Creating Media-RichLearning Solutions

John LynchSenior Instructional Technology Consultant

Center for Digital HumanitiesUCLA

johnitc@humnet.ucla.edu

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?