Creating Media-RichLearning Solutions
John LynchSenior Instructional Technology Consultant
Center for Digital HumanitiesUCLA
Media-Rich Learning
As the technical skills in instructors increase, so do their ideas; technical departments are increasingly pressed to provide solutions - http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/itc/resources/
Are there tools available that allow a subject-matter expert to develop their own media-rich content without extensive training, i.e. without custom programming?
Why Not Existing Course Management Software?
Pros Already available for
many universities Provides a structure
for rich-media materials
Cons Inherently private Not permanent Not necessarily
portable to other institutions or away from the university context
Other Options for Media-Rich Learning
Multimedia Lesson Builder Pachyderm Other?
Multimedia Lesson Builder
http://engage.wisc.edu/projects/MmLessonBuilder/
Very strong media capabilities – text, audio and video
Flexible self-evaluating tools, including media-rich testing materials
Very linear, very standard structure
Multimedia Lesson Builder
Despite the excellent instructions and diagrams, instructors often find all of the options intimidating
The “Lessons List” is difficult to use
Pachyderm http://www.pachyderm.org/ Very media friendly Uses a system of design
templates, like MMLB: letter codes clearly link content to its location within the template
Sample Site Very non-linear Media stored online No evaluation tools
Pachyderm Very non-linear Unlike MMLB and its
“Lessons List,” the links between Pachyderm’s page are hand-coded by the creator, making page organization more intuitive (see previous)
Plans to create open-source version, ability to create custom templates will expand its applications dramatically
Other options? Project Pad and Multimedia Annotator
Audio annotating tools – http://engage.wisc.edu/projects/MmAnnotator/ Project Pad will develop into a whole suite of web-searchable tools -
http://www.at.northwestern.edu/spoken/p04annotation.html Blogs?
Both Blogger and Wordpress are very easy to use, and have extensions allowing the addition of media and password protection - http://johnitc.blogspot.com/
Wordpress includes the ability to define “categories,” which allows instructors to organize their resources/posts on the blog in the same way that they might organize them on a standard CMS website, i.e. by Assignments, Annoucements, etc. - http://johnitc.wordpress.com/
Can content from tools like Hot Potatoes be run within the blog framework, or does the blog have to link to external content to gain quiz-tool functionality?
Discussion
Any thoughts? What tools are in use on your campus? Are
there any that I’ve missed? What essential capabilities, if any, do you think
are missing from the tools here? Do media-rich learning objects need to connect
to a student database and allow grading to be truly useful to instructors?
Other questions, comments or snide remarks?