Multimedia educational resource as an example of a polymorphic educational hypertext in the post-literacy era

Nowadays, in a conditions of the contemporary culture, which is

called a culture of the information society from the point of view of technical

and technological foundations of culture, and the culture of the consumer

society in terms of relations between subjects of culture and cultural

phenomena, the system of reading in general, as a social institution, has a

grate cultural and pedagogical transformations.

Internet is a multimedia superhighway (according to M. Kastels) 1, it is

at the same time the conductor and the source of information, and it also

puts tprofessors and students in new educational conditions and needs of

their joint response to the technological challenges of modernity.

Every professor knows today that students "do not read", but the

students in the humanities, as it always is in the universities, it is necessary

to teach, they should acquire useful knowledge and various skills and the

need for professional and social life skills.

On the surface the problem that students «don’t like to read» (or post-

litaracy)2, looks like the total non-literacy of the computers era generation,

but if we look at it attentively from the point of view of cultural studies

analysis we can see quite different substantive phenomena. In one of the

previous article M. Goodova wrote: «Post-literacy – is one of the form of

cultural and historical forms of literacy, including each of the preceding

forms. To be literate today means to owing all forms of writing and reading

demanding in today’s culture and civilization. A modern civilized person

step by step studies to read and to transmit information originally in

1 Кастельс М. Информационная эпоха: экономика, общество и культура \\ http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/Polit/kastel/05.php

2 Маклюэн. М. Галактика Гуттенберга: Становление человека печатающего / Перевод И.О. Тюриной. – М.: Академический проект: Фонд «Мир», 2005. – 496 с. – («Концепции»)

pictures, then – in conventional signs and symbols, and, finally, through a

coherent and complexly written text. This person, from one side,

consistently passes all stages of literacy development in the culture – from

pictographs to books, and from the other side, also consistently prepares

for mastering computer literacy, the main condition of this is mastering

pictographic, symbolic and alphabetic writing»3.

In a new educational conditions of post-literacy it’s not clear whose

task is more complex: the task of students, who perceive post-literacy

situation and Internet as something quasi-natural in their lives, or

professors, who remembers very well times where there were no problems

with reading, and they relate to possibilities which gives Internet with a

grate apprehension. In the perceptions of many professors, Internet is the

technology, which gives only minimal result in a terms of traditional

educational strategies: all this knowledge that professor was producing with

many years labor and would have liked to transfer, a student may very

easy to download.

This contradiction we can solve only if we recognize that modern

students reading has many levels, and that there are a morphological

diversity of the texts which modern information culture gives us in the

consumer society.

In a conditions of free access to the Internet in a process of education

more and more resources of electronic reading are permeate, although still

there are traditional paper-based sources of reading, giving the opportunity

for a peaceful, slow reading.

3 Гудова М.Ю. Постграмотность как массовый социокультурный эффект.// Теория и практика общественного развития, № 5,2012 // teoria-practica.ru/5-2012/culture/gudova.pdf

Гудова М.Ю. Постграмотность как актуальная проблема современной культуры.// Образование и наука. Известия УрО РАО, № 9(88) Журнал теоретических и прикладных исследований. Ноябрь, 2011 , С. 69-78. // //http://urorao.rsvpu.ru/filedirectory/155/2011_09_N88.pdf

These are all kinds of electronic educational resources, digital

libraries, electronic databases, electronic magazines, etc. As a result of this

process the most part of studying time takes electronic reading. This is

on-line reading, when students read text on-line, and also off-line reading,

when they read already downloaded texts.

A very common type of reading today becomes audio-reading,

especially for foreign languages studies, when on the base of this type of

reading assimilate phonetics, lexica, syntaxes and morphology. In a

modern conditions students audio-reading is possible on any gadgets.

More radical way of student’s reading is so-called mobile reading –

this is a reading on-line on mobiles screens which have connection with

Internet.

At the lesson on-line reading is fast reading, sometimes during

preparation for writing or oral exercise in the classroom. In this last case

learning reading turns into a search-reading or viewing-reading but this is

not enough for full-time studying process4.

From the point of view of technological civilisation this approach is

advanced, but in university’s educational practice there is an urgent need

to generate at technically well-equipped students of humanitarian and

socio-political sciences need to read slowly, with interpretation, pondering

in incorporated in the text codes, to understand that the process of reading

is a serious mental and intellectual effort.

We think that the task should be comparable with the possibilities and

needs of the modern generation of students.

Constantly communicating in a social networks, today’s students

acquire skills of reading different media-texts, such as traditional verbal and

visual texts: for example, photos and illustrations; such as traditional visual

4 Гудова М.Ю. Постграмотность и современное учебное чтение: историко-культурный подход // Приволжский научный вестник, № № 5 (9). – С. 86–91. // http://icnp.ru/archive-pnv-n9

and graphic texts: maps, charts, graphics, labels. Actively communicating

in a social networks students acquire skills in a reading of hypertext: audio-

and video-fragments, banners, texts which contain hyperlinks. Practically

“living in Internet” students polish their skills of reading polymorphic

multimedia texts of the modern culture. That’s why professors in

humanitarian areas should appeal to these skills and needs.

Educational texts for students have to be now as complexly

organizing and multimedia hypertexts, which make the processes of

reading more and more complex, and they should bring elements of game

in this process, like through a labyrinth where each of the part of the text is

hidden behind a twist. In this type of reading appears intrigue, and it

becomes an intellectual adventure.

As a rule, professors in humanities have accumulated in their

pedagogical activity different types of texts: verbal and audio-texts of

lectures, additional texts of studying materials, musical-, art- or cinema

materials, tests and so on. But in the past, in pre-media culture, to use the

diversity of these texts during the lessons had to carry a lot of technical

devises: TV, video VHS, audio centre, film projector and so on. Today, in

digital multimedia era, for technical support of the studying process we

need only computer with Internet and multimedia text which contains all

types of didactic, illustrative and control materials.

This complex logistical problem can solve a creation of educational

multimedia interactive recourses with different types of courses: special,

optional, mandatory etc.

For creation of educational multimedia and interactive resources

professors need to raise the level of computer literacy, which lets to work

and to use programs allowing to download all materials and texts.

Educational multimedia resources, generally, apply on a special

university’s website5 и and they are open not only for students and

5 Основы эстетики и этики. // http://media.ls.urfu.ru/start/

professors of this university, but for all people who are interesting in a

problems of history of culture and modern society.

Posted in resource not only lectures and textbook’s texts, but also

articles and current publications professors and post-graduate students in

Russian and English, creators of this resource can consolidate around it

imaginary “humanitarian society” and promote university in Internet. Due to

resource it’s possible to organize the discussion of different questions of

modern culture and provocative texts of humanitarian theories.

Multimedia content is easy perceived and emotionally attractive

because using materials are not only illustrating the main ideas, but also

complement the theoretical view on a problems. Also the use of

morphologically different texts lets make cases more varied and complex

than cases made in traditional verbal form6.

This type of courses should be interactive, it means that professors or

students directly have to create and accommodate in resource the best

research and control works, such as essays, presentations, cases, articles,

reviews, which were made student individually or in groups.

Such interaction of professors and students makes resource “alive”,

reflecting the real student’s vision of problems in humanitarian area and

real intellectual level of these students. The uploading different types of

student’s works on resource is motivate the students to make them more

creative, and helps professor quickly update content from one lesson to the

other.

It is very important that students have possibility to assimilate

intellectual content of resource, if it is necessary, independently or remotely

without loosing the real connections with educational process, in spite of

the various circumstances of life. Students can upload their works

6 Гудова М.Ю., Лисовец И.М., Рубцова Е.В. ММИР в эпоху постграмотности // Новые образовательные технологии в вузе (НОТВ -2013). Материалы Х Международной научно-методической конференции. (06-08 февраля 2013). Екатеринбург, УрФУ, 2013. // http://media.ls.urfu.ru/notv/818/1839/

themselves not only in a classroom, but also from any social networks,

such as, for example, VK or Facebook.

The result of the introduction of educational multimedia resource is

concentration of educational and scientific material, which is enough for

mastering any type of humanitarian course from any time and any

computer with Internet access. Availability of educational multimedia

resource gives an opportunity for students and professors interactive

communication and joint filling of the content.

When we use educational multimedia resource in a studying process,

students became more interesting in achieving high educational and

research results, because their intellectual product, published in resource,

is open for viewing and assessing any visitor.

The most important thing in a functioning of resource is that it decides

the problem of monologue and the monotony of the educational process,

which is one of the characteristics of the traditional educational strategy.

Thanks to the new multimedia educational technology studying

process becomes more variable and more polymorphic because of the

different format of the texts. And it is more variable also because of a new

ways of filling of the texts and new ways of organization of discussion.

Resource, which functions in Internet, may be easy editing by

professor new parts and topics connecting with previous, parallel or future

courses.

Generalizing the practice of creation and implementing educational

multimedia interactive resources, we can say the following: teaching in

post-literacy time – this is a process when professor upload his/her lecture

in Internet, before he/she came to teach, and students checked on their

gadgets polymorphic hypertext connecting with the problem and then came

to seminar to discuss them.