Lockyer, L. & Bennett, S. (2003) Digital video cases: Investigating the effectiveness of technology-supported continuing professional education for general practitioners. In N. Smythe (Ed.), Proceedings of the Apple University Consortium Conference (pp. 13.1-13.7). (Proceedings published on CD-ROM.)

These are two papers published about the process of developing some multimedia learning resources. They are written by some of my uni lecturers, which makes this a little weird but I’ll press on anyway.

The first revolves around a package called Dual Diagnosis, which is designed to assist GPs with evaluating patients with both mental illness and substance dependencies. It includes video clip case study examples of patients attending a number of sessions with a doctor. It also has pre and post tests and a range of printed information and weblinks.  There is also the ability to take notes within the tool.

Overall this is a pretty well put together package (well, at least given my knowledge of medicine) – however one thing I would have found useful was more in depth feedback in the pre and post tests. It gives you a breakdown of the questions that  you got right and wrong but doesn’t reiterate what they were and what the correct answers should have been. This might have broken the elegance of the single page presentation but would have been more helpful.

“Case-based methods are considered to support learners in making links between theory and practice – specifically such methods support active, independent learning with authentic situations and interactions. (Bromley, 1986). Learners are required to analyse these ‘real-world’ problems, reflect on their understandings, interact with other learners and thus explore multiple perspectives and reflect upon or suggest a course of action. (Bennett, Harper and Hedberg, 2002). Specifically these strategies are seen to support deep understanding, critical analysis, decision-making and communication skill development”

This package was tested on two groups of GPs – one that had attended a face-to-face orientation session and another that hadn’t. This paper was written before the evaluation was complete but some of the responses to and concerns about the package were interesting – “Participants expressed concern about using it in an office setting – particularly with a patient in the office. They also identified that they already felt pressed for time and were unsure that they would find opportunity to work through the package. Some identified lack of access to a computer or were concerned that they might lack the necessary technology literacy to use the package”

This suggests to me that some people will instinctly react against the use of multimedia technology and that the design of the interface should be as simple as possible (which I think it is in this case) and probably should reflect something that the learner is already familiar and comfortable with.  

The second package is a fairly specific training package for alumina producers at an aluminium refinery in Queensland. It is very much about training workers in particular processes to ensure maximum efficiency and safety.

Bennett begins by illustrating the proven usefulness of multimedia in education.

“Interactive multimedia can offer a range of benefits over traditional training approaches by providing improved flexibility, cost and time effectiveness, consistency and availability… Forman (1995) identifies benefits and values in four major areas – organisational benefits, instructional benefits, learning effectiveness and business efficiency.l Multimedia can also provide improved and more consistent testing and administration… Keppell and Richards (1996) also suggest that self paced multimedia materials offer a private environment which enables trainees to review the material as many times as they wish”

The multimedia package was designed as a supplementary resource to the face to face instruction.

“A new training structure was designed which incorporated a multimedia tutorial which could be used before, during and after practical training sessions with an experienced operator”

There was a comprehensive development cycle used:

1. Needs assessment
2. Costing and scheduling
3. Content collection
4. Planning grid development
5. Editorial
6. Client review
7. Revision and sign-off
8. Image collection
9. Digitising
10. Authoring
11. Audio
12. Beta testing
13. Client review
14. Revision and sign-off
15. Delivery
16. Trial and evaluation

“These multimedia packages were developed to train operators of heavy mining equipment and were designed to address limited literacy and computer skills through the following strategies:

• the use of simple direct language
• limiting screen information to a single concept
• logical explanations for procedures
• use of graphics to support and explain text
• use of large buttons
• avoidance of icons
• limited navigation options (next, back, help, quit, menu and settings”

“Further development of this model has seen the inclusion of optional, full narration which matches the on-screen text and text/audio help which provides an explanation of the features on each screen. Kenworthy (1993) recommends that information be both visualised and verbalised for poor readers and that supporting audio match on-screen text exactly to allow the identification of unfamiliar words.”

Those are some particularly handy hints – the use of audio in a lot of educational multimedia resources is very underdone and I think it should be used in most places that you have text. I was surprised by the avoidance of icons – maybe this means icons by themselves without accompanying text – I might have to follow that up.  

All in all a couple of interesting projects with some good detailed information about the multimedia design and development process.

Jones, Mike, 2005 Viewfinder: An Introduction to Movies and Visual Media in the Digital Age

After my last effort which clocked in at a fairly ridiculous 4000 words, I’ve decided to take a more sane approach and really just try to focus on the heart of these articles.

This article on possible uses of current technology was written in mid-2003 and while many aspects of it are still quite pertinent, some already seem a little quaint. There is a large focus on what might be done, less so on what is being done and it takes a slightly tech-evangelical bent at times – but it’s nice to see enthusiasm.

In short:

• Edutainment is the meshing of education with entertainment
• Audio and video files are large and accessibility issues should be considered
• Streaming’s advantage is that files begin to play while they are still being downloaded
• As chunk 1 of a file is playing, chunk 2 is being downloaded. When chunk 2 plays, chunk 1 is deleted and chunk 3 is downloaded (Funnily enough, I didn’t actually realise that chunks were deleted)
• Uses of audio – lectures, guest speakers, student projects, classroom interaction, audio files, music performances, readings of language pieces,
• Uses of video – lectures, demonstrations of how to do things, adding motivation/interest to content
• Push technology creates channels to put created content on desktops (This has been and gone and surpassed by pull technology such as RSS)
• Educators should be watchful that push technology is used in schools for educational, not commercial purposes in schools
• VOIP – it works and is cheap and good for distance learning and accessibility
• Uses of VOIP – supplement to classroom based e-mail pen pal programmes, good for language, cultural exchange
• Web Whiteboard tools – useful for collaboration, graphical display and brainstorming
• Instant messaging – useful for immediate communication between teachers and students
• Handheld/Wireless/Mobile technology – it’s coming and will be bigger than Ben Hur (It’s here, some uses but we’re still waiting for the oohh-ahhh moment I think)
• Uses of mobile learning – accessibility
• Peer to peer file sharing – good for exchanging files (well duh) and setting up repositories of learning objects
• Knowledge objects – discrete items which might be image, text, video, audio etc
• Learning objects – Knowledge objects with a lesson attached to them.
• Usefulness of learning/knowledge objects – breaking learning into digestible chunks.

Looks like they missed the whole Web 2.0 boat, as well as Learning Management Systems, Personal Learning Environments and a few other things.

Not a bad article for an overview of some things but definitely a reminder of how quickly things are changing.

In spite of the fact that the guide to writing heuristics itself says that collecting them isn’t “academically respectable”, they are evidently worth investigating as convenient summaries of “the truth” of a theory or body of knowledge.

This is what the guide has to say about writing them:

Structuring your heuristics

Use the following structure to set out each heuristic:

Heuristic statement

• State the issue in a single, active sentence.

Explanation

• Provide an explanation in support of your statement of up to 500 words for each heuristics covering the following:
  • Expand on your statement above to explain what it means in more detail
  • Explain the background to the topic by including references to the relevant concepts from the literature using the correct referencing style
  • Explain what the heuristic means in practice and give examples if appropriate
  • Explain why this is a useful heuristic in your context as a learner, teacher or designer
  • Explain why the issue is important to you, in other words why did you choose to write about it
  • Offer any practical suggestions you might have for other practitioners trying to implement the heuristic

References

• List all the references cited in your explanation as per the convention.

I have four of these bastards to do, God help us all