21ABOUT CAMPUS / MARCH–APRIL 2007

THINKING VISUALLY: USING VISUAL MEDIA IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM

By Barbara F.Tobolowsky

Getting through to students in the classroom continues to be one of the great mysteries of an educator’s

life.What will capture their attention, and, more important, what will transform their thinking? Film

industry veteran and educator Barbara Tobolowsky returned to her roots in visual media to find answers.

AFEW YEARS AGO, as a new professional ona new campus, I was asked to teach a first-yearseminar. I must admit that I found the prospect

daunting. I believed that teaching an extended orienta-tion course that focused on adjustment issues wouldrequire very different skills from those I had developedin the traditional academic culture of graduate school.As I obsessed over how totackle this unique class, Irealized that I had two sup-ports that would help meproceed: theory and visualmedia. Let me explain.

Though new to thiscourse, I had enough teach-ing experience to knowthat all students are not thesame. This is particularlytrue of first-year students,who arrive on college cam-puses with different levels ofcollege preparation, differ-ent expectations, different levels and kinds of support, anddifferent challenges. Recognizing this fact, I pulled outmy old texts and found myself re-reading David Kolb’stheory of learning styles.

Kolb identified four primary learning styles, eachassociated with a specific type of learner.The four cate-gories are convergers, divergers, assimilators, and accom-modators. Convergers prefer concrete things.They aregood problem solvers and don’t like ambiguity.Theselearners like discussion, particularly if there is a direction

and a goal associated with it. Divergers, on the otherhand, are very people-oriented.They tend to be creativeand imaginative, and they see a range of options.Theylike brainstorming and relating information to personalexperiences, so novel pedagogical approaches thatrequire them to be reflective are ideal for them. Assimi-

lators are excited by ideas more than by people.They liketo be challenged to think.They tend to like to makesense of something afterbeing exposed to a widerange of perspectives.Theselearners like discussionsfocusing on concepts andideas. Accommodators aredoers. They like takingchances and seeing thingsthrough. They prefer trialand error and are good atadapting to new conditions.Deanna Forney notes, inUsing Entertainment Media in

Student Affairs Teaching and Practice, that accommodatorsrespond well to case studies and small-group discussions.These four learning styles exist on two continua fromactive to reflective and from concrete to abstract.There-fore, it is important to create classroom experiences thatengage learners across these continua. Patricia Jensen andDavid Kolb note that conversations that allow feelings aswell as ideas are likely to engage all learners.

With theory now in hand, I turned to my secondsupport, visual media. In the interest of full disclosure, I

INpractice

STUDENTS BEGAN BY DISCUSSING

THE TECHNICAL ASPECTS

AND ENDED UP

DISCUSSING THEMSELVES.

22ABOUT CAMPUS / MARCH–APRIL 2007

must admit that using visual media comes very naturallyto me. Prior to my current career as an educator, I stud-ied film and worked in the film business.Therefore, rec-ognizing the power of visual media to convey messagesis second nature to me. For example, as a teaching assis-tant in an Introduction to Film course many years ago,I had the students discuss the films they viewed in class.I asked them look beyond their immediate reactions todiscover how the filmmakers affected an audience’s reac-tion. On a basic level, they needed to deconstruct theelements of the film (for example, script, camera move-ment, lighting, focus, music, costumes) to see how eachcontributed to the film’s affect or effect.The best feed-back I got from this method was when one student toldme that I had ruined movies for him. He could nolonger passively watch a film as he had in the past; now,he was an active viewer, analyzing each frame as hewatched. By the end of that class, I witnessed studentsspeaking about film in adeeper, more complex way.

Now, flash forward tomy current situation withnew students, a new cam-pus, and a new course.Almost immediately, I rec-ognized that visual media,once again, could be thekey to opening up my stu-dents’ thinking. I toyed withthe idea of using mediaother than film or televi-sion. Many recent novels(for example, I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, Moo

by Jane Smiley, and Straight Man by Richard Russo) rep-resented life on American college campuses; however, Idid not think that they were ideal for this setting. I feltthat new students were not as comfortable talking aboutbooks as they were about films or television. I believedthat students regularly talked about recent movies or tele-vision shows with friends but that books were identified(unfortunately) as belonging to the domain of the class-room.This view might hinder discussion rather thanencourage it.Also, the length of a book meant that wecould probably read only one or two during the semes-ter, which would limit the number of topics and view-

points to which the students could be exposed. Film andtelevision were more flexible, immediate, and familiar, sostudents would be more engaged.

Furthermore, film and television have, with someregularity, turned their attention to representing the lifeof college students.As educators, we may take issue withthe content conveyed in these entertainments (forexample, in National Lampoon’s Animal House, Higher

Learning, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Felicity); neverthe-less, they cover a wide range of topics and perspectiveson the college experience. In addition, using these visualmedia constitutes a novel classroom approach thatencourages discussion, critique, and personal reflection,which is ideal for engaging all learners.

ISTARTED MY CLASS by showing scenes from Felic-

ity, a series that focuses exclusively on its protagonist’scollege experience from the first year of college to grad-

uation, and by showing acampus-produced videocalled 720 Minutes at USC,

which was created as arecruitment tool for theUniversity of South Car-olina. These video clipsserved two primary pur-poses: exploration of adjust-ment issues and explorationof expectations.The Felicity

clip mirrored the issues mystudents were facing in theirfirst year, thus providing

them an avenue for discussion of their own adjustmentconcerns. 720 Minutes at USC offered a very specificglimpse into our campus and allowed us to untangle thenotion of expectations and how visual media can con-tribute to the formation of expectations. In addition, therewas a third benefit to using these clips. I felt that withoutthese examples, students would have been hesitant to talkabout personal issues with the class, which at this pointwas a group of relative strangers.The conversation aboutthe videos allowed the students to begin to break downsome of the barriers between classmates and relieve someof their anxieties.

I used the Felicity clip first to encourage the studentsto discuss their adjustment to college life. It is importantto remember that not all students respond in the sameway; I certainly experienced that in my classroom. Stu-dents who preferred sticking with facts (convergers) mayhave felt less interested in the aspects of the discussionthat dealt with feelings, but they seemed to enjoy dis-secting the scene and how the fictional students wereportrayed.The more people-oriented students (diverg-

CONVERSATIONS THAT ALLOW

FEELINGS AS WELL AS IDEAS ARE

LIKELY TO ENGAGE ALL LEARNERS.

Barbara F. Tobolowsky is associate director of the NationalResource Center for The First-Year Experience and Studentsin Transition and clinical assistant professor in the Departmentof Educational Leadership and Policies at the University ofSouth Carolina. Her e-mail address is barbarat@gwm.sc.edu.

We love feedback. Send letters to executive editor MarciaBaxter Magolda (aboutcampus@muohio.edu), and pleasecopy her on notes to authors.

23ABOUT CAMPUS / MARCH–APRIL 2007

ers) responded to the feelings of the characters ratherthan the technical aspects of the production, such as edit-ing, writing, lighting, or music. Divergers were the oneswho linked the fictionalized stories to their own expe-riences. Students who enjoyed thinking through ideas(assimilators) sparked to exploring the intentions of thescene—what ideas were being expressed and how thecreators of the series depicted those ideas in ways thatwent beyond just dialogue.The assimilators wanted todig deeper. Finally, some students, the accommodators,seemed to just like this new pedagogical approach, tend-ing to be the first to speakand engage in the exercise.

With students re-sponding in different waysto the material, it was crit-ical that I welcome allcomments, regardless oftheir orientation. It wasalso important to not letone person dominate thediscussion. If a person whoresponded only to ideasdominated, the feeling stu-dents’ eyes would glazeover. Likewise, if the “feel-ers” dominated, then Imight lose the thinkers. Iattempted to avoid a one-sided discussion by callingon the quieter students toshare their insights, and I tried to keep the discussionmoving by having all views presented.

I used 720 Minutes at USC to explore the conceptof expectations and how they can affect the collegeexperience.This fast-paced video cleverly depicts twelvehours in the life of a group of college students as theywake up, rush to class, meet with peers, talk to profes-sors, and return to their residence halls to eat and studyat the end of the day.After I played the tape for my first-year students, I asked them how our campus wasdepicted.They started talking about very basic elementsof the video, such as where the students lived and wherethey had classes, but quickly shifted to discussing howthe production elements (such as editing, music, visuals,and dialogue) created a view of the University of SouthCarolina.This discussion led to a number of other top-ics:What expectations did the video create in viewers?How did their own experiences compare to what theysaw on the video? Soon, we were talking about theirexpectations about college and how those were differ-ent from what students actually experienced.The videoseemed to offer students in the class an easy way to talkabout adjustment because the discussion was not ini-

tially personal. Students began by talking about thetechnical aspects and ended up discussing themselves.After the class meetings, the students wrote reflectionpapers.Their reflections tended to focus on how theclass offered them a safe place to be themselves. I alsosaw that the films allowed conversations to take place,which, in turn, allowed students to feel at home. Filmsand videos provided the material to create that haven.

THROUGHOUT THE SEMESTER, I used videoclips to discuss a range of topics, such as feeling

overwhelmed about startingcollege (Buffy the Vampire

Slayer, Undeclared); alcoholand partying (Buffy the Vam-

pire Slayer; Sabrina, the

Teenage Witch); diversity (Boy

Meets World, Higher Learn-

ing); test-taking anxiety(Felicity, Boy Meets World);and student-faculty interac-tions (Moesha, Felicity). Infact, television and filmwere rich with examples ontopics I wanted to address. Ifelt that the approach wasworking, because I sensedexcitement at the beginningof each class as the studentsanticipated what I wouldshow. The groans, laughs,

and cheers when I introduced a clip seemed to getlouder each week as the students got used to watchingvideo clips as an introduction to whatever topic was tobe discussed.

After watching and analyzing videos throughout thecourse, the students, for one of their final assignments,were asked to select any film set on a college campus,write a three-to-five-page paper, and then present theirfindings to the class.The paper included three parts: (a)a brief plot summary, (b) a summary of how college wasdepicted in the film, and (c) an analysis of how the film’srepresentation was like or unlike their own college expe-riences. I wanted the students to be able to make theconnections between the story, the way the story wastold, and their own experiences.The students said theyenjoyed being able to choose their own film, and insome cases, they surprised me a bit with their racychoices (for example, Road Trip and National Lampoon’s

Van Wilder). I was introduced to some films that I con-tinue to use in the classroom, and I discovered that eventhe most sophomoric films provide very provocative andpowerful messages about college. I learned a lot from mystudents’ choices, and I believe that the students also

THE RICHNESS OF MY STUDENTS’

PAPERS PROVED TO ME THAT THE

FILMS AND VIDEOS HAD ENGAGED

ALL OF THEM, REGARDLESS OF

THEIR LEARNING PREFERENCES,

AND PUSHED THEM TO USE AND

DEVELOP THEIR ANALYTIC SKILLS.

24ABOUT CAMPUS / JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2007

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learned something: how to think analytically (which wasone of my primary course objectives). I saw that manyof the students could now provide a more detailed filmsummary than they did in early class sessions. I read morethoughtful explanations ofhow the college experiencewas depicted in a film.Allof the students, not just thedivergers, seemed able toaccess their own experi-ences more easily in laterpapers than they had beenable to early in the term.The richness of theirpapers proved to me thatthe films and videos hadengaged all of the students,regardless of their learningpreferences, and pushedthem to use and developtheir analytic skills.

At the end of the course, students turned in all theirwritten work in a portfolio and wrote a final reflectionpaper that summed up their experience in the class. Somestudents were able to see their development over thesemester. Most took with them a deeper understandingof the college experience. One student wrote that he hadgained “a better understanding of what I needed to do

this year and the years to come as I gain my education.”The lessons learned were about more than film or col-lege success skills; they were about personal growth, andvideos and films had helped them get there.

The next time a seriesor movie set in college isshowing, don’t discount itout of hand as mere teenentertainment. See it. Real-ize that it may help opendoors for your students,their needs, and theirunderstanding in ways thatno book could.

NOTES

Forney, D. S. “Introduction toEntertainment Media Use.” InD. S. Forney and T.W. Cawthon(eds.), Using Entertainment Media

in Student Affairs Teaching and Practice. New Directions forStudent Services, no. 108. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

Jensen, P. J., and Kolb, D. A. “Streams of Meaning-Making inConversation.” In A. C. Baker, P. J. Jensen, and D. A. Kolb(eds.), Conversational Learning: An Experiential Approach toKnowledge Creation.Westport,Conn.:Quorum Books,2002.

Kolb, D. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source ofLearning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:Prentice Hall, 1984.

I DISCOVERED THAT EVEN

THE MOST SOPHOMORIC FILMS

PROVIDE VERY PROVOCATIVE

AND POWERFUL MESSAGES

ABOUT COLLEGE.