Use of multimedia in engineering education

Learning (CAL) by the computing industry, there remained a shortage of suitable titles insome subject areas, including engineering.Investigation revealed that the most significant barrier to the exploitation ofmultimedia technology concerned justification and payback for the substantial amount ofdevelopment effort required to produce software of this kind. It was found that the size ofthe potential audience for a programme was all too easily limited by the exorbitantcomputer system requirements and limited flexibility which tended to be built into thesoftware by default. It was aimed to investigate whether the elements of a multimediaprogramme which contributed greatly to its computer system requirements, cost andinflexibility were so closely linked to its educational effectiveness.The research was experimental in nature. It involved the creation of several pieces ofmultimedia software, this being an experiment in itself since it allowed measurement ofthe amount of effort required to incorporate the various media into an educationalprogramme. Two particularly significant pieces of software are described in detail in thethesis; an advisory system meant to promote design for testability among electronicengineers, and a CAL system offering an introduction to process planning. Both of thesefeatured, in places, a highly interactive style, involving the dynamic generation of imagesand animations in response to users’ input. This represented a radical departure from theconventional approach to multimedia, which was normally based upon the sequentialplayback of prerecorded material.The process planning software was used with groups of students; their commentswere invited and their performance was measured in a test which used a novel method toidentify any students who had prior knowledge of the subject. (Correct answers from suchpeople could not reasonably be claimed to indicate that learning had taken place, but theresults of the remaining students provided a more accurate sample.) Knowing how wellstudents had performed on each question, when taught in a variety of different styles, itwas possible to compare the educational effectiveness of each approach. Since the amountof time spent adding each feature and medium to the software was known, it was thenpossible to identify which media had been the most efficient.It was found that interactivity is the most vital single ingredient in CAL software.Experimental results clearly showed that learning was most likely to occur when thesubjects were required to play an active role. Attractive, informative media such as photographs and diagrams did generally help to facilitate learning, but the effect of thesewas comparatively minor.The author theorises that effective computer-based education does not necessarilyinvolve extensive use of high quality digital video and the like; rather that the means toeffective computer-based learning predate the multimedia era