Teaching with Multimedia, by Patrick J. Lynch

Educational projects on the computer have a mysterious air to them, primarily because the technology is often unfamiliar. Without a basic understanding of software and hardware, the results can look like magic, interesting, but unattainable. Unfortunately, the technical and marketing jargon that surrounds multimedia often hurts the new author more than it helps.

Overcoming the Buzzwords

Along with new media, hypermedia, and integrated media, the term multimedia has been picked up by the marketing world to describe virtually any conjunction of media on the computer screen, no matter how prosaic. At heart, a multimedia document is much like any other document you have created with text to be written and edited, illustrations to be created or collected, and the footnotes, annotations, indexes, and bibliographies you would expect from any scholarly work in your domain of expertise.

Multimedia can best be defined as various combinations of text, graphics, sound, video, and animation that are controlled, coordinated, and delivered on the computer screen. Multimedia also implies interactivity, where the user is actively engaged in the presentation of information, and is not just a passive observer of a fixed procession of sights and sounds.

Components of Multimedia

Educational multimedia projects may incorporate interactive audio and video from a videodisc player, digital audio or digital video clips stored on a hard disk, or audio playback from a CD player controlled by a Macintosh computer.

Some presentations combine visual media on a single computer screen, but many interactive videodisc projects use two screens; one for the computer, and a separate video screen for a videodisc player. All Macintosh computers come with a built-in speaker; in multimedia presentations, this is often supplemented by larger speakers for better sound quality.

Multimedia in the Classroom

Now that multimedia technology is steadily filtering into most institutions of higher education, we should focus on how best to apply this powerful new educational tool in our laboratories and lecture halls.

The three principal ways in which multimedia technology is used in higher education include:

at the front of the classroom as a more flexible and versatile update of traditional audiovisual media,

in student groups for collaborative learning, and

in individual student use for independent learning.

Lecture/Presentation

Many educators feel that conventional audiovisual materials remove an important element of spontaneity from their classroom lectures. It is often difficult or time-consuming to back up a slide tray or rewind a videotape, and students tend to become inattentive during long audiovisual examples.

By using interactive media in the classroom, you have instant, random access to both sound and video content. You can compare and contrast different audiovisual examples at will, without having to rewind a cassette tape or search a CD for the passage you need to illustrate a point. Such ready access to multimedia can make classroom lectures a much richer experience for both you and your students.

Well-designed interactive audiovisual presentations can solve many types of educational problems, particularly those that involve dynamic events or processes difficult to describe fully in print or still illustrations, and provide students with a much clearer model of dynamic processes.

Almost any type of process on motion video can be analyzed in slow motion or frame-by-frame, whether the subject is animal locomotion or the destructive testing of new metal alloys. The process can be repeated as many times as it takes for students to grasp the concepts.

Multimedia can also be used to enrich. Using materials such as video, still images, or audio segments from famous speeches, you can make the subject immediate and alive in a way that the printed page never can. Rather than reading dry casualty statistics about a Civil War battle, you could present a superb video such as Ken Burns's Civil War series, where the battle is brought to life through the words and images of participants.

Collaborative Learning

Multimedia can increase the depth and breadth of education, particularly in specialized areas of the curriculum where access to professors (and, therefore, to the subject matter) is limited by the logistics of faculty schedules, the availability of scarce or valuable teaching materials, or maximum class sizes for popular courses.

For example, most medical students do not have ready access to detailed information about diagnostic imaging techniques used in cardiology; these subjects are usually introduced late in a physicians education and are taught by busy clinical faculty members to small groups of residents in cardiology.

Multimedia teaching offers both faculty and medical students a means of packaging this professional expertise, thereby making it widely available to students as well as potentially reducing the time involved for faculty members.

Individualized Learning

As the cost of hardware falls, the use of multimedia with personal computers is becoming more common for individual student use as well. Educational presentations on the computer provide a private, non-judgmental learning environment; the student controls the pace in a "hands-on" learning experience and can back up, repeat a segment, or ask for further explanations.

Interactive learning on an individual basis helps students of all levels. For quick learners, multimedia offers the opportunity to explore beyond the basics of the course. For slower learners, individualized learning situations lessen the fear of having to publicly ask for extra help or admit that they "didn't get it" the first time around events that might otherwise slow down the rest of the class.

Reprinted from "Articles database of CCNEWS, the Electronic Forum for Campus Computing Newsletter Editors, a BITNET-based service of EDUCOM."

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