Edutainment typically seeks to instruct or socialize its audience by embedding lessons in some familiar form of entertainment: television programs, computer and video games, films,music, websites, multimedia software, etc. Examples might be guided nature tours that entertain while educating participants on animal life and habitats, or a video game that teaches children conflict resolution skills. Most often, edutainment seeks either to tutor in one or more specific subjects, or to change behavior by engendering specific sociocultural attitudes. Successful edutainment is discernible by the fact that learning becomes fun and teachers or speakers educate an audience in a manner which is both engaging and amusing.
It can be argued that edutainment has existed for millennia in the form of parables and fables that promoted social change. One of the most influential modern-day practitioner and theorist in the field is Miguel Sabido. In the 1970s, Sabido began producing telenovelas (soap operas or serial dramas) that combined communication theory with pro-health/education messages to educate audiences throughout Latin America about family planning, literacy, and other topics. His model, which incorporated the work of Albert Bandura and others theorists, as well as research to determine whether programs impacted audience behavior, revolutionized the field. Today, these principles are being used extensively in the health communication field to educate people around the world about important health issues. Various groups in the United States and the United Kingdom have used edutainment to address such health and social issues as substance abuse, immunization, teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and cancer. Initiatives in major universities, such as Johns Hopkins University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, NGOs such as PCI-Media Impact, and government agencies such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC), are using edutainment to impact the United States and the world.
he term edutainment was used as early as 1948 by The Walt Disney Company to describe the True Life Adventures series.
The noun edutainment is a neologistic portmanteau used by Robert Heyman in 1973 while producing documentaries for the National Geographic Society. It ws also used by Dr. Chris Daniels in 1975 to encapsulate the theme of his Millennium Project. This project later became known as The Elysian World Project.
Edutainment can be used to describe various learning modules.
Entertainment-Education uses a blend of core communication theories and fundamental entertainment pedagogy to guide the preparation of the programming. Additionally the CDC has a tip sheet available on its website that provides additional guidance for writers and producers .
The major communication theories that influence Entertainment-Education include:
- Persuasion Theory: (Aristotle, Petty, Cacioppo) Psychological characteristics affect the response of a person to messages. Also indicates the message and source factors that influence a person's response such as the credibility, attractiveness, and expertise of the source.
- Theory of Reasoned Action: (Ajzen, Fishbein) Social influences affect behavior, including beliefs and perceived social norms.
- Social Learning Theory: (Bandura) People learn by observing others and the consequences of their behavior. If the person so chooses, they then emulate the behavior by rehearsing the action, taking action, comparing their experiences to the experiences of others, and then adopting the new behavior.
- Diffusion Theory: (Rogers) Behavior spreads through a community or group over a period of time. Television may plant the idea, but social networks reinforce it and cause it to grow.
Pedagogy involved with Entertainment-Education include:
- Relevance: Learning is more likely when people can see the usefulness of the knowledge they are given.
- Incremental Learning: Learning is most effective when people can learn at their own pace.
- Distributed Learning: (Fossard) Different people learn in different ways over different periods of time. It is important to present information differently so that people can absorb it.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar