Audio-Visual Education

Audio-Visual Education, planning, preparation, and use of devices and materials that involve sight, sound, or both, for educational purposes. Among the devices used are still and motion pictures, filmstrips, television, transparencies, audiotapes, records, teaching machines, computers, and videodiscs. The growth of audio-visual education has reflected developments in both technology and learning theory.

Audio-visual education emerged as a discipline in the 1920s, when film technology was developing rapidly. A visual instruction movement arose, which encouraged the use of visual materials to make abstract ideas more concrete to students. As sound technology improved, the movement became known as audio-visual instruction.

Educators at that time viewed audio-visuals only as aids to teachers. Not until World War II, when the armed services used audio-visual materials to train large numbers of people in short periods of time, did the potential of these devices as primary sources of instruction become apparent.

In the 1950s and 1960s developments in communications theory and systems concepts led to studies of the educational process, its elements, and their interrelationships. Among these elements are the teacher, the teaching methods, the information conveyed, the materials used, the student, and the student’s responses. As a result of these studies, the field of audio-visuals shifted its emphasis from devices and materials to the examination of the teaching-learning process. The field was now known as audio-visual communications and educational technology, and audio-visual materials were viewed as an integral part of the educational system. Today it is converging with information technology in education through multimedia materials and Internet services.