Multimedia has been used for a variety of purposes. Most often it is seen as offering a means of adding interest to the material being presented. Such applications have given rise to the terms edutainment and infotainment.

A good deal of innovative multimedia is produced for advertising and other commercial purposes. The commercial potential of such projects makes them more likely than educational projects to attract funding for software, equipment and personnel. Many of the same ideas pioneered in commercial multimedia projects can be applied to educational projects. Thus there is value in looking carefully at commercial projects to see what lessons may be learned for educational projects.

However, it is likely that the major interest of students in this course will be the educational application of multimedia. Given that context, it is worth spending some time to consider the interaction of educational theory and the design of multimedia.

Selected Reading 1.3

Wild, M. (1996). Perspectives on the place of educational theory in multimedia. In Learning Technologies: Prospects and Pathways. Selected papers from EdTech '96 Biennial Conference of the Australian Society for Educational Technology. Retrieved June 6, 2007 from <http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?
_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED396746&ERICExtSearch_SearchTyp e_0=eric_accno&accno=ED396746>.

Wild provides some useful insights into the relationship between educational theory and the design of multimedia. He focuses on the nature of learning and approaches which might be characterized as constructivist. From this perspective he argues that multimedia might be used to create cognitive tools to support such forms of learning.

Activity 1.3

In Activity 1.1 you published a web page identifying two examples of multimedia on the WWW. In this activity you will identify and share two examples of educational multimedia on the WWW.

Using similar criteria and bearing in mind the discussion in the Wild reading extend your page by adding two examples of educational multimedia from the WWW. For each site you should record at least the following information:

Site title
URL
Name(s) of the author(s)
Identity of the sponsoring organization (if any)
Date the site was last revised
Brief description of the site contents
Brief critique of the design of multimedia on the site with a focus on the educational design

Introducing Interactive Multimedia

Applying interactive multimedia

Selected Reading 1.3

Activity 1.3