Title: Medium as frame: comparing mobile audio and video interactions in informal learning contexts

Authors: Brett Oppegaard; Michael Rabby

Addresses: School of Communications, University of Hawaii, 550 Campus Road, Crawford 330, Honolulu, 96822-2217 HI, Hawaii ' The Creative Media and Digital Culture Program, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 N.E. Salmon Creek Drive, Vancouver, 98686 WA, USA

Abstract: Concept-driven interaction design opens new pathways for research of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in educational contexts, between the particulars of a case study and the abstractions of theory. Explorative research in this project tested foundational theoretical ideas, such as medium specificity, through concrete designs in an authentic setting. During these separate but similar procedures, conducted a year apart, ordinary users were given representative tasks on mobile devices in order to examine the levels of involvement, social facilitation, and satisfaction generated by differing media forms within the mobile delivery system. From this perspective, direct comparisons could be made, for example, between audio and video forms. Enabling such comparisons has grown in importance with the advent of mobile and other convergent technologies that blend mediums to bring together media organisms to comingle. In the case of a smartphone, for example, mobile media designers now can choose which medium (text, audio, video, animation, etc.) they want to use within their master medium, which adds to the complexity of the design endeavour but also to the potential for new integrated and interactive forms to emerge as well as for more mindful context-tailored solutions.

Keywords: medium specificity; medium studies; mobile media; information and communications technology; ICT; information technology; smartphones; audio-video comparison; user involvement; social facilitation; user satisfaction; medium layering; mobile audio interaction; mobile video interaction; informal learning; mobile devices.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLT.2016.081711

International Journal of Learning Technology, 2016 Vol.11 No.4, pp.302 - 322

Published online: 22 Jan 2017 *

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