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Developing a media centre : a study of the development of the Instructional Media Centre, Canberra College of Advanced Education

The Instructional Media Centre at the Canberra College of Advanced
Education has been developed in the belief that teaching and
learning are performing arts - particularly when they take
place together - and that they are greatly enhanced by an understanding,
and appropriate use, of the media.
This Centre was established to provide media services to the
whole College, and to teach media courses in its School of
Teacher Education. Its development entailed the procurement
of equipment, the employment of staff, the organization of
administrative procedures, the devising of courses, the production
of materials, and later the design of a building to house the
operation.
In the absence of any comprehensive, coherent and cogent theory
this development was essentially pragmatic. Factors such as
the availability of money and material resources determined
its lower limits; the skills and beliefs of the people involved
its upper limits.
Designing, producing and delivering media materials, teaching,
and evaluating the outcomes of those activities are however
susceptible to theoretical examination, if not completely to
prediction and control. Media producers, managers, teachers
and students require an artistry that goes beyond theoretical
insight and technical competence. Traditional theoretical
frameworks have not adequately encompassed this quality.
The study examines the development of this Centre and the complex
of factors which have influenced it, in the light of the available
theories. It pays particular attention to the ways in which
theory informs practice in each of the Centre's areas of
activity, and also to the personal preferences and attitudes
of the people involved. Educational media is seen as a field
governed more by convention than by formula. Its unpredictable
and uncontrollable aspects are seen as signs of its artistry.
And artists have ultimately to be left to their own devices
and their own genius.
Perhaps the most important outcome of the study is that it
translates some knowledge from someone's head to a more objective
and accessible form of record.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219224
Date January 1977
CreatorsMorgan, Frank, n/a
PublisherUniversity of Canberra. Teacher Education
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Rights), Copyright Frank Morgan

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