Transmedia narratives are innovative tools, aimed at supporting teaching-learning and communicative processes in the field of education.
By:
Mg. Luis Fernando Gutiérrez Cano
Mg. Luis Jorge Orcasitas Pacheco
At present, contemporary society is immersed in an irrefutable amalgam of persistent and vertiginous technological transformations, where digital media stand out, which are linked to profuse fabrics of communication and information that, in one way or another, have coerced unique forms of approach and exchange in the conventions and accesses that individuals have to access knowledge.
Teaching-learning methods have not been alien to the technological transformations that are currently being experienced and from various academic instances there is debate about the role that these technologies can play within a context with communication and information flows in incessant development.
That is why the main agents involved in the education sector have channeled their concerns in trying to clarify formulas of how media technologies manage to become viable and potential allies to provide useful educational tools, which can contribute to the optimization of pedagogical processes, both in the classroom and outside it.
What this article proposes, in allusion to the exploration of transmedia narratives as learning tools, does not have the ambition to establish itself as an absolute or definitive prototype nor to establish itself as a univocal formula to effective and strengthen education; on the contrary, the essence of the abstraction outlined here is aimed at knowing and re-knowing the implications of "trends for education" (Jenkins, 2008, p. 32). In this regard, Amador (2013) states:
"Transmedia learning" is a proposal that does not intend to become a model or a formula to make academic performance effective in schools and universities. It is, rather, the recognition of a new public-private sphere in which subjects, knowledge, practices and interests are present, which underlies the interactive cultural convergence, that is, ways of being, thinking and acting that emerge from the transit from the receiver-user to the prosumer. This transit is mediated by the participation of ordinary people in digital storytelling and interactive environments (media ecology). (p. 25).
In summary, what is intended is that some of the alternatives and facilities provided by the technological devices of the ecosystem that integrate digital media can be adopted and adapted, with an obsessive purpose: transmedia narratives and the universe of technological media that embraces them, become useful objects of learning as a stimulating and motivating factor for learners (De Grande, 2016).
Transmedia narratives and education
As Rampazzo Gambarato (2013) points out, even today there are certain uncertainties around the academic consensus of what exactly transmedia narratives, NT – transmedia storytelling, TS – mean. It can be said that until now the space of enunciation of the NT continues, in a certain way, open and expanding.
Therefore, Henry Jenkins creates a conceptual framework of the notion of transmedia narrative from the analysis of the phenomenon that provoked the film Matrix, configuring the transmedia as a narrative that "develops through multiple media platforms, and each new text makes a specific and valuable contribution to the totality" (Jenkins, 2008, p. 101). This refers to the fact that the media transcendence of a communicative narrative, such as the NT are signified and re-signified in a kind of media journey of the message, which gives a sense of experiential depth to it (comprehensive), in front of its users. This from an eminently capitalistic foundation, but is also applicable in the case that is being addressed: an object that can be applied in pedagogical processes.
For this reason, Massarolo and Mesquita (2013) consider that the increasingly omniscient presence of digital media components such as NT in current educational spaces has caused them to be aimed at a diligent search for innovative pedagogical tools that promote renewed teaching-learning models, in accordance with reality.
On the other hand, Jenkins highlights the use of NT as concrete and effective pedagogical tools, which also create a break with the educational paradigms already known since they evoke different ways of promoting education through the development of precise capacities, so that learners participate fully in the teaching-learning processes themselves and can go beyond the simple need posed by traditional education "to distribute skills and skills. knowledge necessary to train informed citizens" (Jenkins, 2008, p. 256).
However, the progression of NTs as tools (or strategies) to support educational processes can be used and applied in the perspective of collecting these particular narrative structures, prone to expand through different languages and media, for the creation and innovation of products for educators and learners.
In order to achieve the interaction and participation of these in the formulation, execution and understanding of messages (audiovisual, radio, iconic, textual, etc.), for the construction of pedagogical experiences that promote the formation of participatory communities that together, allow those same communities to discover, rediscover and solve the multiplicity of questions projected by the objects of study. In this way, academic communities are able to redefine the ratification, expansion and subjection of new knowledge, taking advantage of the virtualization facilities provided by digital media.
In short, nt are likely to offer components that are undoubtedly framed in Lévy's thesis around virtualization, as a way for the constant construction and transformation of knowledge, in order to optimize educational processes in any area, from the transversalized incorporation of elements such as the ability to differentiate, the capacity for immersion, continuity and multiplicity, extraction, construction of the environment, seriality, subjectivity from various perspectives and generation of collective content for individual consultation.
Characteristics of transmedia narrative
From the context of expansion that the media currently present, the so-called "new age of the media", where they are expanding from our needs, technology appears according to the needs that are being created and it transforms those own needs into something useful (it must be clarified that technology does not transform societies, on the contrary, society creates demands that technology will meet during the transformation.)
As mentioned at the beginning, in the already existing links of transmedia narratives with education, related uses and articulations of elements such as ICT are already concentrated, for example, applicable to the teaching processes of certain academic contents; the operation of virtual education platforms through the implementation of Learning or Management System for the development of multichannel and multimedia online courses (e-learning, b-learning and multimodal); and the implementation of virtual learning environments and objects (Amado, 2013).
However, it is also important to point out a certain degree of complexity that is immersed in the practices of transmedia narratives in education, since these also demand the creation of universes much more complex than those that can be shown by a film (Matrix case) or a television series (Lost case), since transmedia, related to education, it acquires other dimensions of what can be seen on the screen.
That is why it means and implies a more arduous work and, that also, generates new demands for involvement, commitment and immersion on the part of educators and learners, exactly because within all that context, the "traditional" educational processes that are done on a day-to-day basis, often fail to dialogue with those "publics" in the way they channel communication (remember that this dialogue only occurs when all individuals they start from the same base of linguistic and communicational structure), hence when different dialogical levels are presented , they end up surrounded by a lack of diligence, to the point that one of the parties will not understand the other.
Therefore, it is necessary to create structures and create strategies that manage to dialogue with those "public" more active and possibly more interactive and it is at this moment when a transmedia narrative emerges then as a proposal to support this path of the educational process.
Formula for transmedia application in education
Undoubtedly, it is difficult to establish a univocal formula for the application of transmedia narratives in education; however, what is clear is the existence of some parameters that are necessary and possible to structure a narrative or transmedia organization to support educational processes.
1. The first step is to clearly expose the content of the universe you want to discuss. At this point the teacher must be aware that the production that is going to be carried out must have a function beyond the "traditional", this is fundamental for the development of the different components of the universe that you want to work. Therefore, the teacher (who serves as a transmedia producer) must have the ability to understand the whole subject and how the story (product) has been created and the different contents that make up the whole.
2. In a second instance it is essential that the teacher knows, recognizes and identifies the main characteristics of his students (target audience). In the same way, it must investigate what are the languages to work, which are the spaces, the resources that this "public" has, the limitations that are had, because it is necessary, within the possibilities that are available, to select and distinguish those issues that will really meet the needs of students.
Likewise, the educator must take into account that the target audience with whom he will work collaboratively, has access to the devices, technology and infrastructure required to have the possibility of using those contents. In short, it is necessary to know the public before creating an educational structure, that what exposes them is known, that which still does not allow them accessibility at different levels (from financial issues to intellectual issues), in order to direct productions for that audience and that it has access and manages to dialogue with them, because it is feasible that certain groups are not yet suitable to consume certain content; if these elements are not available, the teacher does not gain anything by creating a type of help for the class and that no one can take advantage of it.
3. It is also necessary to plan all the means of communication and platforms that can be used. The more you can plan the different technologies, the different languages and the different means to be used, the more specific the elements of the universe that will be created. As far as possible, the teacher must articulate each of these media before starting to produce them, establishing how the media relate and do not create difficulties between them and defining the narratives and nuclei. It is important to trace the differences between the media for the universe to be told from questions such as: where do they converge and where are they independent?
Resources for creation in education
It is not a closed list; however, a priori there are technological resources that can be added within a transmedia structure and that most of these can be made with a reasonable economic investment. These are: video, animations, crossmedia material that converges at some point, DVDs, linear contents, gamified system, virtual reality and expanded reality, "traditional" written books and texts, iBook, interactive books, collaborative narratives: RPG creation structure (programming), from the collaboration of interpretation and applications for mobile devices, electronic games, neurological games. It should also be noted that these resources do not imply the replacement of face-to-face attendance and in the same way can be used in different types of education.
Aftermath
Transmedia narratives, in addition to being the most active form in the teaching-learning process, offer a responsibility for the construction of individual and collective knowledge, as well as acting in one of the aspects that is needed in the set of educational processes and is the motivation of academic communities to participate more actively in the particularities of the process.
Transmedia narratives make it possible to explore the particularities of narrative languages and what they say. The idea is that you do not learn by a single means simply, because it is clear that you learn by the composition of the different media, of the different resources, of the different audiovisual and intellectual styles.
The idea of applying transmedia narratives is that it offers the option of exploring each of its constituent elements, its composition and the convergence between them for the creation and construction of knowledge. In the same way, an approach to the issues is made from different points of view, because it is necessary to tell something from a simple narrative line, but also from those that propose several of these lines and the convergences that are established between them, that is, educators and learners will be able to make several approaches, of several contents of the same subject.
Transmedia narratives facilitate learning and collaborative work, the collective construction of knowledge through the sum of small knowledge and the baggage of individualities (if the commitment of the participants is achieved), which allow taking advantage of the specific knowledge of each subject to add, to collaborate, explore and add to the whole. It is clear, then, that transmedia narratives configure a sense of responsibility in the construction and participation in teaching-learning processes, which goes beyond the obligation of face-to-face, passivity, reception.
In short, the idea of the transmedia narrative is not to overload more content in the classroom, the idea is to give support, offer possibilities to the student so that he can get involved and the content is a much more pleasant issue. Envelopment is more subtle in that sense, but it is not a greater obligation.
Final Considerations
Transmedia is not a definitive solution in educational processes, moreover, there is still much to be done, the concept is not so horizontal therefore, the great challenge is to think and rethink collectively; for example, one of the major differences in the implementation of transmedia educational strategies is the infrastructure capacity of students.
That is why the type of resources of the students should be carefully observed: if you have computers, high-speed Internet, mobile phones, etc.; if the educational institution has the resources, if the teacher himself has the resources. The application of new narratives in education depends on the technological structure you have, also if the teacher has the resources to create content.
It is also necessary to consider the enormous difficulty that exists in teacher training specialized in this type of resources, since from the field of digital media, technologies and new languages, the presence of traditional media in teacher training courses is still timid and when there are, sometimes they are more technical courses (for example, they are asked how to record a video, but they do not involve the language of video in education or the potential of the image in education; a course that teaches how to use software but does not deal with how that software can be implemented within an educational structure). It is clear that it is still very slight in the curricula, the way to use the means within teacher training.
Finally, both planning and evaluation are also very complex actions. Many teachers have been faced with the question of how to produce different content and materials in educational processes using audiovisual resources; also, if it is feasible that the teacher can find the necessary time within the pedagogical-administrative structure established by the institutions, something that is sometimes very difficult to achieve. That is why the academic community must make the agents of the system understand that transmedia is a major issue in the contemporary educational context.
To conclude three important elements to take into account when establishing the transmedia narrative as a support to the teaching-learning processes:
1. Media convergence as a reality already configured.
2. Nts represent a more difficult issue than it seems, it is somewhat more complex.
3. Educational agents must work in the same direction of this new reality.
Mg. Luis Fernando Gutiérrez Cano. Social Communicator-Journalist (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana), Master in Education (Tecnológico de Monterrey), PhD candidate in Technological Management and Innovation (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana). Professor of the Faculty of Social Communication-Journalism of the Pontifical Bolivarian University. Coordinator of the Master's Degree in Digital Television at the Pontifical Bolivarian University. Defender of Teleantioquia Viewer. You can write to: [email protected] and [email protected]
Mg. Luis Jorge Orcasitas Pacheco. Social Communicator-Journalist (Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana), Master in Theory and Practice of Creative Documentary (Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona), Mestre en Imagem e Som (Universidade Federal de São Carlos, UFSCar). Professor-researcher Faculty of Social Communication-Journalism Pontifical Bolivarian University. Member of the Urban Communication Research Group-GICU. You can write to: [email protected] and [email protected]
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