ANALYSIS

Key aspects of this case study are the role of expertise in choosing and participating in a learning experience, the use of multimedia in online learning, the need for built in observation and reflection, as well as the need for assessment.  

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Content Moderation is a new field that is culturally sensitive and platform specific, which means that there are almost no learning experiences specifically for this topic area. As an expert in this field, Colin looks for learning resources for transversal domains and fields, for example, critical thinking and fact checking, and frequently monitors media and industry sources so that he is aware of industry trends and concerns. He is continuously engaging his metacognitive skills, or “the ability to monitor one’s current level of understanding and decide when it is not adequate"(Bradsford et al., 2000). Once he finds a knowledge gap, he then looks for a book, webinar, workshop or online course that will help him to develop the missing skill. His main reason for engaging in learning experiences is to “be better prepared for [his] job or future jobs” (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022).  

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Colin was originally drawn to this learning experience because he could adapt fact checking skills to his current position, however, he quickly realized that he was not the intended audience of the course. According to Bradsford et al., it was his adaptive expertise that allowed him to approach his learning experience flexibly and to decide that even if the experience was not exactly what he was expecting, that it might be useful when interacting with his colleagues that do not work within content moderation (2000).  

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Simon and Glaser’s work (as cited in Bradsford et al., 2000) found that experts have conditionalized knowledge, they know in which contexts their knowledge is useful. Throughout the module, Colin assessed how what was being taught was applicable to himself and to his colleagues. He determined that most of the content was too basic to be of help in his position, but he was able to find some tools and resources that he could consult. He also assessed the module from the viewpoint of his colleagues and found that the content was too in depth for them and would take too much time to go through. He thinks that an easy to consult infographic on questions to ask yourself before sharing a news source would be more beneficial for his colleagues than a full course on fact checking (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022). 

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The types of computer-based multimedia that are typically used in education are text, audio, video, animations and diagrams (Miller, 2014). All of these were found to some extent within the module and Colin appreciated the mix of media, as well as expected it in an online course (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022). According to Miller, the videos in the module met two of the main requirements for effectiveness, as they were conversational in tone and used everyday language (2014). However, Colin thought that they were lacking in content and depth. The videos were very short, about two minutes long, and they covered very broad topic areas. 

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The module was also an example of the multimedia principle and how adding images to text produces enhanced learning (Miller, 2014). It would have been impossible to teach media literacy skills around fact checking without including specific examples of news in social media. The Poynter course made frequent use of pairing social media images with brief explanations around why they were examples of fake news. In many cases, however, Colin found that the explanations were too brief and often included terms that were either not clearly defined, or never defined (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022).  

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Incorporating multimedia into a course entails an added level of technical and user-support complexity, multimedia components are “another thing that can crash, stall or otherwise go wrong, so [instructional designers] need to make sure that they are worth the potential headaches” (Miller, 2014). Colin encountered the potential downsides of multimedia in the form of articles behind paywalls, and the majority of course content being sources that he needed to access outside of the learning platform. Constantly being taken out of the course site made the topics within the module seem separate and disjointed and going back and forth between browser tabs was inconvenient (V., personal communication, May 30, 2022). 

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The signaling principle, or visually highlighting important information so that it stands out from less critical information (Miller, 2014), was used throughout the module.