Interactive Multimedia Learning

This book introduces new concepts and mechanisms regarding the usage of both social media interactions and artifacts for peer education in digital educational games. Digital games in general, and digital educational games in particular, represent an area with a high potential for interdisciplinary innovation, not only from an information technology standpoint, but also from social science, psychological and didactic perspectives. This book presents an interdisciplinary approach to educational games, which is centered on information technology and aims at: (1) improving digital management by focusing on the exchange of learning outcomes and solution assessment in a peer-to-peer network of learners; (2) achieving digital implementation by using forms of interaction to change the course of educational games; and (3) providing digital support by fostering group-formation processes in educational situations to increase both the effects of educational games and knowledge exchange at the individual level. In addition to a systematic analysis of the relationship between software architecture, educational games and social media applications, the book also presents the implemented IT systems' architectures and algorithmic solutions as well as the resulting applicable evaluation findings from the field of interactive multimedia learning.

Multimedia environments suggest to us a new perception of the state of changes in and the integration of new technologies that can increase our ability to process information. Moreover, they are obliging us to change our idea of knowledge. These changes are reflected in the obvious synergetic convergence of different types of access, communication and information exchange. The multimedia learning environment should not represent a passive object that only contains or assembles information but should become, on one side, the communication medium of the pedagogical intentions of the professor/designer and, on the other side, the place where the learner reflects and where he or she can play with, test and access information and try to interpret it, manipulate it and build new knowledge. The situation created by such a new learning environments that give new powers to individuals, particularly with regard to accessing and handling diversified dimensions of information, is becoming increasingly prevalent in the field of education. The old static equilibrium, in which fixed roles are played by the teacher (including the teaching environment) and the learner, is shifting to dynamic eqUilibrium where the nature of information and its processing change, depending on the situation, the learning context and the individual's needs.

This text emerges out of the need to share information and knowledge on the research and practices of using multimedia in various educational settings. It discusses issues relating to planning, designing and development of interactive multimedia, offering research data.

An evidence based, rigorous text reviewing 12 principles of experimental studies grounded in cognitive theory of multi-media learning.

The purpose of this book is to stimulate reflection on the different issues concerning the design, development and implementation of interactive multimedia learning systems. Multimedia, hypermedia, and interactive systemsmore generally need to be examined in terms of underlying cognitive processes, interface characteristics, and theoretical principles regarding learner control of instruction. This book is based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Quebec in 1991. The papers in the book present a critical analysis of the multimedia design concept that reveal it to be still immature, sometimes ambiguous, and even confusing. Within this contexta variety of different design dimensions are considered, such as those of interfaces, procedures, content, control, and advisory processes. A central requirement is to define the interactivity concept, both to enable the learner and the system to collaborate through communication and to direct this communication in order to stimulate effective learning. Proposals made in the book include adaptive interfaces, interactive transactions, intelligent strategies, knowledge representation, and student modeling.

For hundreds of years verbal messages - such as lectures and printed lessons - have been the primary means of explaining ideas to learners. In Multimedia Learning Richard Mayer explores ways of going beyond the purely verbal by combining words and pictures for effective teaching. Multimedia encyclopedias have become the latest addition to students reference tools, and the world wide web is full of messages that combine words and pictures. Do these forms of presentation help learners? If so, what is the best way to design multimedia messages for optimal learning? Drawing upon 10 years of research, the author provides seven principles for the design of multimedia messages and a cognitive theory of multimedia learning. In short, this book summarizes research aimed at realizing the promise of multimedia learning - that is, the potential of using words and pictures together to promote human understanding.

This text looks at the development and reusability of multimedia content in web-based learning systems. The author discusses the development of a component-based framework that enables developers to employ reusable software components enhanced with metadata. The text contains complete instructional visualizations in a rich learning context. Two activities for making stand-alone visualizations group-aware are addressed. No other work has addressed the issue of transparent collaboration based on instructional visualizations enhanced with metadata in such a way.