ECI 514

Multimedia Design & Applications in Instruction

Course Description

This course was concerned with the methods of designing, developing, and evaluating interactive multimedia (hypermedia, tutorials, simulations and games, etc.) for formal and informal learning contexts. Emphasis was be placed on intermediate skills in writing, editing, graphic design, interface design, storyboarding, prototyping, formative evaluation, quality assurance, and documentation. Thus, in this course we engaged in the iterative design, development and testing of interactive multimedia for formal and, increasingly, informal learning environments.

The questions that guided these activities were:

• How should we represent reality and ensure academic rigor in interactive multimedia?
• How do we balance simplicity, efficiency, and playability against realism, richness and complexity?
• What contributions can interactive multimedia development make to instructional best practices?

Throughout the course, we also asked more in-depth questions to include:

• What makes interactive multimedia interesting, engaging or fun?
• How can we maximize enjoyment without sacrificing instructional quality?
• What can be learned from interactive multimedia and how do we evaluate this?

These questions sought to uncover psychological and sociological antecedents and effects of interactive multimedia to enhance instruction.

Storyboard