Communicative Competency Development for High-School Students with a Multimedia Learning Strategy

Introduction

At present, work within the classroom demands changes in the dynamics conducted inside, as new educational proposals aim to achieve significant learning that support students throughout their life.

The competency-based approach promotes the realization of learning experiences for students to enable them to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes according to the context in which they operate. The competencies also presuppose the development of the efficient, professional work, making use of their knowledge by applying skills they must possess to fulfill their tasks within their field of action (Guzmán and Campos, 2009).

Education in Mexico has placed particular emphasis on a competency-based approach, due to the Reform of Higher Secondary Education (Reforma Integral de la Educación Media Superior, RIEMS). This approach’s advantage is that it helps to prepare students for a full development in different contexts throughout life, favoring meaningful learning over memorization.

Within this educational reform, the competency-based approach is centered on the premise of skills development leading to the realization of learning experiences to articulate knowledge, skills and attitudes in specific contexts, to achieve more complex learning, allowing to process concepts and ways of relating that support students in acquiring knowledge from meanings of learning (Hernandez, Martin, Oliver, Trejo & Vazquez, 2008).

Information and communication technologies (ICT) offer solution not only to support competency development, but also for issues raised by economic imperatives, such as globalization and increased competition, seeking greater productivity through cost saving, improved speed and competitiveness (Gil, 2001). Thus, new technologies, and especially the multimedia, play an increasingly important role in education. Visionaries of educational technology draw enthusiastic scenarios of the future of education, where teaching online, distance learning and classes supported by technology play an increasingly important role, although in México there are still teachers who have difficulty using the computer (Schnotz, 1999). The use of new technologies calls for the development of multimedia learning materials, thus generating an innovation in the modalities of communication and learning environments.

Several studies (Collins, 1997; Schnotz & Bannert, 1999) indicate that the use of ICT in the classroom can extend and enrich learning, develop the ability to think independently, creativity, problem-solving, managing own learning, etc. Furthermore, by using multimedia materials interactivity increases, which grants the student a degree of control over their learning process by making it more meaningful.

Taking these approaches into consideration, this research carried out the design of a multimedia learning strategy through the implementation of a web page that contributes to the development of communication competencies to support the course “Reading and oral and written expression I” (ROWE I). In this study, a multimedia learning strategy was designed, implemented and evaluated. Its purpose was to develop the communication competencies of public high school students. We considered important that students develop communication skills that enable them to deliver emissions or statements in communicative contexts, e.g. a job interview, a business meeting, a formal written request, among others, selecting from their repertoire those possibilities that come closest to their intentions.

Using a multimedia learning strategy in addition to a face-to-face class for acquiring communicative competencies is based on the pedagogical assumption that a learning environment with technology resources helps students to understand the meaning that these tools create in the development of cognitive, affective processes and the competencies, as the experience of the process of knowledge construction offers students a different way of perceiving their learning when interacting with these resources (García, 2003). The development of communication competencies allows individuals to differentiate, understand and produce various types of sentences or speech genres written and oral according to their work, personal or social needs.