Multimedia Authoring Research Articles

An analysis of branching behaviour patterns in an interactive hypermedia learning environment

Students’ branching behaviours and how these behaviours relate to learner variables, such as prior knowledge, and demographic variables, were examined. Fourteen subjects were asked to learn a hypermedia instructional director system, MAPLE (Multimedia Authoring and Production Learning Environment). The results showed students differ in their branching behaviours and learning characteristics: individual differences in branching behaviour patterns were related to prior domain knowledge of director. High prior knowledge students tended to employ the branching behaviour pattern, moving linearly; low prior knowledge students tended to employ branching behaviour pattern, moving forward and backward; medium prior knowledge students tended to employ branching behaviour pattern, skipping sub‐sections. Other prior knowledge variables, and learner variables were unrelated to students’ branching behaviour patterns.

COMPARE radiology: creating an interactive Web-based training program for radiology with multimedia authoring software.

Computer-based training has two primary benefits: Content can be presented interactively, and students can choose the time, place, and pace of learning. As a subject of medical education, radiology lends itself particularly well to computer-based training because of its highly visual content. To improve the efficiency of radiology training at their institution, the authors decided to create an interactive Web-based training site. Working with a group of medical students knowledgeable in multimedia authoring, the authors used authoring software to create "COMPARE Radiology," an interactive training program that follows the modality-based structure of the undergraduate curriculum for radiology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany, and at medical schools worldwide. The Web-based program offers cases and exercises in radiographic anatomy at different selectable levels of difficulty, allowing users to test and build their knowledge of radiology. Pathologic images are initially presented without any further information. Additional information (patient history, laboratory results, reports from other imaging studies, and normal images for comparison) can be retrieved selectively and successively. Further information regarding the diagnosis and pathologic findings can be found by following links to external Web sites. The COMPARE Radiology program content is extended and updated regularly. The program is subject to internal peer review and can be evaluated by the user online. The authors' experience shows that a highly interactive Web-based training program for radiology, tailored to the requirements of the target group, can be developed economically by a team of medical students using an advanced storing system, with the guidance of a radiologist and without the help of professionally trained computer experts.

Sites of construction: language learning, multimedia, and the international engineer

This article discusses the role of a multimedia learning environment in teaching foreign languages to engineering students. Arguing for a subject-specific and skills-oriented approach in teaching Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) in the university, it outlines possible targets and skills for a language course for engineers. The paper goes on to discuss the advantages of using new language learning technologies in the LSP-classroom. It is argued that multimedia technology has a particular role to play in integrating complex subject matter and language learning, and that it facilitates the creation of authentic learning situations in an LSP-context. The discussion stresses the importance of combining technical aspects with pedagogical considerations, particularly with a view to promoting learner autonomy and a constructivist approach to language learning. Particular attention is given to the potential of computer technology in encouraging collaborative learning processes and in involving learners in the production of exercises and materials. The paper also considers the tutor-learner relationship in a technology-enhanced learning environment. Practical suggestions for language and skills training in a multimedia setting include a discussion of tutorial CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning), multimedia authoring tools, and the Internet. In conjunction with the Internet as a learning resource, the aspect of culture learning for engineering students is touched upon briefly.

Multimedia Authoring with Hierarchical Timed Stream Petri Nets and Java

The expected benefits of modeling documents using a formal technique are twofold. First, the document's model can be checked against logical errors and unsatisfied timing constraints. Second, the same model can serve as reference for implementation purposes. In this context, the paper discusses a methodology for multimedia document design and implementation on heterogeneous and distributed platforms. The design trajectory starts with document modeling in Hierarchical Timed Stream Petri Nets, goes on with model checking against design errors, and continues with automatic translation of HTSPN models into a Java application. A tool prototype supports the methodology with a document editor, a simulator and a HTSPN to Java generator. Its use is exemplified on a guided tour of Florianopolis City, Brazil.

Assessment and multimedia authoring - a tool for externalising understanding

Abstract Multimedia authoring software has a number of features that, given teacher support, should provide conditions that help pupils create material that genuinely reflects their understanding. This paper reviews the ways in which use of this technology may also support improvements in assessment. Drawing on research findings it describes how pupil-produced multimedia documents can reveal aspects of performance that traditional tests may not recognise. If such assessment is to be accepted at the policy level, a shared set of criteria for achievement must be developed in terms of technical manipulation and content exposition. Lines of enquiry for further investigation of multimedia authoring, pupil learning and assessment are proposed.

A constructivist learning experience: Reconstructing a web site using web based multimedia authoring tools

<span>This paper focuses on using multimedia to create a constructivist learning experience as well as to innovate a multimedia mediated constructivist learning (MMCL) model based on a course given to students at the Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Malaysia. Students were required reconstruct any existing website of their choice in the Internet that they thought required improvements. The purposes of the project were to assess problem solving skills and ability to evaluate a website's design, creativity and navigational structure. The students were required to enhance the site by adding sound and animation and to improve the overall look and feel of the site, using Web based multimedia authoring tools, Macromedia </span><em>Dreamweaver</em><span> and </span><em>Flash.</em><span> The course was structured for constructivist learning whereby students constructed their own knowledge of the project, determined their own learning outcomes, and worked in a collaborative and cooperative manner, thus taking an active part in the processes. A survey used to obtain feedback from the students indicated that using multimedia in a constructivist learning environment helped them to become more analytical and critical thinkers, more apt to seek information, and more motivated in their learning.</span>

How useful is peer‐produced multimedia teaching material?

This is a follow‐up study of a multimedia program developed as a student project by high school pupils. The initial study sought to determine what learners would gain from constructing multimedia programs for their peers. “Multimax” is a multimeter skills fixation simulation. The students who designed it acquired subject skills, multimedia authoring and teamwork skills that would benefit them in the context of lifelong learning. To investigate the usefulness of the product this follow‐up seeks to determine what the peers of the design team learnt when using the program. A formal, summative and dynamic evaluation of the program was designed and executed to determine its suitability for teaching multimeter skills to university engineering students. Both empirical and interpretive evaluation methods were used in a way to answer evaluation questions using both the quantitative and qualitative paradigms. It may be concluded that the objectives and outcomes of the learning opportunity are successfully reached. A number of content errors are a matter for concern, while the technical implementation requires a great deal of reconstruction.

Developing Multimedia CALL: The Telos Language Partner Approach

The paper looks at the multimedia dimension of CALL from the point of view of using an authoring tool developed for the production and customisation of (online and offline) multimedia language learning materials. The interaction between learners and teachers in Internet-based pedagogic communication environments is not dealt with. The main emphasis is on the production and customisation of multimedia language learning materials and on the kind of software support needed for their successful embedding in an overall learning and teaching context. The paper also considers the kind of software support needed for the successful embedding of such materials in an overall learning and teaching context. Some of the principles and requirements underlying the development of Multimedia CALL are discussed, but the main focus is on the description of the multimedia learning and authoring software Telos Language Partner. This is a multimedia PC-software designed to incorporate the principles and requirements of multimedia language learning and tutoring discussed in the paper. The software was developed and evaluated with support from the European projects ‘Eloquent’ (Lingua) and ‘Telos’ (Telematics Applications Programme, ET 3005). It supports relevant and authentic language learning activities; intuitive editing functions facilitate the low-cost production, customisation and flexible pedagogical embedding of multimedia language learning contents.

Evaluating the use of multimedia authoring with dyslexic learners: a case study

This paper reports on the findings of a case study set up to explore the possible benefits that dyslexic learners might have when engaging in the creation of their own multimedia project. Two children with specific learning difficulties worked with the author to develop a multimedia presentation. The children developed authoring skills (such as planning and drafting, composition, revision and reflection, proof reading and presentation) and became active, motivated learners. It is believed that the open‐ended character of a multimedia authoring package can encourage creative thinking and interest for content and style of presentation.

Preparing students for internet and multimedia technology careers

This paper provides descriptions of three courses in a thirty-credit Internet and Multimedia Technology (I/MMT) certificate program. They are: Multimedia Authoring II, Project Development, and Internet Programming. The latter has been offered in both traditional and online versions at the Essex Campus of the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC-Essex).

Web-Enhanced, Standards-Oriented Teaching Units on Post-Wall Germany for the Secondary School Classroom

Every year teachers take stock to determine which instructional practices worked well and which need to be improved. In recent years German teachers have likely focused on the national standardsI and technology since they have been encouraged or mandated to deliver standardsbased instruction and to use technology. Technology is now an integral part of life in the U.S. Advertisements on television or in print regularly refer to a company's URL. There is a computer in most households and people of all ages surf the Net. In Germany, Chancellor Schr6der is now arguing forcibly for German schools to teach students how to use technology so that jeder Jugendliche die Chance [hat], sich schon in der Schule mit den neuen Medien vertraut zu machen.2 Use of the Internet will proliferate with the arrival of NGI (Next Generation Internet3), which can handle end-to-end multimedia applications such as realtime interactive video and high quality video-ondemand.4 Teachers must now consider how they can harness the Internet to enhance future learning and teaching. One advantage of the Internet in foreign language classes is quick access to cultural artifacts and authentic multimedia documents in the target language. This enables cross-cultural learning in revolutionary ways.5 The World Wide Web gives

The educational potential of multimedia authoring as a part of the earth science curriculum—a case study

The educational potential of multimedia authoring as a part of the earth science curriculum—a case study

Integration of reusable software components and frameworks into a visual software construction approach

Software reuse is an effective means of improving software productivity and software quality. Reusable Software Components (RSCs) are the basic building components for software programs constructed using the software reuse approach. The object-oriented approach is used to design and implement our RSCs. Our laboratory has already implemented more than 300 reusable software components, including design-level frameworks in various application domains and approximately 200,000 lines of code in our library. These components and frameworks have been accumulated in the course of designing and implementing strategy-based game systems, multimedia authoring systems (2-D and 3-D), multimedia playback systems, and other application systems. Multimedia software plays an important role in the software industry. In contrast to traditional software, multimedia software provides users with visual and audio effects through their interfaces and can more accurately model the real world. A media component may contain various elements, such as text descriptions, voice narration, and animation sequences, which more closely present the subject to be modeled. Such a reusable media component is commonly referred to as a Multimedia Reusable Component (MRC). Using RSCs, frameworks, and MRCs, our laboratory has successfully designed and implemented a commercial product called DIY Magic Cartoon World (for use in making subject-based cartoons. The RSCs and frameworks can be visualized as icons for a visual programming model. Reuse-in-large practice is, therefore, achieved using visual programming techniques based on these visualized components. In this study, we introduce design principles and implementation techniques for our RSCs, frameworks, and MRCs. RSCs, frameworks, and MRCs are integrated into a visual software construction approach. More specifically, the design concept and implementation of an approach for visual software construction are described. In addition to discussing the advantages of the proposed construction approach, this work also presents examples which illustrate how the visual programming environment is used.

The "Authoring on the Fly" system for automated recording and replay of (tele)presentations

We discuss the problem of capturing media streams which occur during a live lecture in class or during a telepresentation. Instead of presenting yet another method or system for capturing the classroom experience, we introduce some informal guidelines and show their importance for such a system. We derive from these guidelines a formal framework for sets of data streams and an application model to handle these sets so that a real-time replay becomes possible. The Authoring on the Fly system is a possible realization of a framework which follows these guidelines. It allows the capture and real-time replay of data streams captured during a (tele)presentation, including audio, video, and whiteboard action streams. This article gives an overview of the different AoF system components for the various phases of the teaching and learning cycle. It comprises an integrated text and graphics editor for the preparation of pages to be loaded by the whiteboard during the presentation phase. The recording component of the system captures various data streams of the live presentation. They are postprocessed by the system so that they become instances of the class of media for whose replay the general application model was developed. From a global point of view, the Authoring on the Fly system allows one to merge three apparently distinct tasks - teaching in class, telepresentation, and multimedia authoring - into one single activity. The system has been used routinely for recording telepresentations over the MBone net and has already led to a large number of multimedia documents which have been integrated automatically into Web-based teaching and learning environments.

Multimedia authoring and presentation techniques

Multimedia content is being increasingly used for presentations, be it in formal lectures and documents or informal home pages. Authoring a multimedia presentation involves describing spatial and temporal relationships governing the objects composing a document. While spatial relationships specify where (on the user’s screen) objects are to be presented, temporal relationships describe when and how objects presentations are to be synchronized. In a distributed environment, a multimedia presentation is carried out by retrieving and delivering objects according to their spatial and temporal relationships described by the author(s). In such environments, continuity of a presentation can be maintained by pre-fetching objects based on their temporal relationships and the system load (such as network traffic and server workload). Flexibility in temporal relationships can help in adapting to varying system loads and maintain continuity of presentation. Hence, the techniques used for authoring not only influence the aesthetics of presentations but also the efficiency. This special issue includes papers covering a wide range of multimedia authoring and presentation techniques: realtime authoring, web presentations, audio and video navigation/authoring, and databases for multimedia presentations. The first paper by Muller and Ottmann discusses a system that automates recording and replay of multimedia presentations. This system comprises an integrated text and graphics editor for preparing presentations as well as a recording component that captures in real-time the various streams of multimedia presentations. Named, Authoring on the Fly, the system has been extensively used over the MBone net. In the next paper, Borning et al. propose a constraint-based framework for laying out multimedia documents on the Internet. This framework can be used by both authors and viewers to exercise constraints on the page layout. The appearance of a document page during its presentation depends on the negotiation between the author and the viewer through the specified constraints. De Roure and Blackburn, in the third paper, present a system that allows content-based navigation of music, using melodic pitch contours. The system integrates hypermedia navigation and content-based retrieval techniques for this purpose. Navigation is supported by means of a link service along with a query process on a music database based on melodic pitch contours. This system incorporates techniques for storing and querying contours, and a set of componentbased navigational hypermedia tools. The fourth paper is on a video authoring system called Zodiac that employs an innovative edit history abstraction. This system, developed by Chiueh et al., facilitates video authoring by means of a powerful branching history model that allows users to organize the authoring process. Zodiac also carries out shot and boundary detection by analyzing the edit history. For its operations, Zodiac uses a multimedia file system, MMFS, and an internal buffer manager that handles transparent lossless compression/decompression. Adali et al., in the last paper, describe an architecture comprising a multimedia presentation algebra for creating interactive multimedia presentation databases. The multimedia presentation algebra can operate on presentation trees whose branches reflect different possibilities for delivering multimedia presentations. This algebra can be integrated into a query language that can support presentation database operations such as select and join. Based on these operations, the query language can be used as an authoring tool for multimedia presentations. In conclusion, this special issue carries several interesting approaches for multimedia authoring and presentations. We believe that the papers in this special issue will help the multimedia community to more easily make use of these widely spread results and will also stimulate further research in this topic.

Zodiac: A history-based interactive video authoring system

Easy-to-use audio/video authoring tools play a crucial role in moving multimedia software from research curiosity to mainstream applications. However, research in multimedia authoring systems has rarely been documented in the literature. This paper describes the design and implementation of an interactive video authoring system called Zodiac, which employs an innovative edit history abstraction to support several unique editing features not found in existing commercial and research video editing systems. Zodiac provides users a conceptually clean and semantically powerful branching history model of edit operations to organize the authoring process, and to navigate among versions of authored documents. In addition, by analyzing the edit history, Zodiac is able to reliably detect a composed video stream's shot and scene boundaries, which facilitates interactive video browsing. Zodiac also features a video object annotation capability that allows users to associate annotations to moving objects in a video sequence. The annotations themselves could be text, image, audio, or video. Zodiac is built on top of MMFS, a file system specifically designed for interactive multimedia development environments, and implements an internal buffer manager that supports transparent lossless compression/decompression. Shot/scene detection, video object annotation, and buffer management all exploit the edit history information for performance optimization.

Multimedia authoring framework with ILOG ™ solver

Multimedia presentation delivery characteristics are impacted by the delivery environment including network bandwidth, latency, local disk storage, etc., and this may invalidate the presentation schedule. These varying characteristics are not addressed adequately in the authoring process. We propose a new approach to multimedia presentation scheduling that utilizes constraint technology and a flexible set of scheduling heuristics. The Constraint Satisfaction Authoring Framework aims at increasing the expressive power of a multimedia authoring paradigm with regard to resource capacity conflicts. The approach deals with domain uncertainty and incorporates it into the presentation schedule.

Axonometry: a matter of perspective

Since the 1920s axonometry, or parallel perspective, has provided an important graphic technique for artists, architects, and engineers. Like linear perspective, axonometry helps depict 3D space on the 2D picture plane. It usually comes as a standard feature of CAD systems and other visual computing tools. However, axonometry originated in China. Its function in Chinese art was similar to linear perspective in European art. Axonometry, and the pictorial grammar that goes with it, has taken on a new significance with the advent of visual computing. Although research on axonometry's origin is far from complete, I summarize its main features. Axonometry is part of a coherent pictorial language and a valuable alternative to photorealistic imagery based on European linear perspective. Axonometry is an essential feature of CAD systems and multimedia authoring programs. Most visual computing tools use a combination of axonometry and isometry with linear perspective to create anything from computer games to virtual reality worlds.

Constraint-Based Versus Tree Structure Formalisms for Designing Temporized Multimedia Documents

The research presented in this paper deals with the process of designing multimedia documents from a cognitive point of view. An experiment was carried out to evaluate the usability of two formal approaches for specifying temporal relationships in multimedia documents. The results of this experimental study will then be used by researchers in computer science to specify the user interface of a multimedia authoring tool using both approaches.

Learning building pathology using computers – a prototype application

Building defects are notoriously difficult to identify, even by the most experienced surveyor. Traditional training methods of identifying defects in buildings involved the physical visiting of a property. This has become more difficult as insurance and organisational issues have made this practice unsafe and costly. Methods of training surveyors can be brought up to date with the introduction of desktop technology to provide learners with a rich set of learning resources in a much easier format. Defects generated from real life cases using digital cameras are stored in a format that can be transformed into QuickTime VR movies and then used to train inexperienced surveyors. This paper describes a prototype application using case‐based‐reasoning virtual reality and multimedia authoring technologies. The architecture of the system is described and some details of the methodology used are discussed. An iterative approach is used to develop the system and validate it.