Main Body
Case Study: A Course Activity Using Rich Media
Overview
In the following example, the instructional challenge centered around a situation where students were having difficulty grasping an abstract concept: How is data collected in the process of navigating on the Internet that results in the formation of a data profile of the user?
A rich media resource was employed in the course that converted the hidden navigation data into an accessible and interactive graphical representation of the user’s Internet behavior. From this, students could review a visualization of their own Internet navigation so that they could discover how many trackers had been attached from each point of their navigation. This engagement was then used as a basis for discussion.
An instructional challenge with an abstract concept
COMM601 Trends in Digital & Social Media is an online upper-level undergraduate course at UNH-CPS (USNH).
One of the topics in the course is about Online Behavioral Targeting (OBT) – an online marketing technique based on using Internet tracking data (third-party cookies) saved in the user’s Web browser to predict what kinds of ads or content the user might respond to.
The technical underpinnings of OBT are mostly invisible. Most people do not know how or where browser cookie data is stored, where it comes from, how it is used by trackers, and how it causes a person to have a “personalized Internet experience”. From an instructional standpoint, the concept of OBT feels like it operates entirely in the abstract.
To illustrate the concept of OBT more clearly, students are directed to install a Firefox browser plugin called Lightbeam. The plugin processes all of the browser’s saved tracking data and displays it in an interactive graphical format.
Figure 1, on the left, shows text-based cookies (tracking data) as it appears in the user’s browser while in Developer Mode. Figure 2, on the right, shows how the Lightbeam plugin presents the same data as an interactive graphical display.
| Figure 1: This is what cookies look like in the user’s browser data. | Figure 2: This is the same data as it appears in the Lightbeam browser plugin. |
Rich media within the pedagogical wrapper
From an instructional design perspective, the Lightbeam experiment was intended as an integrated activity. It was not just a link dumped in the Resources section of the module. It was placed within a larger pedagogical scheme – a so-called pedagogical wrapper. The wrapper is composed of three parts:
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- Prior to the activity: An introduction to the resource to show relevance and credibility: The following text is included with the link to the Lightbeam resource (excerpt): “Have you ever wondered what entities are tracking your moves on the Internet? The Lightbeam Firefox plugin will show you, in graphic detail…. The plugin is funded by the Ford Foundation: ‘The work at the Ford Foundation focuses on building outreach campaigns to help people understand online data tracking —