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Moving into Multimedia: Issues forTeaching and LearningJosie Taylor aa Institute of Educational Technology , The Open University, UKPublished online: 09 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Josie Taylor (1996) Moving into Multimedia: Issues for Teaching and Learning,Innovations in Education & Training International, 33:1, 22-29, DOI: 10.1080/1355800960330104

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22 IETI 33, 1

Moving into Multimedia: Issues for Teaching andLearning

Josie Taylor, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, UK

SUMMARY

By looking back at the introduction of interactive video into two British primary schools a fewyears ago, this paper illustrates the observation that the success of an innovation in the classroomis determined as much by the conditions within which it operates as by its quality. It compares theexperiences of teachers in the context of the schools and describes the issues they faced as theytried to integrate the technology into their classroom teaching. The paper then looks forward tomoves into computer-based multimedia for primary schools. It discusses important issues associatedwith learning via this technology, and how children will need teachers' support if they are to makethe best use of multimedia software that will arrive in their classrooms.

INTRODUCTION

Multimedia can offer many exciting opportunitiesfor teaching and learning but in the rush of devel-opment which always surrounds new technology,we sometimes forget that we may be providing anew gloss on old problems. Researchers may scru-tinize new multimedia software and debate its edu-cational worth, yet fail to consider the context inwhich it is used. In this paper, however, it is thecontext which is the object of scrutiny, rather thanthe multimedia products themselves. The paperdraws on the findings of an evaluation study of in-teractive media in schools funded by the NationalCouncil for Educational Technology, and on theLessons for the Classroom produced from that study(both reports are available from NCET, Laurillardet al., 1993/4a,b)

For teachers, the context is the classroom, estab-lished teaching practice and the wider school ethos;for pupils the context is their existing learning strat-egies, and ways in which these may or may not beappropriate for learning from multimedia systems.Expectations in both cases need to be right, and theintention is to point out that no matter how excitingmultimedia developments may be, if they are notproperly contextualized they may ultimately disap-point and cease to find a foothold in mainstream

education. The conclusions are rather predictable —on the one hand, teachers cannot expect to stopteaching learners, even if some form of multimediaapplication might appear to take over aspects of thistask. Learners, on the other hand, must recognizethat multimedia may make learning more enjoyable,or even more effective, but may not necessarilymake it easier.

ISSUES FOR TEACHING: INTERACTIVEVIDEO IN TWO BRITISH PRIMARYSCHOOLS

The project to pilot the curriculum use of IV andassociated technologies was announced in Novem-ber 1991 by Michael Fallon, then ParliamentaryUnder-Secretary of State for Schools. The aim ofthe initiative was to investigate IV as a resource forteaching and learning in the context of the NationalCurriculum. The project has involved over 200schools, nationwide. The materials used covered arange of curriculum areas including mathematics,science and technology, but focused particularly onthe World of Number disks funded via the NationalCurriculum Council.

The project took place against the background ofthe Government's strategy for information technol-

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ogy in schools, which includes the application ofnewer technologies for educational purposes, suchas CD-I, CD-ROM and CDTV. These were includedwith the IV materials in an evaluation study, fundedby the National Council for Educational Technol-ogy, and carried out by a team which includes theauthor.

The following case studies are drawn from that study,and describe two primary schools which participatedin using interactive video (IV). The aim is to illus-trate one of the major conclusions of the report whichwas that the success of an educational innovation isinvariably determined as much by the conditionswithin which it operates as by its quality. Local con-ditions in schools play a crucial role in this — eventhe physical layout of the school can influence suc-cess or failure. Although the schools lie within about15 miles of each other in similar catchment areas,their teachers had very different experiences of bring-ing interactive video into the classroom. Both schoolstook delivery of a basic IV player, plus monitor con-trolled by a microcomputer, with a remote controlhandset or bar-code reader. They were provided witha variety of disks, but the main focus was on theprimary and secondary mathematics disks which hadbeen developed by the National Curriculum Coun-cil to support and improve maths teaching. Otherdisk titles included: Louvre (Disk 1), ShoppingMicroworld, Musee D'Orsay and Regard for thePlanet. In the following discussion the schools havebeen given pseudonyms.

Sherwood Primary School

Sherwood is a primary school in a rural area, builtin the middle of a working-class housing estate. Ithas traditional two storey buildings, with extra pre-fab classrooms in the playground, one of which wasrun down and empty. This arrangement was notamenable to easy snaring of the multimedia re-sources, and it was difficult to move the equipmentaround because of staircases and steps. For exam-ple, wheeling the system on a standard equipmenttrolley across the playground proved a nightmare.The frequent, frustrating, breakdowns of the systemin the early, months were attributed to the bumpyride across these uneven surfaces. Eventually theequipment had to stay in one room, making it lessaccessible than it should have been.

Two teachers were using IV. The lead teacher, Ms A,was introducing the technology into the school more

Moving into Multimedia: Issues for Teaching and Learning 23

or less single-handed, with little support from indif-ferent senior management. Ms A described herselfas a 'traditional' primary school teacher. Some ofher children were obviously a handful and a certainamount of time was spent physically keeping someof them in the classroom. Ms A had hoped that theIV system would allow pupils to work alone so thatshe could spend more time keeping control of andteaching the rest. In this hope she had been desper-ately disappointed.

She confessed to not being a computer enthusiastand had found the discussions about customizingmaterials during training sessions intimidating. Herattitude to the IV system was that whatever was avail-able had to be more or less free-standing otherwiseit wouldn't get used: 'Primary teaching is generaland we don't have the in-depth knowledge of thesoftware — or the time — to start messing about.'

At first she put the IV equipment running the mathsdisk at the side of the classroom and rostered pairsof pupils to work through the pre-specified mathsworksheets which accompanied the disk. Eventually,she had to move the machine so that the screen facedaway from the rest of the class, because the otherchildren were too easily distracted. As time went by,she realized that expecting children to be able to workon their own was unrealistic, because they had a ten-dency to skip through the video sequences withoutreally paying attention to what was being taught.Instead, she found it helpful to use the IV disk toconsolidate teaching she had previously done offline,and it was a useful diagnostic tool for assessing in-dividual children's needs in maths. Eventually, shedecided to devise her own worksheets, but felt ratherresentful about this, saying-not unreasonably-thatworksheets geared specifically to National Curricu-lum attainment targets should have been availableas part of the system.

Initially Ms Afelt let down by the project, and wouldhave liked the materials to have been more interac-tive. Everything she had done with the system, shethought, could just as easily have been done with avideo-tape or even a book. As her confidence grew,though, so did her optimism about using the materi-als in the future. She pointed out the importance ofvery high quality pictures for use with young chil-dren, and video sequences which provided vicari-ous experience (eg going to a bun-making factoryand seeing the production process) provided veryexciting visual experience, as did as a simulated'visit' to a factory.

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Her colleague, Ms B, also relatively inexperiencedat using new technology in the classroom, was work-ing closely with Ms Ato develop her skills.The chil-dren in her class were younger than those in Ms A's,and were less of a problem in terms of classroommanagement. Ms B used the IV system in three ways:in small group work for revision and reinforcement;as a picture resource for project work, and also as awhole class teaching device when she would con-trol it, using pictures and diagrams for illustration.All three ways had been reasonably effective, shesaid, but her class had expressed the view that theypreferred applications which were like standard com-puter applications, such as microworlds. Pupils feltthat the tasks on the disks had allowed them to skiparound too much, whereas their experience withcomputer programs was that you weren't allowed tomove on until you'd answered all the questions. Thisappears, at least superficially, to reinforce the no-tion that children respond to structure, an issue weare currently researching (Laurillard et al, 1995).

A year into the project, an NCET technician installeda menu system which allowed much easier disk ac-cess. The teachers found this apparently small changea tremendous help. Ms A reported that she felt muchmore confident and relaxed, and had begun to ex-plore alternative, innovative ways of using the in-teractive materials. For example, by using a scanneron pictures provided as part of an art gallery, herpupils had explored the use of brushwork in paint-ing. She had also convinced the senior managementto reorganize its overall IT resources and relocatethem in a central area. The achievements by theseteachers in Sherwood school are a tribute to theirdedication and enthusiasm against all the odds.

Cosworth Hill Primary School

Cosworth Hill Primary School is built in a similarlocation to Sherwood — in a rural environment buton the edge of a large working-class housing estate.The school is a single level, open-plan buildingwhich makes it easy to see what other teachers andtheir classes are doing. IV resources were located inthe (physically) central area along with many otheritems of communal equipment. A teacher couldwheel the IV trolley into his or her area for a spe-cific piece of teaching, and other teachers might passby, casually looking over at what is happening insuch a teaching group. Alternatively, the equipmentmight be commandeered by a particular teacher fora term to develop a specific piece of teaching.

A small group of enthusiastic teachers developed quitea sophisticated view of the use of resources in theschool, not just IV. The school still had the computersfrom a previous NCET study in which they had par-ticipated, as well as several video cameras and anediting facility which the children used as part of theirproject work (eg to make their own community vid-eos). Because these teachers had a view of what theyintended to do with the technology before it arrived,and were building on previous experience, they hadlittle or no trouble accommodating it in the classroom.They were inducting another member of staff into useof new technology, and the teaching strategies werestrongly supported by the headteacher.

The teachers used IV in four different ways. Firstthey had small groups of about four children workthrough worksheets prepared by the teacher for re-vision and consolidation. These groups were unsu-pervised, but in an open-plan classroom, so a fairdegree of monitoring was going on, and the teacherwould frequently be called over to help. The seconduse was similar to the first, but aimed at teaching tospecific attainment targets in the National Curricu-lum rather than consolidation. Again, the childrenhad worksheets designed by the teacher with instruc-tions and tasks for completion. Thirdly, the teachersat with the machine and used the IV as a stimulusfor teaching—flagging children brighten up consid-erably when video clips are played. The IV disk pro-vides very high quality freeze-frame pictures, andthe device doesn't automatically start to play againafter a lapse of time. This provides opportunity forwhat the teacher described as 'quality discussion'.The fourth use was straightforwardly resource-based.The player was set up in a corner on a project table,and children wandered up to it, using it in whateverway they wanted as a complementary source of in-formation and augmentation for their project work.

The apparently 'unsupervised' children in the class-room were not causing problems at all because theteachers structured the classroom activities in detailwell in advance. Each child had his or her own checklist of activities to be completed which included notonly exercises on the interactive materials, but alsoother offline project work. The teacher checked andsigned off tasks as they were completed. With sen-ior management's cooperation, the worksheets werebased on the plan for the year, the teacher's monthlyplan, and individual weekly records. Mr C, the leadteacher, felt that what he wanted from interactive me-dia was material he could adapt to his teaching, ratherthan using free-standing self-contained programs.

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I'd rather have stuff... which I can do things with myself.Okay, have some back-up materials with suggestions andso on but I'm much happier with making them fit in withwhat we 're doing rather than having it very structuredand expecting me to follow somebody else's scheme —because it doesn 't work—well, I don 7 think it does.

He also emphasized the importance of visual se-quences and interaction:

particularly the video sequences which clearly is wherethis technology comes into its own for all kids, theyare exciting, and the control over those, the beautifulstill images that you can then hold and do things with.That was what was exciting about the Powers of 10exercise—you could freeze it at any point and take inthe information about what you were looking at. Youcould re-wind it a little bit and then step it back to getthat little bit of extra information. .. it had a focusand yet it was open enough to allow you to ask allsorts of different questions which were geographical,which were about science, which were mathematical,which used various language skills, did other bits ofresearch using atmosphere then calculated them. I justfelt it was a really good piece of work because itbrought in a very wide view of what was going on.Cross curricular if you like. It wasn 't set up to be that,I mean it just offered that to you without too muchthinking. I suppose you have to work in that way andthink that way. I felt that was what was so exciting.

Teachers in both schools had suffered their share ofsystem faults and breakdowns, and felt at differenttimes that they were struggling against the odds. Suchfailures made them disinclined to train other col-leagues into using new technology in the classroom:

How can we train someone to use it if it keeps break-ing down? They are going to just walk away and saythis is rubbish. I haven't got the time to keep breakingoff my teaching to do the technical support required.

Teachers at Cosworth Hill got off to a flying start,however, in part because they had not assumed thatthe multimedia systems would relieve them of anyof their teaching load—it probably would increase itinitially. They also cultivated children's informationhandling skills needed for IV through use of otherresources such as video-tapes and computer soft-ware. They expected to devise appropriate work-sheets, and had also planned in detail how theclassroom would operate before they introduced theIV systems. Teachers at Sherwood had to discoverthis for themselves, and initially they found it a bur-den to cope with the system in the classroom be-cause it was disruptive — it distracted the childrenbeing taught and the children using it demanded at-tention which the teacher couldn't give.

Moving into Multimedia: Issues for Teaching and Learning 25

The teachers at Cosworth Hill actually didn't carevery much whether or not the materials they wantedto use were embedded in an interactive multimediapackage. As long they had access to some basic tools(e.g. measuring devices, stop, start, freeze frame,replay, line drawing etc.) they would 'wrap-up' thenecessary components into a project themselves.What they wanted most of all was an extensive, butproperly catalogued, resource of very high quality,topic-based picture material. Their biggest complaintwas that the support material for disks from themanufacturers was totally inadequate, so they hadto invest a massive amount of time just lookingthrough disk contents to find out what was there.

The contrasting experience of these two schools isinteresting simply because it highlights the impor-tance of context when looking at the effectivenessof multimedia systems (or any computing applica-tion for that matter). The NCET study showed thatover the 18-month period of the project, a markeddifference in the effectiveness of various manage-ment infrastructures in schools was noticed. The leasteffective option was for one teacher or small groupto take responsibility for the use of IT. Problemswhich arose were: the individual's lack of time, theirabsence or transfer, the location of the IT equipmentin one room, and the lack of transfer of skill andknowledge to others. However, if the school adoptedan overall policy towards the integration of IT sup-ported by heads and deputy heads, then staff aware-ness could be raised, planning of resources managedmore effectively, and IT viewed as just another re-source in school rather than an end in itself. Time setaside for developing appropriate teaching materialswould also be easier to arrange if senior managementwere sympathetic. An additional key element to thiswas the expectations staff had of the new media. Thegreater the number of experienced staff, the more re-alistic expectations were likely to be. Many of thesepoints were illustrated in the case studies of Sherwoodand Cosworth Hill schools.

ISSUES FOR LEARNING: INDEPENDENTLEARNING

Multimedia applications are often used in the class-room to foster independent learning. This form oflearning has been used in education for many years,from primary school project work through to post-graduate research written up as a thesis. The ben-efits of independent learning are typically seen as

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putting learners in control of their own learning proc-ess, allowing them to develop at a pace determinedby themselves. This in turn encourages a mature andscholarly approach to learning. We know it is quitean accomplishment to bring a project to final con-clusion and, in the normal way, teachers supportlearners very carefully to maximize chances ofsuccess. So what's the problem in introducing newtechnology?

The impact of technology on this form of learninghas been threefold. First, large and very diverse in-formation sources are now becoming accessible tochildren, not just scholars. Second, multimedia pres-entation of these information sources can challengeour preconceived ideas of appropriate modalities forlearning. For example, difficult topics or conceptscan be illuminated by the use of video, graphics ormodelling in ways which we have only just begunto explore. Third, the new technologies allow learn-ers to do things which previously were either im-possible, or would have taken a very long time, suchas searching across very large texts. These very ad-vantages, however, can sometimes work againstlearners' interests. They may end up merely brows-ing around huge (and often very interesting) amountsof material in an unstructured way, enjoying thevisual presentations, and not necessarily learninganything substantial.

The main point here, though, is that teaching chil-dren to use multimedia applications effectively isnot just a question of teaching them how to use indi-vidual packages. Because multimedia programs lookinviting, attractive and straightforward, children mayseverely underestimate the amount of hard work andeffort required to learn anything worthwhile fromthem. Another major finding of the NCET evalua-tion was that the combination of interactivity andaudio-visual features enabled multimedia technol-ogy to enhance learning, but children's informationhandling skills needed developing to capitalize onthis — in other words, children did not benefit fromthis technology just because it was there.

Consider a child wanting to learn from a multime-dia system: she needs to get the machine running,checking that it is loaded with appropriate disks, andthen to run whatever application she needs. She hasto consider what to do, where to go and how to getthere, perhaps by reference to a worksheet. Havingarrived, she needs to engage with the task she in-tended to accomplish, negotiating with the environ-ment to find the information she wants. There are

several different levels of activity here, and learnerssometimes find it difficult to separate them out inorder to isolate problems they are having. Under-standably, the struggling learner is quite likely toblame the machine for failure to interact meaning-fully. But although the mechanics of getting arounda system can present problems, these problems areas nothing in comparison with the much greater chal-lenge of knowing what it is you need to know be-fore you start, that is, identifying appropriate goalsfor yourself, and knowing when you have accom-plished them.

Left to our own devices, most of us are not verygood at asking the right questions at the right levelof detail to get intelligent answers first time round.We tend to iterate several times, refining our ques-tions and developing a sense of what we want toknow. Sometimes we find that we have had an an-swer all along, but hadn't spotted it. These skills ofunderstanding how to ask questions and recognizeanswers need developing. This is especially true forchildren, who have a natural propensity to enjoythemselves, and given a stimulating interface withentertaining video-clips and moving graphics, willkeep themselves happy for a surprisingly long time.Whether or not they are learning anything useful isheavily dependent on how well-developed their in-formation handling skills are. It is precisely for thisreason that we need to train learners how to usemultimedia.

Detailed observation of both adults and childrenworking with various types of computer based learn-ing systems allows us to identify four perspectiveson the task in which they are engaged. Each per-spective highlights different types of activity or skillrequired to accomplish goals at that level. These arenot phases in learning, or stages in the process oflearning. They are views of the process, each oneassociated with a task, and each one having a set ofskills or knowledge needed to accomplish that task.Each level shades into the next, and divisions be-tween task areas are not always clean. However, alearner must recognize, or master, all of them to somedegree of proficiency in order to succeed.

Operation

In this mode, learners have to be aware of how torun the physical system which they are about to use.This involves knowing what connects where andwith what plug, how to switch things on, what but-

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tons to press, protocols for what gets loaded first,how to log on, interactions between peripherals, andwhat runs under what system. These skills are im-portant, but they are the kinds of things which learn-ers can often find out from colleagues or each other.There are no 'in principle' difficulties in getting thehardware running, just irritating detail to get right.Because this is a basic skill level, as opposed to aconceptual understanding level, cascade learning isoften an appropriate form of support for the learner-teach one child who then teaches another and so on.

Navigation

Navigation—used here in its broadest sense to meanhow to run the software, and find one's way about-involves sorting out how different packages inter-face with one another; how to: respond to the sys-tem when it asks questions; keep track of placesvisited, and how to get back; retrace steps; jump fromone place to another; and where to make notes ifthey are needed. These skills are often taken forgranted, but can really make a learner stumble, par-ticularly if the system crashes whilst being used.Establishing what to do and how to get back to whereyou were can be a challenging exercise. Putting chil-dren to work together is helpful to support this kindof activity — what one forgets the other might re-member. Teachers need to be careful about whoworks with whom, though, and, as was done atCosworth Hill, strictly enforced protocols might beneeded for using the input devices to avoid fights,arguments, or domination by one individual. At thislevel, game formats are often quite useful — findingyour way to a particularly abstruse piece of informa-tion, for example, or a very deeply nested part of thesystem—activities which may have little value in termsof content, but which help illuminate process.

Investigation

Investigation involves knowing how to ask a sensi-ble question in the context; identifying suitable goals;recognizing what kind of information is actually rel-evant versus what is interesting, but irrelevant; in-terpreting information to spot concordance,dissonance, variation; analysing information to rec-ognise potential answers. This is when the real hardwork starts, and teacher input to this part of the proc-ess is crucially important. As we saw earlier,worksheets with structured tasks which direct pu-pils' attention to the multimedia material help to

Moving into Multimedia: Issues for Teaching and Learning 27

avoid unproductive browsing, but teachers must alsobe sure that they find ways of checking that pupilshave really understood the work. Mixing on- andoffline work keeps pupils focused, and follow-upactivities can help integrate and consolidate what hasbeen learned (see Laurillard and Taylor, 1994).Offline work helps to encourage analytical think-ing, and a more reflective approach. Online tends toprovide better support for experimentation and tink-ering with applications.

Reflection

Reflection involves satisfactorily integrating the in-formation found into project work or a final write-up through going back to the original task, evaluat-ing whether enough information has been gathered,analysing and evaluating the material, and integrat-ing and composing the final product. This type ofactivity is normally completed offline. Many of thetechniques for supporting investigation will be use-ful here, but teacher input cannot be underestimated.Group discussion of the project, its outcomes andpersonal discoveries, particularly among older pu-pils, can provide valuable reminders of why they setout in the first place, and what their original con-cerns were. Comparing findings can also reinforcethe idea that there is not necessarily a single 'right'answer, and seeing where your class-mates went andwhat they made of things is useful for older pupils.

Helping learners acquire information handling skillscan be a demanding task for the teacher —hence thenotion that new technologies can create work ratherthan save it. Instead of focusing at the content levelof what is to be taught, the teacher needs to cultivatethe higher order skills in pupils of how to go aboutlearning, and, paradoxically, this may mean thatlearners apparently learn less for a while (seePlowman, 1988). For example, it is important thatlearners make mistakes at some level, because thisis a very effective way of developing strategies(Laurillard, 1987). The temptation to intervene as alearner heads off into probable disaster is over-whelming, though an absolute — or, worse, repeated— failure is unlikely to stimulate even the mostdogged pupil. So it is a matter of degree. The teacherneeds to develop a sense of when to intervene tohelp avoid catastrophe, but otherwise to allow pro-ductive mistakes to occur in order for pupils to de-velop strategies for coping. A balance needs to bestruck with the type of intervention that is most ap-propriate. Snatching the keyboard away and typing

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arcane formulae into the machine to retrieve a situ-ation may save time, but is unlikely to help learnersif they are confronted with such a situation againand may only encourage dependency.

Teachers may find themselves acting more as thera-pists than instructors. The teacher helps pupils todebug their strategies and techniques for accessinginformation, offering advice and useful hints, butallowing students to develop their own way of han-dling their learning. When things have gone wrong,teachers may find themselves conducting quasi-therapeutic sessions with pupils: 'Why did you thinkit was important to do that? What did you think wasgoing to happen? What were your expectations?Where's your plan and list of goals? What were youdoing just before the machine crashed? How wouldyou like to interpret that experience?' and so on.Thiskind of interaction is much more personal than for-mal chalk and talk teaching, and in a classroom cen-tred around multimedia systems, tutoring ofindividuals or small groups is likely to become morecommonplace than it is now.

Shifting Control of Learning

Teachers may find that the independent learningappropriate for use with new technologies puts themin a difficult position. What is the teacher to teach?What are the roles of teacher and pupil in this newenvironment? How can we be sure that self-directedlearners will cover the curriculum? How can stu-dent progress be examined if everyone is doingsomething different?

In traditional teaching, the aims and objectives ofcourses of study or activities are givens. Typically,teachers derive classroom work from a plan whichis based on agreed curriculum goals. Activities aredeveloped which enable pupils to engage in the workgradually, making assessment and evaluation a rea-sonably straightforward enterprise. Students are in-formed about what they are to do, how they are todo it, what the expected outcomes are and when theexercise should be completed. There is often somedegree of flexibility, and opportunities are providedfor pupils to make choices within this framework,but there is rarely a point at which a pupil can de-cide (albeit temporarily) to reject the teacher's aimsand objectives in order to pursue an interesting lineof thought on his or her own.

It is equally true that, although independent learn-ing is usually project based, and students are ex-

pected to take a more active role in drawing up theirown aims and objectives, they cannot simply pur-sue whatever course of study takes their fancy. Stu-dents are expected to work from a general descriptionof what needs to be covered plus, usually, some ex-amples of questions they ought to be able to answeror discuss when they have completed their project.They normally are also aware what format submit-ted work should take. Students will need to under-stand how to take this information and convert itinto a list of manageable aims and achievable ob-jectives which the teacher accepts as reasonable. Theprocess needs careful support, and, if children are toreap the benefit of'appropriating' their learning, andtaking more control, then teachers need to considercarefully how they will intervene, and, perhaps moreimportantly, how they will withdraw without leav-ing their pupils floundering.

In the classroom the reality is that control shifts fromteacher to learner, but in a way which the teacherdetermines. By designing worksheets and carefullysetting up tasks, teachers can carefully engineer situ-ations in which children feel that decision making isin their hands, and that they are in control, but whichthe teacher is directing. This makes it a safe envi-ronment for children to be exuberant and engage inexploration. The teacher may decide that in order topromote operational and navigational skills, freeaccess to the system is appropriate. The subject-spe-cific learning involved in investigation and reflec-tion needs a closer involvement on the part of theteacher.

Teachers can play an important supporting role asintermediary between student and information.Worksheets developed by the teacher are an impor-tant prop for students to use which can usefully pro-vide examples of achievable goals. Some forms ofworksheet can be used by the teacher not only tostructure the task in which pupils are engaged, butalso to limit access to other parts of the resource orto help as navigational guides. Worksheets whichdemand little more than a ticked box in response tomultiple choice questions will not help learners drawthe best out of the resource. Whatever the overallpurpose of the worksheet, teachers need to ensurethat they provide a suitable context, and clear aimsfor students to work to, and that they engage chil-dren with the material on the disk. A well-designedworksheet can also provide an effective transitionbetween offline and online work.

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CONCLUSION

It will become increasingly important for everyonein our society to develop effective information han-dling skills, and to engage in independent learningin order to take advantage of our information-richenvironment. We have seen that integrating newdevelopments into teaching in schools requires mas-sive investment of time and energy on the part ofteachers, backed by the support of management inthe school.

But we cannot expect children to make good educa-tional use of these new technologies just becausethey are there. Empowering the learner involves giv-ing them responsibility for their own learning, butchildren need to be taught skills at the appropriatelevel to handle multimedia systems. Doing so willnot only enable them to make full use of the poten-tially vast resources of information now at their fin-gertips, but also allow them to make judgements aboutthe relative values of different kinds of applicationswhich the commercial sector pushes towards them.

Moving into Multimedia: Issues for Teaching and Learning 29

(\993/4b) Lessons for the Classroom, National Coun-cil for Educational Technology, NCET, Coventry.

Laurillard, D, Plowman, L, Taylor, J and Stratfold,M (1995) 'Narrative Construction and the Compre-hension of Interactive Multimedia', Economic andSocial Research Council (ESRC) funded project, RefL127251018, Cognitive Engineering Programme.

Plowman, L, (1988) 'Active learning and interac-tive video: a contradiction in terms?', ProgrammedLearning and Educational Technology, 25, 4,289-99.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my stalwart colleaguesin the evaluation team, and also like to express warmthanks to all the teachers and pupils who participatedin the evaluation, which made great demands bothon their patience and their time. The evaluation wasfunded by the National Council for EducationalTechnology.

REFERENCES

Laurillard, D (1987) 'Pedagogical design for inter-active video', in Interactive Media: Working Meth-ods and Practical Applications, D M Laurillard (ed)Ellis Horwood, Chichester.

Laurillard, D and Taylor, J (1994) 'Designing thestepping stones: an evaluation of interactive mediain the classroom', Journal of Educational Technol-ogy, 20, 3, 169-84.

Laurillard, D, Baric, L, Chambers, P, Easting, G,Kirkwood, A, Plowman, L, Russell, P and Taylor, J(1993/4a) Interactive Media in the Classroom: Re-port of the Evaluation Study, National Council forEducational Technology, NCET, Coventry.

Laurillard, D, Baric, L, Chambers, P, Easting G,Kirkwood, A, Plowman, L, Russell, P and Taylor, J

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Josie Taylor is a Lecturer in the Centre for Infor-mation Technology in Education, within the OpenUniversity's Institute of Educational Technology.Her research interest is in adults and children learn-ing from divergent media (ie television, video, ra-dio, audio, print and computer-based learning) andintegrated multimedia. She is particularly interestedin the role of narrative in helping children under-stand multimedia applications, and in adults usingelectronic communications for collaborative andgroup work.

Address for correspondence: Institute of Educa-tional Technology, The Open University, MK7 6AA,UK, Phone +44 1908 655965, fax: +44 1908 653744,e-mail: j.taylor@open.ac.uk.

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