Interdisciplinary innovation: psychoeducational multimedia technologies

Abstract

This article presents new ideas arising at the intersection of many subfields of psychology – including child, cognitive, developmental, educational, general, personality, and media psychology, – as well as education and multimedia, and leading to the creation of an innovative type of educational multimedia 1 1 Educational multimedia applications” means on-line (e.g., Internet) and off-line (e.g., CD-ROMs and CD-Is) multimedia products and services devoted to learning, teaching, and training of various knowledge domains. In turn, “multimedia” in general refers to a new generation of communication tools, which can draw on a full range of audio-visual resources – from text and data to sound and pictures – and which store and process all these diverse data in a single integrated delivery system. A general definition of multimedia describes an integrated presentation which combines at least three of: • Text (including notes, captions, subtitles and resources such as tables of contents, indexes, dictionaries and help facilities). • Data (such as tables, charts, graphs, spreadsheets, statistics and raw data of various kinds). • Audio (including speech, music, atmospheric background noise and sound effects). • Graphics (often ranging from traditional media such as drawings, prints, maps and posters to images processed or created entirely within a computer). • Photographic images, from negatives, slides, prints or even digital cameras (which record photographic images directly as computer graphics). • Animation (whether recorded on film or video, or created with a computer). • Moving pictures (specifically, digital video either converted from analogue film and video, or created entirely within a computer). technologies – psychoeducational multimedia technologies (PEMTs). The existing educational multimedia applications are critically examined. The nature of PEMTs, their basis, and specific traits are considered. One of the most developing multimedia areas, “edutainment”, is in fact transformed into “psychoedutainment”. Finally, one of the possible kinds of PEMTs – high intellectual and creative educational multimedia technologies (HICEMTs) – are discussed.