Teaching media ecology in-person and online: Lessons from a COVID-19 semester

Abstract

This article examines how a public relations writing class read and discussed a media ecology text, Orality and Literacy, during the spring 2020 semester as higher education classrooms shifted from a face-to-face to a remote or online instructional model due to the onset of COVID-19. The findings show that students in the class understood the effect of medium on learning in their own case through application of the text they were studying, and were able to distinguish between oral and written modes of learning, as well as their benefits and drawbacks. The article evaluates how technological change can impact communication and learning, and concludes that reading and discussing a media ecology text online can be incorporated deliberately into instructional design in order to teach the effect of a medium on ease of use and understanding.