Journal Entry # 7

Measuring the Acquisition of Media Literacy Skills

Why did the authors do this study?
The authors wanted to determine if Media-Literacy Instruction would improve students comprehension skills, writing skills, and analysis skills between print, audio, and video forms.


How did the authors do the study?
The study was conducted for the course of one year with 11th grade media/communication teachers and students. To have a local comparison the authors chose a school about 50 miles away from the treated school. There were many differences between size, race, and other key factors - making this a Quasi-experimental design. Students were exposed to reading a print news magazine
article, listening to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) audio news commentary, and viewing a television news segment targeted at teenagers. Each of the skills was measured using these mediums. Comprehensions skills were measured through written responses and open ended questions. Writing skills were measured through the open ended question response text (word count, quality, spelling/grammar errors. Analysis skills were measured with both open ended questions and checklist items to see if students could identify purpose, target audience, construction techniques, values and point of view, omitted information,and comparison-contrast.

What data/results emerged from the study?
The treatment group had higher reading comprehension skills than the control group.
The students in the control group had higher listening skills than the treatment group.
There were significant differences between the control group and treatment group in the ability to identify main idea from video, but no differences in other details.
Students in the treatment group wrote longer paragraphs that those in the control group.
There were significant differences between the control group and treatment group in analysis skills.

Overall Conclusion
The students in the treatment group were better able to complete the tasks. As quoted from the text "The students ability to identify main ideas demonstrated improvement in reading comprehension skills. Longer paragraphs and fewer spelling errors are signs of continuing development in writing skills."

What do the authors conclude from the data analysis?
The authors discovered that media comprehension literacy can increase students comprehension skills, writing skills, analysis skills, and overall literacy skills.

As quoted from text

"This study finds that students who received
media-literacy instruction were more likely to
recognize the complex blurring of information,
entertainment, and economics that are present in
contemporary nonfiction media. Students who received
media-literacy instruction appeared to have a
more nuanced understanding of interpreting textual
evidence in different media formats to identify an
author’s multiple purposes and intended target audiences."

What is the significance of the study?
This study shows that teachers/educators should not fear teaching students how to media literate. Just because we teach our students how to media literate does not mean that we are devaluing print or even trying to eliminate it. We are finding additional ways of helping out students grasp a deeper understanding through the power of increasing their literacy skills. Print will also be a part of literacy, we are just in the process of adding some other types of forms.

How do these findings influence your position on media literacy and school curriculum?
I think that this study shows educators the importance and benefit of teaching media literacy in the school systems. The students learn more and are more motivated through the use of media, so why shouldn't we use it as an instructional aid?