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Audiovisual design might impact emotional responses, as studies from the 1970s and 1980s on movie and television content show. Given today's abundant presence of webbased videos, this study investigates whether audiovisual design will impact web-video content in a similar way. The study is motivated by the potential influence of videoevoked emotional responses to related activities in a web-based learning environment. To examine this, a video scene was designed that follows the concept of an educational trigger video. A trigger video aims to evoking affective responses in viewers with respect to a social problem situation. An experiment was conducted that explored whether the manipulation of two audiovisual design variables-shot length and camera height-of a web trigger video affects how the problem situation and the characters are perceived. The results showed that audiovisual design did impact these video-related tasks.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether a video-induced positive and negative mood has a differential effect on subsequent problem-solving activities in a web-based environment. The study also examined whether task conditions (task demands) moderated the mood effect. As in traditional experimental mood-effect studies, the affective video materials were not related to the tasks. The results show that affective video clips did impact performance on an insight task but not on a divergent-thinking task. This provides evidence that in some cases affective video has an effect on the performance of unrelated tasks in a web-based environment.

The applicability of multimedia databases in education may be extended if they can serve multiple target groups, leading to affordable costs per unit for the user. In this contribution, an approach is described to build generic multimedia databases to serve that purpose. This approach is elaborated within the ODB Project ('Instructional Design of an Optical DataBase'); the term optical refers to the use of optical storage media to hold the audiovisual components. The project aims at developing a database in which a hypermedia encyclopedia is combined with instructional multimedia applications for different target groups at different educational levels. The architecture of the Optical Database will allow for switching between application types while working (for instance from tutorial instruction via the encyclopedia to a simulation and back). For instruction, the content of the database is thereby organized around so-called standard instruction routes: one route per target group. In the project, the teacher is regarded as the manager of instruction. From that perspective, the database is primarily organized as a teaching facility. Central to the research is the condition that the architecture of the Optical Database has to enable teachers to select and tailor instruction routes to their needs in a way that is perceived as logical and easy to use.Keywurds: Adaptability; Instructional database; Multimedia; Object-oriented approach; Teacher-support systems. Context of the current ODB projectThe seemingly unlimited possibilities that multimedia systems offer for presenting information in any desired format, and the interactive capabilities that stem from the built-in computer power offer, in principle, a vast range of educational applications.

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