An integrated architecture for tightly coupled design and evaluation of educational multimedia

Abstract

Multimedia technology is increasingly being used to create instructional environments for distance education. However, the design of educational multimedia is currently driven more by intuition than by empirically or theoretically derived design guidelines. In the absence of prescriptive design principles, iterative design - a cyclical process of design, test and redesign - becomes critically important for creating effective educational multimedia. This paper proposes a framework for the iterative design of a class of educational multimedia called Hypermedia Educational Manuals. The architecture of an authoring and evaluation platform designed to support this framework and ease the designer's task is presented. Two unique features of this tool are the automatic creation of a system structure definition of the multimedia system being authored, and the automatic incorporation of interaction-logging elements in the system. This is done by an authoring component that assists the designer with the design and implementation of educational multimedia. An evaluation component then parses both the system structure definition and interaction logs created while students work with the multimedia system, in order to generate statistical analyses and graphical visualizations of how students interacted with the multimedia. The integrated architecture of the tool embodies a tight coupling between the design of educational multimedia and the evaluation of its effectiveness. This coupling reduces the time and effort required in repeating evaluation-redesign cycles in order to iteratively refine the initial design. We also briefly describe an experimental demonstration of the utility of this tool.