AUC Academic Conference 'From Virtual to Reality' The University of
Queensland 1996AUC Academic Conference 'From Virtual to Reality' The University of
Queensland 1996
Back to Home Page ...... by Presenter ...... by Paper Title ...... by Keyword
Paper Title:
From Virtual Novices to Real Interactive Multimedia Producers:
A Research Study
Presenter:
KHOO Cheng Choo (Ms), Deakin University
Authors:
KHOO Cheng Choo (Ms)
LOU Cheng Teik (Mr)
Deakin University
Keywords: Multimedia, Education
Faculty area: Education
Introduction
The profligation of interactive multimedia programs into every field imaginable is an accepted fact today. But few of them are designed to suit the wide spectrum of instructional situations in schools and tertiary institutions. Designing and developing instructional interactive multimedia programs require a designer to be aware of the detailed, systematic and complex planning of the design, development and presentation of the product. Teachers and trainee teachers are becoming increasingly aware that they need, or may soon need to cater to a new breed of computer literate students. To cater to this need, they may have to design instructional materials in other formats (the obvious one being the computer/multimedia format), other than the traditional format, to help foster their students' 'continuing motivation' (Kinzie, 1990) and challenge them to learn.
As the technology becomes more affordable and simpler, potential multimedia novices' need to create/customise their own computer/multimedia programs for instruction is growing. However, this need is thwarted by the lack of research-based guidelines, of how to go about doing it. So the questions from these virtual multimedia novices persist : "How do I go about creating effective computer or multimedia programs for instruction?" "Is acquiring the technological hardware and learning the authoring packages sufficient or do I need to do more?" These questions can only be adequately answered if more research is done on interactive multimedia design and development. Interactive multimedia design and development is extremely complex and involves a gamut of intellectual, psychological and technological issues. It is not surprising therefore that many researchers like Hannafin, Kozma and Merrill advocate serious research on instructional interactive multimedia design and development.
This paper is the outcome of one such research study and will attempt to report how some virtual interactive multimedia novices (teachers undergoing a Graduate Diploma Course), learnt to create real, but scaled down instructional interactive multimedia projects and in the process became 'interactive multimedia producers' within thirteen weeks. In the context of this research, a 'virtual novice of multimedia design and development' is defined as a person who may or may not possess any computer knowledge or experience, but who has never created an instructional interactive multimedia product before.
Pedagogical and Research Slant
The pedagogical approach adopted tenets from both the cognitivist and constructivist paradigms. Norman' Schemata Theory (1976), and the Generative Learning Theory (Wittrock, 1979) posit that learning is a matter of acquiring new structures by constructing new nodes and interrelating them with each other and existing nodes. Like hypertext nodes, schemata can be combined and linked to form larger structures.
Fig. 1 Schemata of inter-related nodes
The schemata that a learner accesses to interpret new knowledge is unique and idiosyncratic. There is a therefore a relationship between the Schemata theory and interactive multimedia design and development, as both are based on the concept of assembly and construction. The class instruction was built on extending the multimedia experiences of the multimedia novices. For example, during the multimedia course they were introduced to different software applications and congruent aspects of graphic and message design principles. They were also shown examples of interactive multimedia programs and learnt how to manipulate and operate equipment like video and QuickTake cameras. These experiences extended, like the nodes in Norman's Schemata, until they provided the novice multimedia designers with a knowledge base to operate from. Once they had acquired this expanded schemata, they were then able to assemble and construct their own learning in their own idiosyncratic way.
In addition, the pedagogy allowed for a high level of constructivistic activity in class. Jonassen (1993), said that constructivists claims that reality is in the mind of the knower. Constructivism is concerned with how we construct knowledge from our experiences, mental structures and beliefs and use this constructed knowledge to interpret objects and events. Thus constructivists posit that learners can only interpret information in the context of their own experiences and will therefore be individualistic. This theory also applies to students learning how to build their own knowledge of subjects. Although the instructor demonstrated equipment operation and highlighted useful features of application programs like PowerPoint and Hypercard, the multimedia novices did not fully comprehend until they had hands-on practice. To them, the reality of learning occurred when they themselves were pushing buttons, pressing keys and finding their own solutions. A constructivistic environment therefore naturally promotes self-directed learning. This constructivist approach alters, but does not diminish the teacher's role as the teacher now functions as a mentor or coach who guides students in their construction of knowledge.
However, allowing every student to construct their own learning may give rise to some problems. Research shows that experts and high achievers do very well in a constructivist environment as they are self-motivated and are capable of high individual performance. However, multimedia novices and lower ability students require more structured and guided instruction and often faired poorly when asked to construct their own knowledge. Glaser and Chi (1989) suggest that while experts are able to quickly access a solution strategy because that strategy is closely linked (in memory) to the problem node, solution times are slower and less fluid for novices as they must engage in one search to identify the problem and another to solve it. In a multimedia scenario, novice student designers will face many intellectual and technical problems, but given ample planning and development time, determined and motivated multimedia novices can devise appropriate solutions to their design and development problems.
Research Subjects
The students who signed up for the basic interactive multimedia class were adults aged between 20 to over 32 years. They were mainly primary school teachers who were working towards their Graduate Diploma in Information Technology. This was a one year degree course for full-time students and two years for part-time students. About two-thirds of the class were part-time students who worked full-time. Of the remaining one third, about half of them were part-time students who worked part-time as emergency teachers and only the remaining half were full-time students. As this was an optional unit, some of the students were in their first year of the Graduate Diploma Course while others were already finishing up. Each class was two hours per week, spread over thirteen weeks.
It was important to gauge the students' computer competency entry level right at the beginning as it would serve to determine the instructional approach and material for the class. An entry behaviour questionnaire was administered during the first session to ascertain their level of computer experience and expertise. Questionnaire feedback indicated that their level of computer competence ranged from basic word-processing, database or graphics knowledge to Internet experience. When queried about the concept "multimedia", some of them had no idea while others defined multimedia as 'cd-rom' because "it contains all kinds of pictures, video and music." They would find out about their misconception in the weeks that followed. They were also informed about, and invited to participate in the research study. Those who consented also agreed to be interviewed and videotaped during the course.
Although the novices were curious and excited by the prospect of doing a multimedia project, they also indicated that they were rather scared by the prospect. Some of them voiced some apprehension about working with Macs. As PC users they were not familiar with the Mac environment. Interestingly enough, it was peer testimony about the Mac's user friendly quality coupled with the class' general optimism and camaraderie that helped to lessen their colleagues' anxiety about the platform used.
Course Structure and Equipment
The content of the 13-week class included the introduction to application programs like Powerpoint and HyperCard, graphic and message design principles and equipment familiarisation and use. The course content was kept as flexible as possible and frequently adapted to meet the needs of the students. The Mac was chosen for its apparent ease of use and its generally accepted reputation of being a superior interactive multimedia production machine. The students were required to create a basic HyperCard program of ten cards or more on any topic related to "Computers". They were not expected to submit a full-blown project. However, they were expected to design a user friendly screen layout by incorporating clipart, scanned and QuickTake images, one but no more than four short QuickTime movies and one brief audio segment and display relevant text in a well balanced and meaningful manner. They would also need to create linkages or navigational paths for users to browse through their program. At the end of the semester, they would each do a ten minute class presentation to explain the design and potential use of their mini instructional interactive multimedia project.
The Novices' Design And Development Problems & Solutions
The concept of 'design' in an interactive multimedia environment is inevitably related to problem solving and decision-making. For this paper, the multimedia design problems encountered by the novices have been divided into three broad categories. The first relates to the identification and analysis of the content, the second covers the planning and design of the multimedia product and the third is related to mastering equipment operation and software manipulation to develop their project.
1) Content Identification and Analysis
The novices' inability to focus on a topic resulted in an attempt to include everything that seemed related to the topic. A problem like this was tackled by systematically breaking it down into several sub-problems and levels by asking questions like: what is the content? what is the scope of the programme? who will use the content? what are the teaching and learning points? how does one prioritise and organise the content? Guided by these analytical questions, the novice multimedia designer then began to conceptualise a design strategy that ensured a meaningful and engaging interactive multimedia end product.
2) Planning and Design Issues
Visualising how their content would fit together and link in a non-sequential manner to allow for navigation caused the novices a lot of headaches. When they first began, they did not know how to perceive their project holistically. Their haphazard planning was hampered by low level linear thinking and they had difficulty conceptualising how to make their information flow and relate to each another. But after working on their design, most of them gradually understood that thinking laterally helped. Getting a working understanding of the application programs was a critical factor in their multimedia design and development agenda because by being familiar with HyperCard they would be able to make better use of the navigating features using HyperCard's button commands. Questions like:"What resources (text, graphics, sound or video) are needed to illustrate/enhance the content? Where and how can these resources be obtained? How can the resources be assembled, processed, and used meaningfully enhance the content? How does one deal with screen layout design (which has to be user-friendly and interactive)? and How does one plan the navigational paths and provide sufficient browser guidance?" helped them view their project globally. This progress ties in with the observation made by Resnick and Ocko (1990) that by designing their own interactive multimedia materials, teachers and students benefit as they inevitably learn higher order thinking and problem solving skills.
Furthermore, the students discovered that the simple sketching of ideas graphically on paper helped them see the connection between their raw ideas and how these would translate into a Hypercard stack. Although they initially planned their work on paper and in textual format, they quickly realised that they could begin to substitute some textual information with meaningful graphics or QuickTime movies. When their hierarchical charts became too linear and cumbersome, they sought other methods of representing their non-sequential flow of ideas. They were shown how to use storyboards and flow-diagrams to flesh out their ideas. A student who described himself as a reflective and visual learner found the flow diagram to be extremely useful in helping him visualise his concepts and his navigational flow of information in his HyperCard program about teaching beginners to create a Web page.
Fig 2 Hypercard's hypermedia linkages
3) Equipment and Software Manipulation issues
Initially some students had problems saving their documents in a Mac environment. They were baffled by the metaphor of folders and files, the click, drag and drop function of copying and saving, the pull-down menus and the option of saving in various storage areas. Although the students had been shown the mechanics of HyperCard, they still had problems understanding the concepts of 'buttons', 'fields' and 'background'. Understanding these functions in Hypercard is critical because it leads to related issues of linking, navigation and hypertexting. The problem here was that some of them were still thinking linearly. At their request, they were shown more examples of non-linear and interactive multimedia programs created in HyperCard and Macromedia Director. The navigational points were highlighted and explained to them. This exercise made them pause and think of solutions to allow them to link their information in a non-linear way. Handling the equipment used for assembling their picture and movie resources taught them skills that could not have been achieved through a lecture on camera techniques. Those who had never handled a camera learnt that holding a camera still and letting their subject do the moving, was the best technique they could use in a video shoot. They discovered this when they found it hard and even impossible to digitise their jerky video shots - the result of too much panning and zooming. The slower students needed lots of guidance and instructor encouragement (noted by Glaser and Chi, 1981) but through their own determination many of them produced commendable projects in the end.
Some Observations
The pedagogical approach was not to offer solutions to the student's design problems but to guide them to resolve the problems themselves. Through the ensuing discussions the students were usually able to identify a few potential solutions. However, although multimedia work opened up opportunities for them to be individuals working in a creative and self-directed environment, many students initially could not relinquish the traditional notion of the teacher being "the keeper of knowledge" and kept asking: "Is this what you (the instructor) want?" expecting the instructor to solve the problem for them. The question was invariably rephrased and put to back them as "Is it what you (the student) want?" This strategy forced them into a higher plane of problem solving and decision making. They had to analyse their problem before making the final decision themselves. In the beginning they found this approach very disconcerting but as they progressed and their schema expanded, they became more confident about solving problems, especially technical ones, themselves.
At first, their major problem was finding a topic for their project. To help them focus on a topic, they were asked to write a brief one-page proposal stating what they wanted to do for their project. The objective of the proposal was to make them focus on what they were doing. Individual consultations with each student or pair of students were then organised to fine tune their proposal. The proposals revealed that most of them had little or no concept of interactive multimedia design. The majority of them had proposed extremely wide coverage of their topic which would not have been achievable within the time-frame of thirteen weeks. Also, the students were influenced by video programs and tended to imitate video production concepts as they were familiar with TV and video programs.
Generally, the consultative and discussion-oriented approach worked very well for these adult students. Besides the one-to-one approach, they liked the private nature of these consultations as they could more freely express their thoughts and anxieties. The consultations provided opportunities for students to brainstorm with the instructor. During the consultations, potential problems and limitations in their multimedia design were identified, discussed and solutions sought. It was during this phase that ideas were concept-mapped and flow diagrams revised or amended to chart the flow of information and navigation paths of the stacks that they were designing.
Multimedia novices' achievements
Some of the students had come into the course with fears amounting to technophobia. One in particular was sure that she knew nothing about computers and was worried about how she would cope. Her note-taking was constant and detailed. She said that by taking notes, she was able to practise them at her own time and pace. But she needed a lot of convincing that she had the ability to do the interactive multimedia project. Breaking down information into small simple chunks helped her understand operational procedures and using analogies helped her understand Mac desktop metaphors. Through consistent work and self-directed determination she produced an impressively simple interactive multimedia program that introduces beginners to computers. Another novice designed a HyperCard program to teach beginners how to design a Web page. The novices' final products proved that they were able to adapt and incorporate most if not all the multimedia elements like friendly user interface, learner control and navigation and design principles into their own projects very successfully and creatively. Segments of their work will be shown during the presentation.
Conclusion
When working on their projects, these novice interactive multimedia designers had gone through the processes of problem-solving and making decisions on how to: 1) prioritise and organise content, 2) select the best graphics, sound and video resources to illustrate or enhance their instructional messages, 3) build in an interactive and a user-friendly interface and 4) assemble and integrate everything into a multimedia product that users will find interesting, engaging and instructionally beneficial.
At the end of the semester they nervously but proudly presented their instructional interactive multimedia product to the class and it served as the final initiation of the virtual multimedia novices to real multimedia producers. All said that it was hard but satisfying work. They hope to carry and transfer their learning to other subjects and other challenges. The analysis of the results of the study is still on-going. Hopefully, the findings will shed some light on the complexities of interactive multimedia design, production and presentation and help other virtual interactive multimedia novices become bonafide interactive multimedia producers.
Back to Home Page ...... by Presenter ...... by Paper Title ...... by Keyword
Reference
Kinzie, M.B. (1990). Requirements And Benefits Of Effective Interactive Instruction: Learner Control, Self Regulation, And Continuing Motivation. Educational Technology and Research and Development 38(1), 5-21.
Glaser, R. and Chi, M.T.(1989) Overview. In Chi, Glaser & Farr (Eds.) The Nature of expertise (pp xv-xxviii). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hannafin, M.J. & Rieber, L. (1989). Psychological Foundations For Instructional Design For Computer Based-Instructional Technologies: Part I. Educational Technology and Research and Development Journal, 37(2), 91-101.
Jonassen, D. H. et al. (1993) Constructivist Uses of Expert Systems to Support Learning, Journal of Computer-Based Instruction, Summer 1993 Vol.20, No. 3, 86-94..
Kozma, R.B.(1991) Learning With Media. Review of Educational Research, 61 (2), 179
Merrill, D.(1991) Constructivism and Instructional Design. Educational Technology, Nov.
Norman, D. Gentner, S. & Stevens, A. (1976) Comments on learning schemata and memory representation. In D.Klar (Ed.), Cognition and instruction. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Park, I. and Hannafin, M.J. (1993) Empirically-Based Guidelines For The Design Of Interactive Multimedia, ETR&D, vol.41, No. 3, pp 63-85.
Quillian, M.R.(1968) Sematic memory. In M.Minsky (Eds.), Semantic information processing. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 216-270.
Resnick, M. and Ocko, S. (1990) LEGO:Logo: Learning through and about design. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, Epistemology and Learning Group, E & L Memo No. 8, September 1990.
Wittrock, M.(1974) Learning As A Generative Process. Educational Psychologist, 11 (2), 87-95.
Wittrock, M.(1979) The cognitive movement in instruction. Educational Researcher, 8 (2), 5-11.
KHOO Cheng Choo (Ms)
School of Scientific & Developmental Studies
Faculty of Education
Deakin University
Burwood Campus
221 Burwood Highway
Melbourne
Vic. 3125.Tel:
(03) 9244 6912 (O)
(03) 9803 9135 (R)Fax: (03) 244 6834
e-mail : kcc@deakin.edu.au
Back to Home Page ...... by Presenter ...... by Paper Title ...... by Keyword
