Testing Multimedia in the Community College Classroom.

Expenditures in education for electronic and multimedia instructional gadgetry are increasing daily. Limited systematic study has been done to identify whether multimedia offers measurable improvements over traditional instructional techniques.[1,2] Essentially, teachers are in a "hyper-VCR" era: we turn the equipment on and assume learning occurs. Under a grant from the California Community College System, the authors developed and implemented a test design to assess the efficacy of multimedia technology as a non-traditional form of instruction. In particular, the research sought to identify how students with different cognitive learning styles performed in courses that integrated multimedia technologies as opposed to courses using the traditional lecture format. The research attempted to broaden the evaluation of multimedia's impact on the curriculum, looking at the effect of using a variety of different multimedia titles and delivery options on student performance in a number of class sections. * Growing Out of Previous Work The current project grew out of earlier research conducted by the authors under a grant sponsored by a consortium of San Diego area community colleges and IBM Corp.[3] Under this grant, the authors developed a PC-assisted multimedia application entitled The Vietnam Experience to supplement an existing curriculum in American Government. Using text, graphics and video images, the tutorial takes students through an introductory lesson on the history of the Vietnam conflict. An efficacy analysis of this instructional approach was made by comparing performances of test groups of students exposed to both the multimedia material and traditional lecture to those of control groups of students receiving only traditional instruction. While quantitative results were inconclusive, qualitative assessment of students' experience with the alternative instructional format was encouraging enough to warrant further development. * Current Practices in Community College Teaching As part of the current grant, multimedia practices throughout the California Community College System have been surveyed. The modality survey of practices indicated that a large majority of instructors use multimedia in the classroom as a form of lecture support (80% of respondents indicated this is their primary use). Interestingly, the next highest response rate (59%) was for using multimedia as a tool to stimulate class discussion: introduce the multimedia element, then lead directly back from the technology to the student. A sizable percentage use multimedia outside the classroom to support courses as either tutorials or self-paced study tools (46% and 43% respectively). The number using multimedia as a tool for class feedback to establish lesson effectiveness or student remediation was, for the authors, surprisingly low (only about 30%). Faculty responses were positive about the impact of multimedia on students, with 79% believing it increases classroom performance markedly and 86% believing it increases student attention. Only 3% of faculty responded negatively to these questions, indicative of overwhelming support of multimedia as an instructional method. Further, the faculty survey overwhelmingly rejects the notion that multimedia is too difficult to use: 84% "disagreed" that the technology is too complicated, with a slightly lower number "rejecting" the notion. Only a small percentage agreed with these statements. The survey results reinforce the general consensus among multimedia users that the technology has definite advantages over traditional teaching methods. Multimedia improves instructor efficiency and students' attention and participation, without presenting too great a technological hurdle. * The Platform Based on the survey, the authors concluded the best platform for in-class multimedia presentations would have these characteristics: * Easily portable; * CD-ROM capability, either integrated (preferred) or as a peripheral; * Fully multimedia-ready (sound, graphics and video cards); * TV- or overhead projector-compatibility interfaces; * 75 MHz or better; * 16MB RAM or more; and * Cross-platform capability (PowerPC, etc. …