Training for Instructional Uses of Multimedia at San Juan College: Toward the Campus of the Future

Abstract

A multimedia training program for community college faculty includes research results in its training. Recent research in computer assisted multimedia instruction is examined and summarized. Changes in the technology of instruction are described and illustrated. A description of the pedagogical relevance of research to teacher training is offered. The facilities, activities, and outcomes of an instructional multimedia training project for faculty at San Juan College are described. The current principles of instructional systems design, identified by a survey of current research in cai, reflect a pedagogical shift from behaviorism through cognitivism to constructivism. Current research in cai reports that multimedia improves the effectiveness of cai, but provides little consistent empirical evidence explaining why. Questions about learner feedback and control have led to useful results in control/display ergonomics. Continued development of effective, artificially-intelligent tutoring systems has benefited from wider progress in expert systems. Research findings demonstrate that the immanent complexity of hypermedia requires methodical management, that cognitive factors limit the optimum number and effective types of hypermedia link displays, and that close monitoring of learner-system interaction reveals important cognitive differences in individual learners. That same close monitoring of interaction also enables complex instructional systems to respond differentially, thus effectively, across broad differences among individual learners. Different schools of pedagogical thought offer different theoretical explanations for cai's efficacy, but in practice cai's increasing capacity to address individual differences in learning processes is re-emphasizing the importance of teachers' ability to do the same.