Abstract:

Teaching what has been dubbed the “Youtube” generation undoubtedly presents challenges across disciplines and subjects, however, it also presents abundant possibilities for engaging young people in exploring relevant issues through the media they are already fluent in. At Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Western Canada, sustains a stream of ‘applied’ media courses, which have, for decades, offered students the productive synergy between theory and practice. Our pedagogical approach simultaneously explores the theoretical study of critical cultural texts, and applied media work through audio and video production. In this paper Milena Droumeva and David Murphy, as researchers and teachers, speak to notions of production pedagogies as they relate specifically to multiple literacies (Kellner, 2000), a curriculum of abundance (Jardine, 2006), pedagogies of listening (Hua, 2012; Schafer, 1992) and its relevance to young people’s lived experience as ‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2001; Palfrey & Gasser, 2008). With a Media Lab archive of over 16 years of education examples, we have access to a showcase of ways in which video and audio production has been mobilized in the classroom to both scaffold and enable students to explore critical issues in culture and society (e.g. risk and health communication, aural history, multiculturalism, identity, advocacy, political engagement, etc.) in ways that supplement and transcend traditional instruction and assessment. 

One of the obvious benefits to our approach is that we control the language of identity and articulation by reversing a passive model of media consumption into an active pedagogical practice. Video and audio production gives students the control to express themselves in ways that they are more comfortable while adding legitimacy to their message. In our experience this can sometimes create a greater motivation and spur more imaginative creations than a more traditional textually-based curriculum. When students become critical and competent ‘producers’ as we encourage them to be, abundant educative possibilities open up for them to have direct impact on the social issues they are exploring. This in turn allows for the educational experience to transcend the rubric of ‘schoolwork’ and ‘assignments’ and take on meaning as legitimate material artefacts in the wider (mediated) world that we all inhabit.

This paper will outline how contemporary advances in digital media have shifted historical understandings and traditions of literacy away from the epistemological legacy of analytical thinking, objectivism and empiricism (Havelock, 1963; Ong, 1982; McLuhan, 1964) and toward emergent pedagogies that recognize that producing and consuming media underlies social and cultural relations. This is a development that utilizes tools for constituting and expressing knowledge beyond literacy, language and writing, and these tools are already in the hands of our students.

We feel that what we are describing and developing in our classrooms is part of a paradigm shift in education that is currently evolving. How knowledge is acquired, disseminated, and interpreted through digital communication technologies has reached a point where we need to respond as educators in ways that are relevant and useful to our students throughout their lives. Although we honour and respect the academic traditions and legacies we inherit, our objective is to develop curriculum and pedagogies that are part of this new paradigm.

Keywords:

Audio, Sound, Video, Media, Pedagogy, Active Learning, Soundmaking.