After talking to colleagues developing multimedia software for medical education I thought that a good approach in my talk at Slice of Life might be to analyze a number of applications with respect to their underlying learning philosophy. I shall present some examples from the field I know best (foreign language learning) and from medical education in order to demonstrate traps multimedia developers can run into. There seems to be an uncertainty as to how to interpret different software concepts. You could call it "the concept derived from learning theory " that poses problems to developers of learning software. Analyzing educational software yields incompatible learning models in the same application (behaviouristic and cognitive). You will find claims by authors "Our software follows a constructivist approach", but they use methods contradictory to these claims (simple assignments). Finally you encounter beautifully designed interfaces for doing absolutely boring tasks.
During the analysis of some sample software a number of general questions may arise: Problem-based or problem-oriented learning is a buzz word heard very often. Is there any difference between case and problem-based instruction? What alternative models exist for multimedia learning systems? Where are the limits of what one can achieve in multimedia learning systems? What are the characteristics of a constructivist learning environment? Does it make sense to mix different concepts of learning in a single application?
An English translation of my book "Hypermedia Learning Systems" (Grundlagen hypermedialer Lernsysteme. Addison-Wesley 1996; 2nd ed. Oldenbourg: München 1997, 3rd ed 2001) is available at my WebSite: http://www.izhd.uni-hamburg.de/Projekte
Prof. Dr. Rolf Schulmeister
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