth of a
thing, valuing).
2) Fundamental movements (crawl,
run, jump, reach).
3) Valuing (accepts the worth of a
thing).
3) Perceptual abilities (catch, write,
balance, distinguish).
4) Organization (organizes values,
adapts behaviour to value system).
4) Physical abilities (stop, increase,
change, react).
5) Characterization (generalizes
certain values into controlling
tendencies, later integrates these
into a total philosophy of life or
world view.
5) Skilled movements (play, hit, dive,
use).
3) Application.
4) Analysis (for example, can break
down a communication into its
constituent parts).
5) Synthesis (can pull together many
disorganized elements as to form a
whole).
6) Evaluation (makes judgements
about the value of materials or
methods).
6) Non-discursive communication
(express, create, design, interpret).
The psychomotor domain and categories have been less articulated at the level of education than the cognitive and affec-
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tive domains. The last two categories of the psychomotor domain are applicable in the creative and professional areas. For
example, doctor’s clinical skills, such as palpation, belong to
the skilled movements category while painting and drawing
belong to the non-discursive communication category.
In formal education there is at least one wide study on using off-line edutainment in teaching and an interesting experiment on using on-line edutainment. In England, McFarlane’s
group studied the use of games among children of 4—18 years
old in twelve schools and at home. The computer usage at
home was evaluated by parents who had received advice on
evaluating and filling in observation forms. Moreover, 800 pupils were asked to fill in a questionnaire. Hence, the views of
teachers, parents, and pupils were taken into account. We
think that the study was methodologically valid, except that
the choice of games was somewhat questionable. For example, it is not proved that racing games affect the learning
of eye and hand coordination. And what is even more questionable, why weren’t provably better and more traditional
forms of learning the coordination used?
The nature of learning supported by the use of games could
be divided into following three types:
1) Learning as a result of tasks stimulated by the content of the games. The use of games as a stimulus to
associated work was mainly restricted to primary
schools. But, for example, games with simulations corresponding to real world phenomena can be a starting
point for general discussion. Games could be a better
stimulus for learning, if teachers were more aware of
the importance of games in pupils’ lives, and willing to
have children contribute their expertise in these areas
to the learning activity.
2) Knowledge developed through the content of the
game. Games vary as to the amount of content they
contain which is of direct relevance to the school curriculum, but the amount is generally low. Even where
the context seems to be relevant to curriculum content, its contribution to the child’s learning may be
very peripheral. The best game type seemed to be
simulations. Problems in using games include lack of
time to play a game, and illogical and too concise content.
3) Skills arising as a result of playing the game. This last
type of learning can be subdivided into direct and indirect learning. Skills developed by the games were dependent on pupils’ age but generally they were supposed to develop personal and social skills, cognitive
skills (problem solving, deductive reasoning etc.) and
knowledge of content. [39]
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Table 5: The roles of players and the
corresponding activities in WebQuest [46].
Role
Player
The validity of McFarlane’s results is decreased by the fact
that the role of confounding factors was not discussed in the
report, not even in the case of small children, although several kinds of cognitive and psychomotor development take
place in them. Hence, it might be difficult to show what the
reason for the observed learning was. On the other hand,
McFarlane compared different types of games against each
other, which means that the possible error in the results is the
same in the case of all program types considered. Especially,
the superiority of simulation games can be considered a valid
result.
In the USA, Perrone et al. [46] have studied the use of web
pages in genuinely improving learning. In this study, WebQuest, the most famous form of web edutainment combining
simulation games and web pages, was used (see Chapter 3.3).
WebQuest tries to apply the basic idea of constructionism that
the best way to learn is to do meaningful tasks. In WebQuest a
learner can have the role of both player and author. In the relationship with these multiple roles, Perrone et al. have considered the corresponding motivational factors as given in Table 5.
Activities
Goal of learning
Motivation
— navigation
— searching information from the
Internet
— engaged in game
— collecting objects from the game
board
— solving quests
— interest in theme material
— learning the content by solving
quests
— feedback to quest authors
Author
— authoring quest worlds
— design skills
— to share new quests with others
— creating the game characters
and rules of the game
— programming skills
— to build new things that contribute to, or extend the game
— handling the feedback from the
players
— reflection
— navigation skills
— to surpass previous quests
Perrone et al. [46] gave an example of using WebQuest in
classroom. The class is divided into groups, which specialize in
the specific parts of the material to be learned, formulate
questions concerning their part to the others (and possible
change the game board). The groups play the games created
by other groups and, afterwards, the games are evaluated and
the best sources of information in the Internet are checked.
In the case of non-formal learning — that is, in the case of
the supposed new focus area of learning — the main interest
has been in studying the learning process. Different learning
methods and materials not only cause different learning results but also different learning processes. Among the new
digital media the Internet has raised a special interest and,
nowadays, it is common to discuss net pedagogy whose theoretical background is on constructivism.
The starting point of constructivism is in learner’s previous
knowledge, experiences, ways of solving problems and sche-
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mas — that is, how the learner understands the world. Learning is to change, to complete, and to rebuild this material.
Constructivism also emphasizes the importance of testing the
new (rebuilt) constructions. A prerequisite is that the learner
understands her own understanding or non-understanding
about the topic to be learned. Hence, self-evaluation and reflection are important skills in constructivism. If the learner
does not know why something must be remembered or
learned, the learning result will not necessarily allow transference: it might be possible that the learner cannot apply it in
practical problem-solving tasks. Although learning is a
learner’s action, a teacher is needed for guiding and tutoring
the learning process by showing goals and evaluating (reflecting) because even an adult learner is not necessary capable of
self-steering her learning. The teacher’s task is to design a
flexible learning environment that allows the learner to construct knowledge from her own starting position. [51]
Problem-based learning is based on constructivism. Its main
purpose is to develop learner’s skills for self-steering, lifelong
learning. According to this pedagogical view, learning is a
combination of one’s own learning, working with the new
knowledge together with other learners, and group discussions. As working methods, problem-based learning uses group
working, introductory and specialist’s lectures, seminars, individual tasks, field studies, and practical rehearsals, when
needed [40]. Hence, there is only a little contact teaching,
and a lot of individual working. In problem-based learning, a
learner learns by starting from problems at hand. Problembased learning is widely used in learning medicine.
Sometimes, especially in practical “real world projects”,
the starting point is a problem to which no answer or solution
exists in the present knowledge or skill repertoire. Developing
new knowledge starts with a problem, which is solved in a
group by using continuous dialogue with some fixed principles.
The result obtained is more than the sum of the knowledge of
the teacher and the learners. The learning community sets the
problems and formulates the questions. (See, for example [17,
18, 58]). Each learner brings her own unique experiences to
the discussion so making the topics to be learned wider and
many-sided. Although the experiences are unique and personal, they can be divided by the other learners and the
teacher. The mere existence of experiences does not guarantee learning. It is possible that they stay superficial because
they are not consciously handled. Conscious experienceoriented learning also includes a cognitive point of view that
brings it closer to constructivist learning.
Experimental learning moves by reflecting concrete experiences and actions towards the theoretical understanding and
better operations models. Learning goes on in cycles and it
can start in any place. The purpose of learning is to construct
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a good (or at least gradually improving) “theory” and its application. Mere doing (learning by doing) is not sufficient for
learning. Similarly, it is not necessarily enough to stress experimental factors or experiences, because it is not possible
to learn from all experiences, or learning from some experiences can be harmful, or it may only strengthen earlier prejudices. A central concept related to experimental learning is
reflection, which is cognitive and affective activity in which
an individual studies her knowledge and experiences in order
to reach a new level of understanding [9]. The reflection of
learning can happen at different levels. At technical level the
learner can ask “Do I know?” or “Is this right way to do this?”.
At practical level the learner asks “Does this relate to this
context?” or “How is this interrelated to the broader context
of action?”. At critical and ethical level the learner asks:
“Why?”, “Is this of any use?”, “What effects does this have?”
or “What alternatives do we have?”.
Learning by doing in a group is called cooperative learning.
It is more a method than a learning theory. In cooperative
learning, a group work includes varying division of work and
changing roles, such as the leader of the group, the collector
of information, the supporter and the summary maker. Generally each member of the group acts alternately in different
roles whereupon anyone of the group can’t withdraw and take
a passive position. The whole group is responsible for the outcome but everybody as an individual is responsible for her own
task. The role of the teacher is shaped in every situation on
the basis of learners’ needs. The teacher is primarily a counselor and a source of strength. In order to succeed in cooperative learning, a clear and shared goal or problem is important
as well as utilizing the differences of the group members (see,
for example, [29, 53]).
Nowadays the focus in adult education is in problem-based
learning and group work teaching. In the education of youngsters, constructivist approaches dominate. In many pedagogical practices learning is separated from its natural context. In
situated learning the purpose is to place learning in a relevant
or “authentic” context. It is argued that knowledge is to a
great degree a product of the activity, context, and culture in
which it is used. That is, it cannot be taught in the abstract. It
must be taught in context. The ‘context’ is often used to refer
to a concrete environment of action. This means that the concept of situation and the concept of context are very close to
each other. In situated learning all factors present in the
learning situation are considered to affect the learning process.
The pedagogical background of educational programs varies
a lot. For example, many educational television programs are
based on situated learning. A typical example is to teach how
to ask whether there are vacant rooms in a hotel. This is a
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good choice for those who are studying because they are planning a trip. On the other hand, many learners are interested in
the language in a much more general sense, and these kinds of
situations are of little use to them.
The Internet facilitates collaborative and cooperative learning. This is important since especially work markets value the
skills obtained by this kind of learning. At the same time, individuals’ own skills of learning and developing strategies are
considered to be of outmost importance. Similarly, the importance of networking and group work is heavily stressed because they require social and collaborative skills. The success
of a team is not only the sum of the success of its individual
members, but it requires also abilities on the social and collaborative level.
When moving from analogical to digital television, the
deepest changes are in learning to obey constructivism. individual’s private activity, moving to collaborative learning, and
interactivity among group members. This allows, e.g., problem-based and exploratory learning, and constructing new
knowledge. Digital television also makes collaborative learning
possible by allowing increasing interaction and a learner to
profile her own learning material. Collaborative learning utilizes the social interaction in a group of learners. This could be
easily applied in edutainment games.
3.5.
Learning contents
Among educational television programs, language learning
programs are the most well-known and popular. Other popular
contents of educational television within formal education are
history, psychology, philosophy, and religion. Yle’s School-TV
includes programs almost in all school subjects. Programs in
the following subjects have web material related to them:
biology and geography, history, multicultural education, fine
arts, manual training, media education, music, environmental
sciences, manners, Finnish language and literature, and foreign languages. In Yle’s Etälukio, the following subjects are
learned: Finnish, chemistry, physics, literature, psychology,
mathematics, religion, philosophy, history, geography, and
biology [38]. Moreover, Yle’s service called Ylen Avoin includes the following categories: everyday-life’s history, cultural history, Asian studies, European studies, global ethics,
gerontology, adult education, drama, tourism, intercultural
communication, communication, history, medicine, psychology, sociology, mass media, and environmental sciences.
Television suits well for learning wide entireties, processes,
narratives and some concrete skills. Informal learning uses
television to broadcast more concise learning packages, like
languages programs with their tourist vocabularies and differ-
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ent programs representing practical skills, which are based on
television’s possibility to connect visual examples with auditory explanations.
Educational off-line computer software suits well to learn
details and processes by repeating and experimenting. Most
off-line computer programs do not suit well for formal education although they might seemingly contain the right topics.
Popular themes in off-line computer programs are languages,
mathematics, geography, biology, sciences, and medicine. In
informal education, off-line programs concentrate on languages with different viewpoints (business, tourism), practical
skills, and hobbies. Infotainment is perhaps the most common
form in this category.
In the years 1990—95 tens of localized or Nordic edutainment or other educational CD-ROM products were published in
Finland. The narrative quality of these products was mainly
high. For example, Elävät Kirjat enterprise aims to publish
products that will succeed in all the Nordic countries [31].
One of the main problems in multimedia productions is that
products require too powerful computers and the newest controlling devices. Beginning at the late 1990s, so-called hybrids
have become more common. A hybrid is an independent CDROM program with new portions and elements to be loaded
from the Internet [30]. Hence, the importance of the Internet
is growing also in these markets.
An example of hybrids is Tytöt — Girls CD-ROM, which is
meant for girls of 10—12 years old. There is a web site requiring a password related to this product. Tytöt — Girls started a
series of products whose next link is FlirtFiles, a CD-ROM
product meant for girls in the “dating age”. In addition to the
CD-ROM and a web site, the FlirtFiles also includes a mobile
service.
According to McFarlane the most popular game genres were
adventure games, racing games, and shooting/arcade games.
Racing games are equally popular with girls and boys, but girls
are far more likely to favour adventure and boys shooting/arcade games. According to the tables given in [39], it seems
that girls prefer simulation games [39, pp. 8—9 and 24]. Boys
play a wider range of games than girls, and for both genders
the range increases with age. In the interviews, pupils mentioned they prefer certain games because of, for example,
their presentation, structure, nature of activities or personal
response of some sort. Girls and boys in all age categories also
often mentioned graphics, color, use of characters, game
play, fun and challenge. [39]
In McFarlane’s research, game types have different definitions than we have in this report. She defines edutainment as
games with edutainment activities structured with a view of
loosely supporting education, usually a combination of activities and games with overt educational intent which can range
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from skill development, e.g. hand-eye coordination, to problem solving [39, p. 8]. This kind of definition is hard to connect with any style of learning or teaching methods and forms.
It doesn’t differ enough from infotainment. A too wide concept definition doesn’t help in planning new concepts, because it doesn’t benefit us in deductive and inductive reasoning.
We analyzed closely three edutainment programs. A simulation program SimPuisto (see Appendix 3) is meant for children
over 8 years old, a geography oriented adventure game SuomiSeikkailu (see Appendix 3) is targeted at children from 8 to 12
of age, and Kapusta (see Appendix 2) is a television language
program for adult learners. Suomi-Seikkailu is an example of
the educational game in which the means of entertainment
and education easily displace each other.
3.6.
Different learners
Learners can be profiled and categorized in many different
ways. The users of digital media are usually divided into
groups based on different social properties. The most commonly used attributes are educational background, sex, and
age. A typical viewer of educational television programs is in a
white-collar profession, and women have a slight majority
among the viewers. In Finland, only Taito-TV has less educated audience, with male majority. [38] Educational computer programs are mainly meant for primary school children,
but especially many language teaching programs are meant for
adults to be used in self-learning. Educational television programs are targeted at all age groups from pre-school children
to senior viewers, but 70 % of Yle’s educational programs are
meant to adults [38, p. 183].
In the case of educational computer programs, there has
been much debate on the meaning of gender. Girls are said to
require that a game has a constructive touch. As players girls
are more persevering than boys, who desire traditional game
elements [31]. Women prefer communication and discussions.
On the other hand, both genres seem to accept quality products. The narrative quality is the main requirement for a good
educational software product [32]. A product should also last
in the long run; the purpose is to tie a user to the product.
Also, good usability is important for a product to be successful. [32] Moreover, women use online educational games a
lot. For example, 40 % of the players of these games are
female in the USA. [31]
A typical computer edutainment type is a game for children
and teens, aged 7—16 [26]. The stereotypical picture of a boy
playing aggressive computer games alone in his room is not
fully representative of young people’s use of computer games.
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In Britain children often play with a friend or family member,
who most likely is the boy’s dad (or younger brother) or the
girl’s younger brother (or elder brother). They even play in
teams. Boys play more frequently and have longer playingsessions than girls do. Almost 50 % of boys play every day and
clearly over 30 % for more than 2 hours at a time. [39] A majority of pupils play games at home, most frequently in their
rooms. Sometimes girls are not allowed to use family’s computer. Only 15 % of girls play at a friend’s house. [63] Computer games are a more embedded part of boys’ leisure culture than that of girls. Boys favour games that are associated
with their other interests, especially sports. Boys view gameplaying as a first choice activity, whereas girls are more likely
to play when they are bored or have nothing better to do.
In the chapter concerning multi-form teaching (Chapter 3.2)
we categorized learners into the following groups according to
their learning styles and habits (see Figure 1 in Chapter 3.2):
holistic and analytical learners or, on the other hand, auditory, kinesthetic, and visual learners. Different media and different learning materials suit each of these groups.
An analytical learner prefers silent environment and concentrates on the tasks without breaks as long as they are
done. She learns one detail at a time and then constructs the
whole picture. She is interested in details and remembers
them easily. An analytical learner likes to work alone and prefers facts, but not teacher’s private experiences. She also prefers exactly set requirements and feedback and carefully disposed learning material. Off-line educational computer programs (for example, Elävää englantia) with linear presentations and multiple-choice questions suit an analytical learner
well. Also educational television programs with concise portions, like in many language learning programs (for example,
Das ist Deutschland), suit her well.
A holistic learner likes to hear music when studying, and
she does several tasks simultaneously taking breaks from time
to time. She first understands the entity and combines the
new things to her own experiences. She also enjoys hearing
other persons’ experiences. A holistic learner wants to see the
material from different perspectives and she makes summaries
of it. A holistic learner prefers learning environments whose
tempo can be controlled. For example, chat channels related
educational programs and educational television programs
with a lot of interviews of specialists and other learners suit a
holistic learner well.
Senses mediate information to us from the outside world
but they are also connected with our thinking, committing to
memory and processing of information. Different senses are
emphasized differently in learning processes of different people: for someone the easiest way to learn is through seeing,
while for others it is through listening or doing by oneself.
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Western culture is more and more visually oriented while, for
example, African culture is kinesthetically oriented.
An auditory learner benefits from oral guidance and she
learns by explaining things for herself in her mind. She remembers names better than faces. Repeating is essential in
the learning processes of the auditory learner. She approaches
and solves problems by speaking. The auditory learner keeps
up with the times by listening to the radio and during her leisure time she willingly listens to music. For the auditory
learner the educational radio and the language and skill programs of educational television suit well.
A kinesthetic learner learns best by doing and experimenting. She remembers what she has done and said or experienced. The kinesthetic learner keeps up with the times by
glancing at papers and watching television news for a few
minutes. She appreciates comfortable atmosphere and her
hobbies include some kind of sport. The kinesthetic learner
benefits from simulation programs (such as SimPuisto or Flight
Simulator).
For a visual learner the easiest way to learn is by looking at
how the things are done. She remembers faces and makes
notes about what she hears. The visual learner follows daily
news by reading papers and she spends her leisure time willingly by watching television and video films, going to movies
and theatre. Straightening up the physical place is important
to her. The visual learner benefits especially from educational
television programs and animation programs including simulation demonstrations (such as medical virtual learning materials).
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4.
Key issues for planning
digi-TV edutainment
4.1.
Challenges for teaching and learning
Formal education emphasizes near and distance learning, but
we believe that in the future, the focus will be in distance and
self-learning. Similarly, non-formal and informal learning will
have a more prominent role. Digital media will be used according to their suitability for the teaching situation in question and, as a consequence, multi-form teaching in the media
chain will be used.
An important part of the media chain will be interactive
television, which allows more possibilities to interaction than
analogical television. Moreover, in digital television a learner
can profile programs to be more suitable for her own purposes. This makes the target groups wider.
These trends raise several questions concerning the use of
interaction especially in educational and edutainment programs. At least the following questions appear:
• What type of interactive service will help people to
learn? What kind of learning experience should be offered?
• In what ways can groups of learners be modelled and
how can learner communities be formed?
• How can adaptation take place in groups of learners?
• What justifiably useful can digital television bring to
teaching and learning of edutainment programs?
• How can viewer passivity be overcome (or is it even
necessary) in the context of educational television programs?
• How can a synergy between information technology services and TV design ideas be reached?
• How to make the best use of the potential for collaborative learning experiences?
There are different advantages and disadvantages related
to the usage of different media in teaching. When using television, structuring the knowledge is easy if the linear representation is suitable for the domain in question. For instance,
a rule of German grammar concerning the word order is beneficial to be represented in certain order. However, it is difficult to give feedback if the learner already in the beginning
misunderstands the rule, because the mistake is repeated and
the whole rule is constructed incorrectly. When using the web
based learning environment, it is hard to control how the
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FiTV: EDUTAINMENT
learner analyzes information because she can surf and browse
through material too quickly or in unfavorable order. Instead,
giving feedback about misunderstanding is very easy through
the Internet.
The learning environment is changing. People are also
learning at home, at work or elsewhere outside the formal
education system. About 20 % of the Finns from 18 to 64 years
of age have studied by themselves for at least 20 hours during
the year 1999 [2]. Self-learning is especially common among
young people, and among those with high education and high
socio-economical position. The most common topic of selfeducation is information technology [2].
Figures 2 (below) and 3 (on the next page) summarize the
basic properties of current educational computer software and
television programs, while Figure 4 (on the next page) shows
what kinds of challenges are found when features of educational computer software and television programs are combined in educational interactive television programs.
Figure 2: The properties of the present
educational computer software.
Educational computer software
DESIGN
TEACHING
LEARNING
LEARNER
LEARNING MATERIAL
Individualizing the
content and its
presentation
— designed for
individuals
Teacher’s role quite
passive
Way of learning
constructivism
cooperative
experimental
Learner’s role active
Detailed contents.
Advantage: possibility
to choose the level of
difficulty and one’s
own pace in progress.
Disadvantage: entertaining means and
learnability are often
too separated from
each other.
Usability
Workflow
Personalization
User model
Fairly short tradition
in edutainment programs
The focus has moved
to on-line software
Material is teaching
behavioristically, by
modeling or using
approaches of constructivism (especially
constructing schema)
Children and
youngsters
The ability to use new
media
Moderate amount of
interaction
A. Formal education
— as a part of formal
education
· Distance learning
· Learning communities
— as an addition to
formal education
— as an alternative
form of formal
education
Homogeneous
learners
Self-education
Quite homogeneous
learners
Active users
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Languages
Mathematics &
Sciences
Active users
B. Informal education
Geography & Biology
Direct interaction
Hobbies & Arts
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FiTV: EDUTAINMENT
Figure 3: Properties of the present
educational television programs.
Educational TV programs
DESIGN
TEACHING
LEARNING
LEARNER
LEARNING MATERIAL
Narrative contents
— for large groups
How to tell a story
in an educative
manner?
How to balance
learning and
entertainment?
Multimedia teaching
packages
Easy to use in learning
Learner’s profiles
General problem:
deficient structuring
of content
model learning
constructivism
TV suits well for
teaching processes,
entities and
narratives
All ages
Advantage: interviews
and stories connected
to learners’ life
The ability to use new
media
History
Languages
Large similar user
groups
A. Formal education
Long and rich
tradition in
edutainment
programs
— as a part of formal
education
· school TV
· Etälukio
· open university
Free usage
No direct interaction
At classroom
— as an alternative
form
Large similar user
groups
B. Informal education
Free usage
Skills
Languages for
travellers
Learners as receivers
of information
At home
Also in groups
No direct interaction
Figure 4: The challenges of educational
interactive television programs.
Educational TV programs
Educational computer software
Interactive educational television programs
Central questions in sketching educational concept types:
— How to design interactive TV programs?
— Who are the users (small groups?)?
· Are the user groups heterogeneous?
· Are there new user groups?
— What kind of program types?
· Would it be possible that a single program could suit
several school subjects, for example to learn
simultaneously languages, history and geography?
· What forms of interactivity are beneficial for
learning?
— What learning and teaching theories suit to designing
interactive television programs?
· The role of accidental and spontaneous learning?
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FiTV: EDUTAINMENT
4.2.
Challenges for designing edutainment
Designing successful edutainment material is a demanding
task. Deficient structuring and incoherence of the content and
lack of pedagogical approach are often mentioned as problems
of digital learning material. Educational scientists have
started to create their own criteria for developing the usability of digital learning environments. Based on Jacob Nielsen’s
usability heuristics and David Jonassen’s guidelines of meaningful constructivist learning environments, Horila et al. [20]
have developed criteria for evaluating digital learning material from pedagogical perspective. Their criteria include
eleven factors:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
11)
learnability
graphic appearance and layout
technical requirements
intuitive efficiency
suitability for different learners and different situations
ease of use: technical and pedagogical approach
interactivity
objectiveness
sociality
motivation
added value for teaching.
These factors connect and affect each other and they are
often overlapping, too. The most central criteria in the pedagogical sense seem to be motivation, efficiency, and objectiveness (here in reference to goal-orientation of the material). According to Horila et al. [20, pp. 22—34], motivation
correlates to willingness to use material and through that to
willingness to learn. Motivation is essential in self-steering
learning. Digital learning material should awake, direct and
keep the interest of learners. Humor, concreteness, animation, music, and some kind of rewards have been regarded as
motivating features in children’s software [11, p. 258]. Horila
et al. state that efficiency also relates to the willingness to
use material. If the material is felt efficient, the willingness
to reuse material is high. Efficiency involves the feedback
about the progress of the learner. Objectiveness is always a
point of departure both in teaching and in learning. Objectives
of producers are a prerequisite for the goal orientation of the
digital learning material. Particularly in edutainment material
the objectives are not often as clearly explicated as in “traditional” digital learning material.
The usability in the sense of ease-of-use is an interesting
question within educational software. The products should be
usable enough not to frustrate learners, but they shouldn’t be
so easy to use that learners can complete tasks without fully
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engaging in the work [49]. So, it is necessary to evaluate the
usability requirement about the ease of use in relation to the
educational goals of the product. When discussing educational
digital games, the discrepancy between the traditional usability criteria and objectives of products becomes even clearer.
Games have to be challenging enough to be entertaining, in
which case their user interfaces can’t be very intuitive [23,
pp. 8—9]. This holds true in educational games, too. Cognitive
challenges and joyful experiences are difficult to provide with
a highly usable (meaning here plain, easy, and intuitive) user
interface. This also relates to the learnability of the user interface. On the one hand, a resemblance of dominant user interface standards is preferable in the user interface in the
sense that learning new things is always built on earlier learning. On the other hand, it is desirable to call into question the
existing standards because they don’t always offer the best
solutions for aimed purpose. [20, pp. 23—24]
Feedback is essential in learning but, unfortunately, it is often implemented insufficiently in edutainment material. Designing a convenient feedback system inside digital learning
material is a taxing task. Feedback should be adequate and
encouraging, and it should enable users to follow their own
learning processes. In educational games, users are often rewarded when answering correctly, and shown right answers if
making a wrong choice, but too seldom they are given explanations or background information that contribute to the
understanding the issue and its context. Especially when the
content is broad and designed to be used many times, the role
of progress reporting is salient. Feedback about learners’ action or progress has been unthinkable and irrelevant in the
educational programs of analogical television, because oneway transmission has not enabled data input from the viewers.
However, the situation is changing with a return channel of
digital television.
Within learner-centered design, scaffolding has been seen
as an important feature of educational software. Scaffolding is
a cognitive apprenticeship meant to help learners to do and
learn complex practices mindfully. Using scaffolding features
should be evident in educational software where the tasks are
complex and exploratory in nature and in which problem-solving skills are needed. These products provide that learners are
more like active constructors of knowledge than mere receivers of information. According to Quintana et al. [49], software
with embedded scaffolding features can support learners in
managing the work process, making sense of their work, and
articulating their understanding. Learners’ understanding
grows when they engage in a new domain and it is desirable
that their tools also grow or change with them. When discussing scaffolding, this means for example that supporting features should fade away when no longer needed. [49]
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In children’s educational computer games, a common problem is that children aren’t aware of the knowledge and skills
they have learned during the game-play and they aren’t able
to connect them with the knowledge and skills associated to
school work [27]. This probably relates to the distinct and specific role of the game world compared with the real world in
the sense that happenings during the game have a different
status than happenings outside the game [24, pp. 10—11]. In
any case, whether it is a game or other edutainment type in
question, it is important to get learners to understand how
knowledge and skills achieved through the edutainment material can be transferred to other contexts.
In current educational television programs it seems that
fragmented content is a common problem. It would be beneficial and motivating for the learners if at the beginning of the
program there were a short introductory about what is to expect and what are the main issues of the episode. The role of
the introductory and overall structure of the content is probably more important when the program is used as a self-learning material. In order to assist learning, educational television
programs should include coherent and structured content and
repetition of the main points.
In conclusion, general challenges concerning the educational material of digital television are,
1) to take into account knowledge and skill levels of the
learners,
2) to get them to commit themselves to the material,
3) to engage their attention,
4) to structure the educative information in a meaningful
way (utilizing audiovisual narrative expression and/or
the characteristics of hypertext),
5) to set clear educational goals,
6) to offer tools for reflective thinking of the subject matter and construction of new knowledge, and
7) to offer suitable tutoring and feedback (along the return channel).
If these challenges are overcome, there is a strong possibility
that users get meaningful and enjoyable learning experiences
through the content. Explicitly, the challenge of edutainment
is to utilize such means of entertainment, which are appropriate to the target learners, in order to enrich their learning experiences.
4.3.
Challenges for the present edutainment programs
Adults may have many external and internal obstacles in
learning. External obstacles include various matters related to
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social conditions (work, family), economic reasons, and other
leisure time activities (hobbies and friends). Internal obstacles
include cognitive and psychological (attitudes, self-confidence) reasons. Also learner’s place of residence may limit
the possibilities to take part in education. It is possible that
edutainment programs in interactive television help to decrease all the obstacles mentioned. For example, it may be
possible to follow an edutainment program even if traditional
educational programs were too difficult to follow because of
family and work pressures.
4.3.1.
How to make good edutainment programs for schools?
To be used in schools, educational material should have different properties than when used by adults. In what follows, we
give various features to be fulfilled in classroom usage. The
features are given separately for computer games and hybrid
games. Many of the features mentioned hold also for other
types of edutainment programs.
The following features should be taken into account when
one is planning (or evaluating) learnable and pleasant computer games for schools:
1) Simulations should provide pre-set scenarios (might be
used directly in the curriculum) that children could explore. The scenario support the learning of the basic
elements of game play without a long lead-in for setting up the initial scenario. If these scenarios were edited by teachers, then they could be linked to specific
teaching points.
2) Simulations must be consistent with reality and at an
appropriate level of educational accuracy. For example, if simulations are constructed by algorithms, it
must be told to teachers so they can be confident in
their use of the software in teaching.
3) Particularly in adventure games playability has to be
closely related to education so that the learner can’t
succeed in the game without learning.
McFarlane et al. [39] noted that games without obligatory
questions and answers tasks and timing were pleasant from
the pupils’ point of view. Moreover, they listed the following
general features that computer and hybrid games should have
in order to be used in classrooms [39]:
1) Saving and restarting is important because when the
lesson finishes, it is critical that the position can be the
starting point in a future session. (Saved scores of what
has been achieved would be useful also for the
teacher.) Children often work in pairs, so they must be
able to save more than one person’s name. It should
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2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
also be possible to save several class of separate restarting points, as pupils often take turns in playing a
game on the same installation.
The games should develop the tasks so that there is
clear progression overall. They should be adopted by
pupils at different ability levels).
The games should repeat practice non-identically (pupils often play sequentially and so they do not always
get exactly the same experiences).
The games should have the facility to save and restart
games where the player left off. Or alternatively the
navigation of the game may allow one to go to the
desired part of the game on start-up.
Complex and longer games should have suitable pausing
points from which pupils can continue to play in the
next class.
The games should have appropriate information to
teachers in order to enable them to integrate the game
within their lesson planning (in an easily readable handbook, for instance). For example, do business simulations behave according to an accepted model, or do the
objects racing round a track obey the laws of motion?
In other words, it would take too much time if teachers
analyzed many games.
The games should pay attention to target group’s level
in the user interfaces and avoid written or difficult instructions to children.
The games should pay attention to heterogeneous target group and school’s goals for inculcation of enlightened attitudes through education, so that there is no
negative material about race, gender, or disability.
Role of sound can’t be significant because noisy games
are distracting to non-users where games are played in
the classroom (usually they don’t have headphones).
A language teaching programs will be originally meant for
other purposes than teaching (see Appendix 2), because in
digital television it is easy to change language (both in speech
and in subtitles). There is a huge amount of material to be
used for teaching foreign languages. The system requires an
archive containing digitized movies, TV-series, documentary
films, interviews, and advertisements in which the language to
be learned is used in its normal context. The material in the
archive must be marked up. This means that the material is
augmented with metadata indicating its topic, level (difficulty
as a learning material), interesting grammatical structures,
links to supplementary material etc. With the help of the
metadata, the system can choose for each user a suitable material with respect to its topic and level of difficulty such that
the system could, for example, imitate the current use of
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videos in learning situations. It could slow down, repeat, give
subtitles, give links to supplementary material, give suitable
exercises, and check the correctness of given answers. It
could also support the interaction between learners using the
target language.
Moreover, the system could monitor the progress of learners
and give reports to the teacher. With the help of the system,
the teacher could also check how much and in which way the
learners have used the system. (See [60] for further details.) A
special challenge in the future is to make it possible to produce TV programs that allow viewers to simultaneously learn
something, each on their own level, and each being kept motivated.
4.4.
Challenges for new learners and content
Figure 5: The challenge of digi-TV-edutainment from the point of view of the new users.
WHY?
+ Reducing digital divide.
+ Reducing knowledge divide.
+ Improving position in work life.
+ Alluring to education and self-learning.
+ Integrating to society: work, social life.
+ Improvig media literacy and multi-cultural
education.
+ Lifelong education in the worklife.
GOALS
When starting to plan a new edutainment material, the first
questions to be asked are related to the goals of the material
(‘why?’), its target group (‘to whom?’), how to teach and what
kind of learning is expected (‘how?’), what is the content of
the material (‘what?’), and in what way it is handled (‘what
kind of edutainment?’). Figure 5 gives examples of these kinds
of questions and the corresponding answers starting with
‘why?’ and ‘to whom?’ questions, i.e., we first decide our
goals and target groups and then answer the rest of the questions.
TO WHOM?
+ Low educated adults.
+ Special groups: immigrants.
+ Youngsters in their spare time.
+ Participants of extension studies
organized by firms or public agents.
LEARNERS
WHAT?
+ Media literacy development.
+ Skills for adapting to the changes of
information society.
+ Occupational skills.
+ Attitudes, motivations, self courages in
change.
+ Finnish language and cultural habits.
+ Occupational skill packages and cultural
habits.
+ Tools for creating contents.
+ Cultural contents.
+ Skill packs and modules.
+ Work languages.
EDUCATIONAL CONTENT
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WHEN? WHEN?
Informal education.
Nonformal education.
Accidental learning.
HOW?
+ Experimental learning and teaching.
+ Situated learning and teaching.
+ Model learning.
+ Experimental and collaborative
learning.
+ Collaborative and modelling learning.
+ Cooperative and experimental learning.
TEACHING AND LEARNING
WHAT KIND OF EDUTAINMENT?
+ Interactive movies and role plays.
+ Simulators and role plays.
+ Traditional television programs augmented with
edutainment portions.
+ Interactive movies and role plays.
+ Simulators and role plays.
+ Educational quizzes.
+ Interactive movies with role plays.
+ Simulators and role plays.
TYPES
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The goals follow the EU’s and Finland’s aims in developing
the information society and the objects proposed in the Literacy Summit in Berlin (answers to ‘why?’ question). According
to the Summit, we need technology and information literacy
to develop our knowledge and critical thinking. These new
kinds of demands include the ability to use the new media,
like the Internet, to reach the sources of information, and to
collect, organize, filter, and evaluate information. Likewise,
we need abilities to form opinions, creative media skills to
produce and circulate contents, and social skills and responsibility to understand the social consequences of our activities.
As target groups, we chose groups that are currently left
outside the educational material (answers ‘to whom?’ questions). Such groups include low educated adults and immigrants because of their risk to be set aside of the development
of the information society. Other similar groups are youngsters
and those in working life but needing continuing education.
In a knowledge society, education and training rank among
the highest priorities. Acquiring and continuously updating a
high level of knowledge, skills and competencies is considered
a prerequisite for the personal development of all citizens and
for participation in all aspects of society from active citizenship to labour markets integration. This challenges also the
developers and designers of digi-TV edutainment material.
The edutainment material, as well as all teaching and training
material should strengthen the following skills and competencies: literacy, numeracy, new skills in the learning society,
learning-to-learn skills, and the cultural and social skills for
active citizenship. [9]
There are certain subjects that suit very well to be learned
in interactive TV. Among them are, for example, languages,
history, and social sciences. On the other hand, computers are
a better medium for natural sciences and mathematics.
The heavy investment in the provision of institution-form
education for young people, which began in Finland in the
1960s, is reflected in the extremely fast rise in the educational level of the labour force (both employed and unemployed) from the 1970s onwards. The number of highly educated persons more than doubled and the size of the labour
force with less than an upper secondary education was halved
in a good 25 years. By the mid-1990s, the supply of persons
with a tertiary level degree exceeded that of persons with a
below upper secondary education (see Table 7).
Table 7: Educational structure of the labour
force (aged 15—74) in Finland by the level
of education 1975—1997.
Level of education
1975
%
1985
%
1997
%
Below upper secondary education
62.3
42.8
27.5
Upper secondary qualification
23.1
36.3
42.4
Vocational college qualification
8.5
11.9
16.9
Lower university or polytechnic degree
3.0
4.5
5.6
Higher university degree
2.8
4.1
6.9
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However, a considerable portion of Finns can be considered
low educated adults, i.e. adults whose level of education is
below the upper secondary level. As explained above, there
are several external and internal obstacles in learning, and
the willingness to learn is lowest among low educated groups
(cf. the accumulation of information). In the case of low educated adults, internal reasons (attitudes, self-confidence) are
likely to be the most important. Proportionally, low educated
adults live more often in countryside where there are fewer
possibilities to take part in educational activities than in
towns.
There are almost 100 000 immigrants in Finland. Their unemployment rate is slowly decreasing, but it is still over 30 %.
Irrespective of their level of education, recently immigrated
are often unemployed because of their poor knowledge of the
Finnish language. The age distribution of immigrants differs
clearly of that of the original residents: the biggest groups are
men of age 30—35 years and children under school age. Many
of the immigrants have a secondary or university degree from
their homelands, but a typical level of education varies from
country to country. [59]
There are well over 300 000 Finns in the age group 15—19
years. Youngsters in their spare time use information technology (computers, the Internet, mobile phones) heavily, but
they use educational programs very little in their spare time.
Especially those youngsters who are not in school any more
are suggested to be one of the main target groups of the new
edutainment material.
Lifelong learners in the work life form the main body of the
participants of adult education. Adult education and training
refer to activities organized for the specific intention of producing learning results in adults who have, since completing or
discontinuing their studies within the school system, been employed on the labour market. A distinctive characteristic of
adult education and training is that they are specifically organized with a view to the needs and interests of adult learners. They may differ from education within the school system
in terms of the time of day when teaching is provided, as well
as in terms of the teaching methods employed. In 2000, 54 %
of Finns took part in adult education. Participation has almost
doubled in the past 20 years. [2, 13]
The willingness to take part in adult education seems to depend heavily on the earlier education — the higher the earlier
education, the more likely it is that a person takes part in
adult education [2]. According to sex and socio-economical
position, the most active group is female upper white-collar
workers (86 %) and the least active group is male pensioners
(14 %). According to sex and age, the least active groups (in
age groups 18—64) are old men (55—64 years old) and young
men (18—24 years old). In all age groups, women are more ac-
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tive than men, and moreover, women’s activity does not decrease as much as men’s in older age groups. [2]
In educational programs on analog television, as well as in
educational computer software, the emphasis has been on the
learning of an individual learner, while the Internet and interactive television stress collaborative learning. This makes the
learning process more important instead of the results, goals,
or rewards. In collaborative learning, each learner uses her
own special skills to widen the common understanding. All the
presented views, explanations, and arguments are handled
publicly and critically. This makes the knowledge visible. It is
typical for collaborative learning that the learning raises to a
higher level than the individual group members can reach.
Hence, we can speak about distributed expertise.
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5.
Ideas for program types in
digital television
In this chapter, we present program types for some of the new
target groups found in the previous chapters (youngsters, low
educated adults, immigrants, lifelong learners in the work
life, etc.) and also for the present target groups (school children in formal education, senior learners, etc.).
In digital television, a learner can profile programs to be
more suitable for her own purposes. This widens the target
groups. For example, Underwood [60] has sketched an environment for language learning using artificial intelligence,
which recognizes learner’s present knowledge and its specific
weaknesses. Hence, in digital television it is possible to tailor
contents to be more suitable for different learners, so widening the possible target groups. It would also be possible that a
single program could suit several school subjects, for example
to simultaneously learn languages, history and geography.
In the case of the present target groups (cf. Chapters 2.2,
3.2, and 3.3) the future trend in formal adult education will
be multi-form learning. In near learning and self-learning,
educational television programs will be augmented by supplementary edutainment services or properties to be added to
the present kind of entertainment programs. The present material in formal learning is based on so specific concepts that
their evolution seems to be quite obvious along with the technical development. For example, it will be unnecessary to use
electronic mail or normal mail to send assignments to the
teacher for evaluation when the return channel of interactive
television is in use.
As noticed in Chapter 4.4, edutainment could be utilized in
designing educational material for various new target groups
which have been difficult to reach with the traditional material. These groups include young people over 18 years old and
those over 16 years old and not in school, low educated
adults, immigrants, and participants of continuing education.
In this chapter, we sketch program types for all of these
groups.
Youngsters. Games, quizzes, and similar edutainment types
suit well for young learners since they are used to play games
for fun. This habit should be utilized in the educational context. Especially, young children, school children and youth
benefit quizzes. These kinds of quizzes fulfil the requirements
of educational material, provided that the questions and answer alternatives are correctly chosen and guiding feedback is
given after incorrect answers. An example of a possible appli-
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cation is a language quiz in which synonyms are searched for
given words.
Low educated adults. In the same way as quizzes and other
game-based edutainment programs could be offered to youngsters, low educated adults could benefit from another type of
traditional programs augmented with edutainment packages.
An example of such programs could be a drama series on scientists, augmented with additional information as a form of a
memory game related to the drama.
A similar idea than game-based material for youngsters
could be a series, say, on art history for low educated adult
viewers in which each separate program ends up with a quiz
requiring logical conclusions and answers augmented with additional information concerning the topics of the questions. It
is essential that the information given is not a set of separate
facts but it is connected to wider entirety. In interactive television, these edutainment quizzes could be interactive such
that the choices made by all the viewers could be shown as
various kinds of diagrams. Moreover, low educated adults
could benefit movies supporting role-play.
Immigrants. Immigrants are a heterogenous group benefiting from program types and their combinations, suitable for
other heterogeneous groups as well. For example, the narrative format suits well when learning Finnish culture.
Program types suitable for heterogeneous groups suit also
for families. For example, consider the program Saga på väg
which for children presents stories by Astrid Lindgren in their
original environment, while the adults in the family can watch
the program as a tourist guide to Skåne and Gotland, or as an
introduction to the local fauna and geography.
New technical possibilities, especially digital television,
make it possible to develop new program types also for the
target groups already reached by edutainment and other educational material. In what follows, we present a few new
program types for these groups.
A common idea in various new program types is collaborative problem-solving. The group members are introduced to
the different parts of the material to be learned. After that,
they can solve problems, for example in games, by working together. The purpose is that each group member should become acquainted with the whole material. When working in
groups, the social skills play an important role. A group can
work in the same place, making better acquaintances with
each other, and may be competing against other groups and
against a computer. A competition could stress the importance of each group member. The role of the teacher could be
to make sure that the right information is found and that the
roles of the group members are in balance.
Social interaction makes the learners to formulate their
thoughts as words, to argument their claims, and to defend
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their opinions. Each learner should have a clear role in the
group. Moreover, each group member is responsible for the
learning and development of the other members, because
knowledge is reached for the group, not only for individual
members. Also teachers, tutors, and different kinds of specialists — or even digital television as an expert system — can
take part in the co-operation. A good field plan guarantees
that each group member contributes to the benefit of the
group and that this kind of contribution is really possible for
each member.
Program types for lifelong learners in the work life. Language learning is a central part of extension studies. As already mentioned in this report, material originally meant for
other purposes can be utilized in situated language learning
environments. There is a significant demand for language programs delivered via TV. According to the EU report [16], a survey revealed that 41 % wanted more language tuition on television and another survey revealed that 28 % of men and 22 %
of women were prepared to pay for more language tuition on
television. Perhaps of all subjects, foreign language instruction can benefit from multimedia materials most obviously.
The most difficult task for instructors is to show the deep
semantic and cultural differences hidden behind dictionary
equivalents. The genuine narrative content in TV programs
helps the learners to form a deep understanding of the language to be learnt and the associated culture [37]. TV materials are usually produced by and for the native speakers and
for many language learners watching, understanding and enjoying TV and films in the foreign language can be a learning
objective itself. [35]
14
Cf. http://www.avoin.helsinki.fi/
ikis/kolmas.htm
We end this chapter by introducing a program idea of an
open learning environment for senior learners. As one can
expect, the environment is meant for informal education giving advice to the learners in their everyday needs, for example by guiding in the use of the new information technology.
The environment can also contain groups for discussion, hobbies, and voluntary work.
During the previous decades, the educational level has considerably increased in Finland. This has caused an educational
gap between the different age classes. This calls for educational equality between citizens of different ages. The proposed open learning environments could be one possibility to
reduce the gap by giving also the senior citizens opportunities
to take part in the developments of information technology.
People of “the third age” 14 devote themselves to projects that
they found interesting. Edutainment could be one potential
method when delivering the information needed in this kind of
environment.
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6.
Summary
Since edutainment material is easier to approach than traditional educational material, it can serve in reducing the digital divide at least at the national level. This means that in the
future, a special emphasis should be put in designing edutainment material for groups that are not reached by the present
educational material. These groups include, among others,
low educated adults, immigrants, and those needing extension
studies.
Television’s educational programs are often supplementary
for other educational material. Moreover, programs are often
viewed for pleasure, in passing, or for updating and recalling
existing knowledge. Educational television programs have
been linear and they are aimed at large heterogeneous audiences. On the other hand, educational computer software is
typically designed for individuals.
The use of interactive television as a new platform for educational programs can solve many of the present problems in
the use of edutainment. Edutainment of interactive television
could and should be targeted especially to learners who are
not capable or willing to use the present educational material.
When moving from analogical to digital television, the
deepest changes are in learning activities obeying constructivism, individual’s private activity, moving to collaborative
learning, and interactivity among group members. Digital television also makes collaborative learning possible by allowing
increasing interaction and a learner to profile her own learning material. Collaborative learning utilizes the social interaction in a group of learners. This could be easily applied in edutainment games. Moreover, in interactive television a learner
can profile programs to be more suitable for her own purposes
so widening the target groups.
The knowledge and skills required by work markets are continuously changing, for example, because of internationalization and the development of information technology. In adult
education, these changes will be likely to emphasize the importance of multi-form teaching, which flexibly in turn includes contact teaching, distance teaching, and self-learning
with the help of various new media. Another trend is that nonformal and informal education will be emphasized. As a consequence, we need edutainment material both in formal and in
informal education. In the future, digital media will be used
according to their suitability for the teaching event in question and, as a consequence, multi-form teaching in the media
chain will be used.
Our starting point in suggesting new concept for digital
television edutainment was the features and needs of the tar-
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get group in question. In the case of the present target
groups, the future trend in formal adult education will be
multi-form learning. In near learning and self-learning, educational television programs will be augmented by supplementary edutainment services or properties to be added to the
present kind of entertainment programs.
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Appendix 1: Educational
television programs in some countries
Nordic countries
15
http://www.ur.se/ur/frameset.html
16
http://www.nrk.no/kanal/undervisning/
skole/
17
http://www.nrk.no/kanal/undervisning/
18
http://www.nrk.no/programmer/tv/
kunnskapskanalen/
19
http://www.dr.dk/undervisning/
In other Nordic countries, the status of educational programs
closely resembles that in Finland. Educational television and
radio programs have augmented material in other media related to them.
Swedish Utbildningsradio (UR)15 has long been the leading
producer of educational material in Sweden. It has a project,
Mediebiblioteket, for storing in digital form all video, audio
and text material, which is broadcast so that they would be
available anytime for everybody.
The Norwegian television broadcasts educational material
for formal education in schools16 and in Open University17. Informal education is supported in the so-called Knowledge
channel (Kunnskapskanalen)18, which broadcasts, for example,
lectures on various topics.
In Denmark, the educational programs19 are divided into the
following topics: work, history, all-round education, children
and family, culture and media, world, programs for primary
schools, environment, and society.
Britain
20
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/
21
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/
library/health.shtml
22
http://www.granada-learning.com/
Traditionally, the British TV channels have been the leading
producers of edutainment material (although the term “edutainment” is not commonly used). For example, the educational programs produced by BBC 20 cover a really wide area,
both with respect to their topics and target groups. A good example of the width of the productions is the classification of
the programs related to medicine:21 Addiction, Allergies, Alternative Therapies, Consumer Health, Cosmetic Surgery, Dental Health, Developmental Health, Disability, Diseases and
Conditions, Emotional Health, First Aid, Fitness, Food and
Diet, Genetics, Medical Ethics, Medical Science, Mental
Health, Physiology, Sexual Health, and Reproduction.
Among the privately owned channels Granada22 is the leading edutainment producer. In addition to the programs, Granada also produces other educational material, such as computer software and CD-ROMs.
Channel 4 produces clearly less educational material that
BBC and Granada, but on the other hand, its programs seem to
use more entertaining material than the bigger companies.
The web site of Channel 4 also contains various edutainment
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23
http://www.channel4.com/learning/
games.html
games.23 A player can, for example, battle against the Spanish
Armada with the help of her knowledge on history or to rescue
the lost arc from a dangerous island.
Germany
24
http://www.dradio.de/bildung/
25
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/
0,1872,1020664,FF.html
The outstanding producers of educational material in Germany
are, for example, DeutschlandRadio24 and ZDF25.
USA
26
http://www.cnn.com/EDUCATION/
The status of educational programs on the big US commercial
channels is much more invisible than on the national channels
in Europe. However, CNN has Education section26 with programs on world events and geography, science and technology, languages, fine arts and media, world history and
government, economics and mathematics as well as health
and life skills.
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Appendix 2: Examples
of educational television programs
Kapusta: a program on the Russian language
Kapusta is a television edutainment program that familiarizes
with the basics of the Russian language. Each episode is divided into subsections that introduce Cyrillic alphabet, some
vocabulary, and phrases related to different communication
situations. Learning is supported by repeating certain expressions and phrases a couple of times during the dialogue. Closeups of the actors’ faces are common. In a subsection called
‘Kiikari’ (in English ‘Binoculars’), committing the words to
memory is assisted by showing the words simultaneously both
as a text and as a concrete object. The dialogue and story
telling of the program are humoristic in nature.
The educational goals of the program could benefit from little changes in representation. For instance, at the beginning
of each episode a short introduction to forthcoming topics
would contribute to the orientation of the learners. Likewise,
at the end of each episode a brief summary would support
piecing together the main issues of the content. Inducing
parasocial interaction (see Chapter 3.2) between the viewer
and the people in the program is based mainly on invitations
to laugh while addressing the viewer through a gaze is rare.
Carita Pintada:
an edutainment program on the Spanish language
Carita Pintada is a soap opera with Spanish subtitles for selflearning the Spanish language. As a program concept, it raises
several questions. If edutainment is based on a drama, too
strong narration may move the viewer’s attention from learning the language. Hence, the problem is to insert educational
elements, like disposition, repetition and feedback, to a ready
drama. Some authors have suggested (see [57]) that ready film
material could be used more on learning languages. This contains the same problem as Carina Pintada: how to combine
educational material and the drama?
As a partial answer to these questions, we can list some
minimal criteria for an educational program: at least weak
(implicit) interaction, at least implicit feedback, delivers information, and contains repetition.
Programs failing to fulfil these criteria can cause only accidental learning although they can be used to maintain knowledge of a language.
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Appendix 3: Examples
of educational computer software
Suomi-Seikkailu: an adventure computer game
Original producer of the game:
Monsterland (1997).
Implementation in Finnish:
Elävät Kirjat Oy.
The educational point of the game is to teach geography of
Finland. Story-wise, the goal in the game is to lead a search
for a scientist called ‘Professori’. A player has three detectives who are under her control. She directs where and how
they move and to whom they talk in different towns. The people the detectives meet in different places speak in dialects of
the Finnish language.
The primary educative content is stored in an archive where
there are short descriptions about different places and areas
in Finland. The player can also look for a certain topic in the
archive through the table of contents. The player becomes acquainted with the map of Finland (and especially with certain
towns of Finland) because the action happens mostly on the
map.
From the educative viewpoint, the main problem of the
game is the fact that the user can play the game through
without reading all the content of the information archive. In
addition, the information is not structured very well in the
sense that it includes more fractured information than thematic entities. From the standpoint of playability, the player’s
actions and moves are quite restricted. This means that she
can only select from a few predetermined alternatives what
she wants to say or where and how she wants to move next.
SimPuisto: a computer simulation
Original production: Maxis, Inc. (1997).
Editing in Finnish: Elävät Kirjat Oy.
Implementation in Finnish: Trantex Oy.
The basic idea of the game is to construct a diversiform nature park. A player acts as a park keeper who also has to
recognise different North American species. The main parts of
the application are simulation of the park, games for recognising species and voices of birds, a guidebook of the park
including information about the fauna and flora, and a map including information about the population of the park. The
package also includes a paper workbook that contains activities and exercises concerning nature.
The essential element in keeping the player amused is her
active role in creating and planning her own park. During the
game, the guide called Risto speaks to the player, gives her
advice about the game and tells some useful information
about nature. This funny character is meant to entertain the
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player but actually it seems to be more disturbing than amusing after the first performance.
Besides offering information about nature and training in
recognition of species, the educative role of the game relates
to a problem solving and conceptualization of large entities as
well as causes and effects within them. For instance, when
the player selects plants that don’t belong to the type of nature in question, they will wilt sooner or later. Or, if the food
chain in the park is incomplete, certain species can breed too
much.
Valtakunta: an interactive movie [unready]
The producers: the Faculty of Theology at
the Helsinki University and the Media Lab
at the Helsinki University of Art and Design.
The creation of the product started in
1997.
A game that introduces social, cultural and political conflicts
that happened within Hellenism, formative Judaism, emerging
Christianity and the Roman Empire during the first century. In
the game, the player encounters fictional characters who
could have lived in Palestine during the times of New Testament. A virtual reality environment consists of photographic
panoramas that have been shot in original locations in Israel.
The story includes alternative story-lines and interchangeable
narrative points of view.
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Appendix 4:
WebQuest — a net edutainment idea
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all
of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing. There are at least two levels of WebQuests that
should be distinguished from one another. The instructional
goal of a short term WebQuest is knowledge acquisition and
integration. At the end of a short term WebQuest, a learner
will have grappled with a significant amount of new information and made sense of it. A short-term WebQuest is designed
to be completed in one to three class periods.
The instructional goal of a longer term WebQuest is extending and refining knowledge. After completing a longer term
WebQuest, a learner would have analyzed a body of knowledge deeply, transformed it in some way, and demonstrated
an understanding of the material by creating something that
others can respond to, on-line or off-line. A longer term WebQuest will typically take between one week and a month in a
classroom setting.
WebQuests of either short or long duration are deliberately
designed to make the best use of a learner’s time. There is
questionable educational benefit in having learners surfing the
net without a clear task in mind, and most schools must ration
the students’ connect time severely. To achieve that efficiency and clarity of purpose, WebQuests should contain at
least the following parts:
1) An introduction that sets the stage and provides some
background information.
2) A task that is doable and interesting.
3) A set of information sources needed to complete the
task. Many of the resources are embedded in the WebQuest document itself as anchors pointing to information on the World Wide Web. Information sources might
include Web documents, experts available via e-mail or
real-time conferencing, searchable databases on the
net, and books and other documents physically available in the learner’s setting. Because pointers to resources are included, the learner is not left to wander
through webspace completely adrift.
4) A description of the process the learners should go
through for accomplishing the task. The process should
be broken out into clearly described steps.
5) Some guidance on how to organize the information acquired. This can take the form of guiding questions, or
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directions to complete organizational frameworks such
as timelines, or concept maps.
6) A conclusion that brings closure to the quest, reminds
the learners about what they’ve learned, and perhaps
encourages them to extend the experience into other
domains.
WebQuests are most likely to be group activities, although
one could imagine solo quests that might be applicable in distance education or library settings. WebQuests might be enhanced by wrapping motivational elements around the basic
structure by giving the learners a role to play (e.g., scientist,
detective, reporter), simulated personae to interact with via
e-mail, and a scenario to work within (e.g., you’ve been asked
by the Secretary General of the UN to brief him on what’s
happening in the sub-Saharan Africa this week).
WebQuests can be designed within a single discipline or
they can be interdisciplinary. Given that designing effective
interdisciplinary instruction is more of a challenge than designing for a single content area, WebQuest creators should
probably start with the latter until they are comfortable with
the format.
Longer term WebQuests can be thought about in at least
two ways: what thinking process is required to create them,
and what form they take once created.
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Appendix 5:
Usability of remote controller
For controlling a digital television, we need new controlling
operations. In a remote controller, this means new buttons. In
addition to the normal number (0—9) and arrow (up, down,
left, right) buttons and basic buttons (on/off, volume, etc.), a
NorDig remote controller must contain the following auxiliary
buttons:
• a button for accepting the choices made (OK)
• a button for returning to the previous state (Back)
• buttons for starting the navigator (Navig), supertext
television (Text-TV) and Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
• four unfixed function buttons (red, green, yellow, and
blue)
• a button for starting the default application (App).
Figure A1: A NorDig remote controller.
Also the Finnish digital television requires remote controllers obeying this standard. A schema for NorDig remote controller is shown in Figure A1.
In general, a remote controller should fulfill at least the
following usability criteria [64]:
•
•
•
•
it should fit in hand by its shape and form
similar functions should be grouped together
the form and naming of buttons should be simple
buttons should be clearly separated because buttons lying too close to each other cause errors
• buttons should be clearly raised up from the surface of
the remote controller; this makes them easier to use
than those embedded in the surface
• labeling of buttons should be understandable (technical
abbreviations or English words as labels may cause problems)
• it should contain a single button (info), from which the
user gets clear help for all operations of digital television.
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Appendix 6:
Links to edutainment products
• The Gamer’s Inn:
http://www.gamersinn.com/library/edutainment/
• Broderbund:
http://www.broderbund.com/
• Oregon Trail II:
http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej08/mr1.html
• Children Vets:
http://www.e-cdrom.com/icanbeandoc.html
• Amazon Trail II:
http://www.e-cdrom.com/amtrailiibox.html
• Yellowstone:
http://www.e-cdrom.com/exyel.html
• Soul City:
http://www.bp.com/location_rep/south_africa/
soc_investment_progs/soul_city.asp
• Hand-held computers and edutainment:
http://www.stanford.edu/~jmanus/edhand/standalone_palms/
palms_as_educational_tools.htm
• Sesame Street:
http://www.sesameworkshop.com
• Wishbone (the web site of the educational television series for elementary school-age children):
http://www.pbs.org/wishbone/
• FunBrain.com:
http://www.funbrain.com/
• Kids Web Japan:
http://www.jinjapan.org/kidsweb/index.html
• Prongo.com:
http://www.prongo.com/
• Active Worlds:
http://www.activeworlds.com/
• Walking with Dinosaurs:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/
• The WebQuest Page:
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/
• Design of Instructional Computer Simulations:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~c07w245/
• Channel 4:
http://www.channel4.com/learning/games.html
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Layout and edited by Simo Kaupinmäki