Distributed Multimedia Learning Environments: Why and How?

Abstract

We outline the societal prospects and business opportunities for much more extensive use of interactive multimedia technologies (IMT) connected through telecommunications to create distributed multimedia learning environments (DMLE). A theoretical framework is provided with a distinctive communications perspective on learning emerging from research in the cognitive and social sciences. A major consequence of this communication emphasis is the special need for rich communication technologies to support highly interactive teaching and learning activities, especially those at a distance but even within a classroom or school. Examples of existing projects using IMT for remote learning communications are among the most dramatic examples of these new possibilities. Based on these foundations, we first depict a vision of IMT for schools that establishes the kinds of DMLE designs that appear from research to offer promising improvements. We then characterize how current educational spending trends and educational technology research and development attitudes could be transformed so that such distributed multimedia learning environments could become a reality more rapidly. Short-term progress in closing the gap from current practices to this vision is possible in specific IMT application areas described. The first author gratefully acknowledges the support of National Science Foundation Grant MDR88-55582 in work related to this report. Aspects of the framework for describing the contributions of learning research were first developed in Pea and Soloway (1987). Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Roy D. Pea, Northwestern University, Institute for the Learning Sciences, 1890 Maple Avenue, Evanston, IL 60201 (pea@~ils.nwu.edu). 'Nicholas Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab depicted these trends two decades ago, and Stewart Brand (1988) has traced the history of these developments in his book on the Media Lab.

Collaboration with Mobile Media: Shifting from 'Participation' to 'Co-creation'

“…The fragmented, emergent nature of the Mobltz experience contrasts with the stable media production environments of most tools. This may seem to challenge previously published recommendations of multimedia learning environments, that include goal driven collaboration, media sharing, and meaning negotiation [17]. As a distributed environment, Mobltz is designed to facilitate meaning-making across and within shifting cultures and contexts.…”

“…Features that foster joint focus on symbols in activity, opportunities for conversational repair and appropriation of meanings can support conceptual learning in a collaborative context, encouraging the aligning of perspectives and conceptual change [11,13,14]. Early work on desktop multimedia and learning has demonstrated the value of such highly interactive multimedia conversational learning environments [4,15,17].…”

Toward a Learning Technologies knowledge network

“…Much work on virtual universities and virtual precollege "campuses" inherits the teacher-centered, lecture-at-a-distance, information transfer model that "distance learning" has had for decades (Pea & Gomez, 1992). This orientation will not be our focus.…”

Remote exploratoriums: Combining network media and design environments

“…The ideal environment for a distributed community encompasses the framework established by Pea and Gomez to support distributed multimedia learning environments [10]. Included in this framework is the ability to provide rich information networking that allows easy, reliable distribution of any kind of data including text, pictures, sounds, and movies as well as interactive information.…”