problems in communication

problems in communication
用英语

Digital Media Communication ( DMC ), Distance Education, Multimedia,
Computer Aided Instruction ( CAI ), Higher Education.
1. INTRODUCTION
In the second half of the 20th century, the information revolution has had a tremendous impact on the every aspect of our society, that is, we are now in the information age. Today, information is communicated not only by traditional media, such as the newspaper, magazine, book, broadcast, television and so on, but also by computers and network. In later situation, information can be created and saved in computer's disk or CD-ROM disc, transmitted by network such as Internet, loaded and then read through another computer. Information being processed in computer is of digital multimedia type, from text, graphic, image to sound, animator, video and may be new media type in near future. This kind of new media can be called as digital media, and it results in a new way of communication, digital media communication (DMC).
The distance learning and education is one of the main applications of DMC witch results in a completely new way of communication between teachers and students, students and students, teachers and computers, students and computers. Therefore there are exist many new problems in this way of communication: How does it work effectively? What is the ability of information literacy today and after? How do people get information or study effectively by interacting with computer, looking at the screen and even listening to the speaker? How information can be collected, edited, organized on computer and published on Internet or CD-ROM titles [1]? In the field of digital media and network, the way people getting and exchanging information are very different from that of traditional way such as literacy, broadcast and television. The way information organized and processed in computer is also different from traditional way such as newspapers and books, broadcast and television program. In the computer and network, information is communicated through the combination and interaction of many works, such as computer and network technology, social and liberal science. Therefore, there should be two sides to establish a successful distance education system, one is the support of computer and network technology, the other is the study and application of digital media communication. When technology is developed into a relatively mature state, communication will be the key problem. In this paper, three major communication problems in distance education will be discussed. One is how information should be structured and communicated in the network; the other is how the communicator and receiver should be trained to work with the new education system; and the last is the teaching method discussion from the experiment of computer aided and distance learning in DMC education
2. THE ABILITY OF DIGIAL MEDIA LITERACY
In the communication of distance education, the ability of digital media literacy is the basic for the communicators and receivers. The fundamental literacy and culture education must be redefined according to information innovation [2]. Conventionally literacy ability is merely deal with printing materials (i.e. books) and it is exactly the "reading" and "writing" in letter meanings. But in the information age, the multipurpose representation of the multimedia information makes it impossible to use the traditional literacy to grasp or process multimedia message. So the literacy ability is developed into a new capability of the synthetic understanding of the digital media by computer and network. Digital media are becoming more and more important in social life, and this concept will also have effect on basic education. Now the literacy and cultural education should not only centralize in the language and literature scope any more, but also in a vast literature which include music, arts studies and even social research involving psychosocial effects, psychology, ethic and so on. Furthermore, students must be trained to appreciate and comprehend not only traditional literature and arts but also the fantastic mode of digital media communication as well. Some of those examples are interactive human-machine dialogue, hypertext and hypermedia application, virtual environments, etc. Only the sufficient understanding of the full scope of literature can make it possible to reveal, exploit and extend information more successfully by means of digital media and network.
Another side of digital media literacy is to make use of the computer software or equipment more craftily. Students should be guided to use computer as a basic tool to express themselves or to communicate smoothly, such as searching information via the network, communicate through the E-mail and BBS. Therefore, a good ability of computer application should be a prerequisite. The related curriculums should include computer application, the basic of database, network application and so on. Those should be for all the students in the college [3]. At the other side, the ability of Digital Media Literacy should also the basic for teachers, especial younger teachers in distance education.
3. INFORMATION STRUCTURE AND PROCESSING IN THE DISTANCE EDUCATION
The fine representation and organization of the digital media information should be the indispensable technique for communication in the distance education. In computers and network, the multimedia information will be located in the extensive context involving text, graphics, sounds, animator and video. Computer technical is the basic to process digital information, besides, media information must also be processed by combining literary and social knowledge with computer technical skill. For instance, the representations of the graphics will differ in thousands of ways, so the appropriate processing means taking the communication content, objectives, environment and effects into account synthetically. Consequently, the strong design ability together with fine grasp of communication theory will be necessary to facilitate the manipulating process of the media.
Multimedia will become the most important way of communication in distance education, so how to transmit vast and complicate multimedia information in an efficient and effective way is an important research topic of communication. Courses will be put on the network as a form of multimedia project or courseware. The process procedure of a multimedia courseware consist of following steps [4]:
1. Chose the topic of the project and write a scripts according to the goal of communication.
2. Gather and arrange various multimedia materials according to the topic.
3. Design the logic and structure of the information representation, that is, the flowchart.
4. Design the storyboard or screen graphic effect, and then process the digital media material to match with the topic, structure and storyboard exactly.
5. Synthesize and integrate various media information in the form of computer software and then publish it on the Internet or on CD-ROM title.
The ability of integrating the computer application and social science well will be embodied in this process. To develop a excellent courseware for distance education, it's required that the developers not only understand the content of the course and the teaching method, but also obtain the ability of digital media communication synthetically and effectively [5]. Therefor, there should be a new field of digital media study and curriculums in the college to educate the special software developers who major in the computer application and digital media communication [3].
4. COMPUTER AIDED AND DISTANCE LEARNING IN DMC EDUCATION
The new Communication Department of Tsinghua University is on the base of the science and technological communication section and a communication laboratory in Social and Humanities School. We have DMC study and courses for several years and the main emphasis is to combine computer technology with the art, literature and communication study very tightly. The courses are designed to teach the students using the newest computer technology to communicate digital media information.
To fit the innovation of the education structure, the reformation of teaching method is also required. Due to the quickly development of the information technologies, the content of education may always lag behind the actual need of the society. For example, the innovation period of hardware and software can nearly calculated by months. In this situation, students and teachers must be of ability of using the newest technologies in stead of merely grasping some specific computer or software application. As the result, the object of the education must be transferred from "college education" to "ability education". This requirement will also be materialized in the optimization of the educational ingredients and methods. The traditional education method emphasizes the class instruction, where teacher is the center of the class and students accept the knowledge passively. This situation came from the restriction of education ideology and teaching condition. In the new DMC education circumstance, we have tried to shift the stress of the instruction from classroom to DMC laboratory, and multipurpose education mode has been used in teaching.
4.1. In Class Instruction
In class instruction still exists where teacher serves as the central part. But instead of the instilling the whole available knowledge to students, the instruction is the basic explanation and summarization of the theory and concept. According to the instruction, experiment is designed in which the students can work on computer in the communication laboratory. This will help students to grasp the course requirement easily and quickly.
4.2. The Use of the Communication Laboratory
Modern facility of the communication laboratory can enhance the instruction greatly. Multimedia is of the advantage of fine combination of text, graphics and more interesting interactive environment, so it will inevitably developed to be the ideal instruction tool. Multimedia technology will be both the study object and the study tool in DMC education. One of the applications of multimedia instruction is the combination of teacher's instruction with multimedia demonstration, so as to give the students the most direct vision impression and result in good understanding. There are two kinds of demonstration, the first one is using large screen or computer projectors to interpret the teaching contents or analyze the design effects. Another way is to combine teacher's lecture with student self-demonstration, that is, while teacher instructing the course the students could manipulate the computer simultaneously. In later way, a good courseware or web page should be developed according to the content. Because the innovation and upgrading speed of the computer application is fairly faster than curriculum renew speed, the computer demonstration can also bring the newest achievements to the classroom. The modeling of the courseware is focusing on interactive instruction environment and abundant helpful material. Excellent courseware has a very good effect on stimulating the students' interests and activities. The student can select the learning content and control the learning speed by himself/herself, and get real-time feedback from computer.
4.3. Long Distance Learning
Furthermore, the application of long distance learning can break traditional barriers of class and school and offer learners some form of spatial and temporal freedom. Students can also tailor their study schedule to situate their own cases. With the popularization of the computer and network, more and more students can study at home or in college's open laboratory, consequently the flexibility and creativity of the study will be improved. Because a developing period of time is needed for a good courseware, at least course syllabus can be designed into a web page and put on the Internet. At beginning of the semester, students can make a survey of the course they may want to select through the computer course selection system in advance. They can also self-study under the guidelines of the syllabus information which will be changed and improved timely according to the study tenor. Through the Internet, student can also follow the course instruction to search the relevant material by the World Wide Web and take hold of the information abreast of the times. Teachers can prepare and renew the syllabus web page and can communicate with students at any moment. Network education can also enhance the cooperation between the students and make E-mail a new way for students to submit homework, discuss problems, and inquire questions. In this education environment, the student's ability of digital media literacy can also be improved gradually. Applying the DMC technology into the both study and application will help the students create good collaborative habits and benefit from a harmonic research environment.
In our teaching experiment, the best way is to combine several ways together. Firstly, an elaborately developed web page of the course should be developed gradually. Now the web page is the most effective way for distance learning, but local network or Intranet is also useful for some very large software including video information. The web page should include the basic information about the course, the useful and possible materials located in the Internet, the syllabus or more detail information about each chapter and the ways the students should sent their homework and so on. The web page can be renewed during the course semester and the student's homework can also be added to the web page quickly. Secondly, the classroom and laboratory should be combined together, where the teacher give lecture while the students could self-control the computer, or the students work by themselves via the web page or courseware. In this way, each student will be the center of his/her study. He/she could study the web page at our classroom, at home, or at open laboratory of college. He/she could get more information from Internet, other students and teacher. Everyone can communicate with other students or teacher more freely. This way of education has been used in the courses of Database application, Electronic Publication and Multimedia Application, Multimedia Projects Design. The courseware could be navigated on our web site http://166.111.107.2 .
5. CONCLUSIONS
We are facing an information age full of challenge and opportunities. Computer aided and Distance education is a completely new field for today's communication and education, and it undoubtedly will be an important method to improve students' information communication ability and consciousness. Correspondingly, the fast development of information also requires the teachers to grasp the newest achievements and apply them into education in a differentiated, fast and efficient way. In the field of DMC, it's multidisciplinary features require teachers to have broad knowledge structure and high comprehensive quality especially in humanities, social sciences, literature and arts in order to train the top-quality persons in the development of distance education system.
The support of advanced media equipment and a cooperative laboratory environment are indispensable factors to the construction and development of DMC study and distance education. In this circumstance, the researchers majoring in different field such as computer science, communication, telecommunication, advertising design and vision arts can learn from others and create a cooperative working space. This trend will also put forward some new problems in both the education funds securing, teaching management and the education structures and methods. We have already made some effort to discuss research issues that may help us to settle these problems, but there is a long way to go for the reformation.