Towards a synthesis of multimedia and intelligent tutoring systems : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University

Multimedia is being used in almost every field. This study is about the use of multimedia in the area of intelligent tutoring systems. This project studies the advantages and disadvantages of interactive multimedia and intelligent tutoring systems, and analyses the ways of combining these technologies in search of an interesting, learnable, flexible, compelling and technology-enhanced educational tool. Educational packages need to be evaluated for effectiveness. When it comes to computer-based instruction, technical concerns such as multimedia effects are taken seriously and there is not enough emphasis on its educational value. There is not much concern about the appropriateness of the instruction method to the computer medium. This research proposes a framework for evaluating educational packages which include a number of issues. Several pieces of educational software were evaluated using this framework and Diagnosis for crop protection, a multimedia software package that aids in teaching the process of diagnosing crop problems, was selected for modification, as a practical application of the theoretical work. We studied different multimedia system development models and methodologies. We also analysed the cognitive issues and intelligent features that enhance the learnability. Finally, the appropriate intelligent features and other factors that could enhance Diagnosis for crop protection to be a more 'active knowledge constructing' environment have been identified. The current version of Diagnosis for crop protection was represented using an appropriate methodology and the proposed changes were described in detail

An Application of Multimedia Services on Transportation: The Use of the World Wide Web (WWW)

INTRODUCTION In recent years, there is an ever-increasing demand and interest in the use of multimedia technology and applications in industry, government and academia. Multimedia is often seen by researchers as the next step forward in interfacing science, technology and community. Yet, the terminology of multimedia bears several meanings. It may refer to Compact Disc (CD), moving pictures or video-conferencing. The multimedia technology referred in this paper is the World Wide Web (WWW) hypertext publishing information system which was developed by and started at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. Since the introduction of WWW, its use has increased dramatically within a couple of years in a widely diverse community including government departments, university and research establishments, and commercial organisations. It has significant influence to our communities and our daily lives. Yet, in most cases, applications of WWW services are largely restricted to electronic library referencelcatalogue search facilities, electronic mail systems, electronic conference and discussion systems, electronic news and publishing agents, and remote access to computing resources on the Internet. The primary objective of this paper is to exploit the potential of this multimedia technology as a simple, easy-to-use and effective means of telematics application in transportation research. It is hoped that initiatives are highlighted via this study and hence encourage participations and collaborations from different sectors of industries. In this paper, a brief history of WWW is given in section (2). An overview of the technical aspects in providing a WWW service is presented in section (3) in terms of computer hardware requirements, software installation, network connections, application maintenance and administration, and system security. Compared to most commercially available multimedia software in the market, WWW services are cheap to run, userfriendly and readily available to the public on the Internet. In order to exploit the potential of WWW on transportation research, a study was carried out and results of the findings are reported in section (4). To further substantiate the level of usefulness, two particular WWW applications were chosen amongst other web services and they are reported in section (5) for illustrative purposes. The selected applications are the 'Transportation Resources on the Internet' developed in mid-1994 in the Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) at the University of Leeds in England, and the 'Southern California Real-Time Traffic Report' developed by Maxwell Laboratories, Inc. in collaboration with the California State Department of Transportation in the US. Finally, a set of issues are raised in section (6), highlighting the directions of future development of WWW as an easy-touse, cheap and effective multimedia telematics application on transportation

Malaysian multimedia content industry

Generally, this chapter discusses issues and challenges of multimedia content industry in Malaysia. Specifically, the chapter provides an overview of the latest multimedia contents, how to implement them in the industry and some examples of industries that has multimedia content in it. This includes education, medical, commercial, entertainment and communication industries. The chapter divided into the following sections: introduction which gives general overview of the multimedia content industry, the technological trend towards multimedia, considerable tools for adopting multimedia, development of multimedia content software, model of applying multimedia content across the industries, differences between multimedia contents and digital content industry and multimedia content industry in Malaysia

Design Guidelines...an unacceptable constraint on creativity or good design practice?

A programme of research was motivated by an identified training need within the School of Design at Staffordshire University. There was a specific requirement to develop computer based training materials for software tools used in multimedia development. Guidance was required to maintain a standard design approach for producing such materials. Initial investigations found that present 'how to do it' guides were insufficiently focused. The research centred on compiling a focused set of guidelines and related design techniques and heuristics to construct an appropriate guide. This paper discusses some of the findings and emerging issues of the research project, for example: generic (ambiguous) and emphatic (context specific) forms of guidelines; ineffective and effective published guidelines in the context of modern multimedia; a negative attitude by designers to present forms of guidelines; the need for a more focused approach to offering guidance for specific domain contexts; as multimedia has no widely accepted conventions, guidelines could help to establish principles of good design practice

Multimedia Computer Ethics Scenarios

Ethical issues with technology are emerging more frequently as new technologies, widespread access and massive content become prevalent. With zip disks and cracker sites, people can easily copy entire applications that could have cost them thousands of dollars. The developer of the application software has a loss of revenue. However, people often view this as a victimless crime. Particularly students, fail to see the broader implications of software piracy and other ethical issues with technology. Yet, in the Information Systems classroom, the topic of ethics or computer crime is sometimes neglected. In teaching Object Oriented Programming, for example, an instructor might not spend time on discussions about computer copyright laws or liability of computer programs. This paper describes the development of a multimedia ethical situations simulator. The premise is that letting a student face ethical issues in a web-based simulation will better prepare them for situations they may find themselves in at work in the future. The use of multimedia is important in that it is a visual approximation of reality, rather than reading a case or a legal document. The participant sees the event. It makes the student an active role player in a visual scenario and it gives students an opportunity to exercise ethical decision making before they actually are exposed to an ethical dilemma in business. Furthermore, the web based training can educate them further as to the consequences of several actions taken in scenarios related to ethics and technology

Understanding of digital copyright issues among business career and technical educators in Mississippi

This study investigated the understanding of digital copyright issues among business career and technical educators in Mississippi. The areas considered were knowledge; perceptions of knowledge; areas of copyright knowledge including computers and software, the Internet, video, and multimedia; and demographics of teaching level, gender, participation in professional development activities, and teaching experience. Participants included 75 Mississippi business career and technical educators at both the secondary and postsecondary levels. The knowledge level of participants was judged to be low; only four participants reached the established competency level of 70%. Their self-rated perception level was higher than their knowledge level, with the largest number of participants indicating that they had an average level of knowledge concerning digital copyright issues on a scale of ratings from no knowledge to excellent knowledge. A Spearman‘s correlation indicated that there was no significant correlation between the participants‘ knowledge and their perceptions of their knowledge (Spearman‘s rho = .162). Pearson‘s correlations were performed to investigate any significant correlations among computers and software, the Internet, video, and multimedia. A significant correlation was found to exist between the computers and software area and the video area, r = .327. Analyses of any significant correlations between knowledge and the demographic variables of teaching level, gender, participation in professional development activities, and teaching experience were made by performing Spearman‘s rho correlations. There were no significant correlations. However, the professional development variable had a negative correlation with the knowledge scores, teaching level, and teaching experience. Conclusions based on the findings indicated that Mississippi business career and technical educators should be provided with training on specific digital copyright areas. These educators will then be better equipped to determine appropriate use of copyrighted materials and model this use to their students

Distance, multimedia and web delivery in surveying and GIS courses at the University Of Southern Queensland

[Abstract]: The University of Southern Queensland has been involved with the distance education of surveying courses for over 25 years. In recent times, staff of the Surveying and Land Information Discipline, and the University as a whole, have embarked on multimedia enhancement and web delivery of curricula. This paper examines some of the initiatives undertaken to enhance the delivery of educational materials and discusses some of the issues involved in the effective delivery of distance education materials. The significant experience in the delivery of traditional educational materials has proven to be an advantage in the repackaging and enhancement of teaching materials. Delivery of education to off-campus students requires a significant support infrastructure which is often not recognised by new entrants into the flexible delivery arena. Traditional support mechanisms such as phone, fax and standard media (eg. videos, audio tapes etc) are being replaced by email, ‘electronic’ discussion groups, CDs and internet resources. These enhancements, when developed professionally, require a significant commitment of resources and expertise and often require a team approach to their design and development. Access by off-campus students to internet services and affordable software packages also require careful consideration in the design and offering of distance education materials

E/Valuating new media in language development

This paper addresses the need for a new approach to the educational evaluation of software that falls under the rubric "new media" or "multimedia" as distinct from previous generations of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) software. The authors argue that present approaches to CALL software evaluation are not appropriate for a new genre of CALL software distinguished by its shared assumptions about language learning and teaching as well as by its technical design. The paper sketches a research-based program called "E/Valuation" that aims to assist language educators to answer questions about the educational effectiveness of recent multimedia language learning software. The authors suggest that such program needs to take into account not only the nature of the new media and its potential to promote language learning in novel ways, but also current professional knowledge about language learning and teaching

Slovenian Virtual Gallery on the Internet

The Slovenian Virtual Gallery (SVG) is a World Wide Web based multimedia collection of pictures, text, clickable-maps and video clips presenting Slovenian fine art from the gothic period up to the present days. Part of SVG is a virtual gallery space where pictures hang on the walls while another part is devoted to current exhibitions of selected Slovenian art galleries. The first version of this application was developed in the first half of 1995. It was based on a file system for storing all the data and custom developed software for search, automatic generation of HTML documents, scaling of pictures and remote management of the system. Due to the fast development of Web related tools a new version of SVG was developed in 1997 based on object-oriented relational database server technology. Both implementations are presented and compared in this article with issues related to the transion between the two versions. At the end, we will also discuss some extensions to SVG. We will present the GUI (Graphical User Interface) developed specially for presentation of current exhibitions over the Web which is based on GlobalView panoramic navigation extension to developed Internet Video Server (IVS). And since SVG operates with a lot of image data, we will confront with the problem of Image Content Retrieval