What does Interaction in Multimedia Really Mean?
Jost-Peter Kania and Debora Weber-Wulff
Virtuelle Fachhochschule - Project Group Berlin
Technische Fachhochschule Berlin
Luxemburger Str. 10
Germany - 13351 Berlin
{kania, weberwu@tfh-berlin.de}
Abstract
1
We often find multimedia applications that are called
"interactive" media, but for which the interactions seem to
be restricted to simple electronic page turning. In this paper
we discuss the different aspects of interaction that we have
implemented in multimedia instructional materials. Our
goal is the creation of Internet-based multimedia materials
that use a seminaristic instructional paradigm for
encouraging coordination, cooperation and communication
in distance learning.
One of the major distinguishing characteristics of a German
Fachhochschule is the use of the seminaristic instructional
paradigm. Most lectures and exercises are restricted to
small groups of students (40 for a lecture, 20 for an
exercise section). A seminaristic lecture does not consist of
the teacher delivering a 90 minute extemporization on the
topic of the day, but of the teacher asking questions, often
difficult ones, and leading the students through discussions
to discover certain points for themselves. Phases of
discussion are followed by content presentation phases and
again discussion is encouraged. Questions are often asked
by the students that can also foster discussion on the
current topic. The topics of the lecture are explored in the
exercise sessions in a laboratory, usually with the professor
in attendance for further discussion. We sometimes call this
type of learning "active learning" (handlungsorientiertes
Lernen).
Digital media enable us to provide a means of accessing
different parts of a collection of texts and other media in
any order. This order may be determined solely by the user,
or can be programmed by the author of the collection, or
may be a combination of the two. In addition, numerous
Internet-based services can be used to enable or enhance
cooperative work amongst distributed learners. Both of
these aspects can be called interactivity.
Shirley Alexander [1] lists a number of interactions that are
possible in digital media, from electronic page turning and
interactive TV through simulations to conference and
tutorial participation via Internet. In the area of
instructional media, however, we find so many applications
that offer only electronic page turning, mostly using linear
structure with an occasional diversion.
The authors do not find physical books interactive just
because one turns pages or can skip to the end to see who
the murderer is. So in our work for the Virtuelle
Fachhochschule [2], an Internet-based University of
Applied Sciences in Germany that will be offering a degree
program in media and computer engineering and in
business engineering, we have attempted to map as many
aspects of seminaristic instruction as possible into digital
media.
Seminaristic Instruction
In order to transport this metaphor of instruction into digital
media and the Internet we have to go beyond the traditional
broadcast metaphor and explore various methods of
encouraging students to interact with computer simulations,
with themselves, with other students and with instructors.
This means that we need aspects of telecooperation
integrated in our learning materials and not just offered as
part of a telelearning environment.
2
Examples
In this section we will give six examples of interactions
that we have produced and explore some of the various
aspects of interactions as we have implemented them. We
have currently produced two courses, one on "Quality
Management" with about 30 hours of instruction and an
introduction to using the Internet (called "Propädeutikum
virtuale" with about 20 hours of instruction) at the
Technische Fachhochschule in Berlin for the Virtuelle
Fachhochschule. In order to fully appreciate the
interactions, we have an on-line version of this paper at
http://vfh.tfh-berlin.de/public/papers/Interactions.html that
has copies of the animations embedded in it.
2.1 Visualization of complex sequential processes
One of the typical uses of multimedia in educational
materials is for visualizing complex processes. When the
process is sequential, we can break it down into single steps
and add a simple CD-player-like navigation so that the
learner can at any point go on with the next step, repeat the
last step, or start over. A running commentary gives a short
explanation of what is happening, while the surrounding
text explains the process in greater detail.
This is an animation that explains how a binary file is
transferred using FTP:
plug-in for browsers, Flashplayer, is needed to view the
animations.
2.2 Visualization of complex uninterrupted processes
Many complex processes need to be seen in their entirety in
order to be comprehended. Many of these processes are
those that involve feedback that will change the running of
the system. In a first level the learner can be shown the
entire process with the explanation texts hidden from view.
On moving the mouse over one of the stations the
explanation is opened up for reading and disappears when
the mouse moves away. Figure 3 is an example of the
statistical process control, which determines by means of
the amount of loss produced the parameters to guide a
production process.
Figure 1: Binary file transfer
The commentary can also be embedded in the animation, as
shown in the example in Figure 2, called the House of
Quality. Here we have a very complex matrix that must be
filled out by the engineer for documenting the quality
function deployment process. After a step-by-step
explanation of the methodology, the individual steps of the
process are explained again using an example in which
ball-point pens are being produced. As in the example in
Figure 2, students can see the work being done a step at a
time and can also go backwards in the process to repeat a
step.
Figure 3: Statistical Process Control
In a second stage a complex simulation can be offered
where the learners can manipulate parameters and see the
effects on the process. The former is easy to do in Flash,
the latter requires complex programming and exact
specification of the parameter effects that the learners can
achieve. Even with authoring systems such as Toolbook or
Director, the production of such a simulation is quite timeconsuming, although when properly done it can be very
useful to the learner. Ainslie Ellis [3] has developed
Toolbook simulations for demonstrating how Java manages
storage when running an application. We are currently
trying to replicate this effort using Flash.
2.3 Integration of Communicative Elements
In the module Propädeutikum virtuale our goal is to teach
beginning students how to use the Internet services as study
tools. One of the units teaches the use of email, starting
with a vicarious learning situation animation in which the
learner watches "over the shoulder" while a fictive student
writes an email to a fellow fictive student.
Figure 2: The House of Quality
Both of these animations, as well as many of the others that
we use, were produced using Macromedia Flash. A popular
It is, however, rather boring knowing how to write an email
and not having anyone with whom one can correspond, so
this unit is to be conducted synchronously over the Internet.
The students register their email addresses at the start of the
unit, and the first exercise requests that they write an email
to the student that is after them in the list. This will ensure
that all students have a new email in their inboxes for the
second exercise, which is replying to an email message. We
do, however, provide a button that will, in an emergency,
produce a letter automatically and direct replies to an
automatic waste basket.
The students quite enjoy this interaction, at first writing
very timid letters such as "Hi s123456, my name is Mark,
who are you?" As soon as the answer comes "This is
Jeanette from Lübeck, were are you from?" they tend to
begin a conversation to find out who the other person is,
although this is not an explicit exercise! Getting to know
someone in a virtual setting is vital to being able to
effectivly communicate with them when working on a
common project. This exercise is very useful for helping
students learn how to begin virtual conversations.
The unit continues through forwarding (forward a letter to
the person behind you in the email list), courtesy copies
and attachments, which are made to the three people in
front and the three people in back of the learner in the list.
At the end of the lesson each learner should have an
awareness of who at least six other people in the group are.
The programming necessary for these exercises can be
done using rather simple Perl scripts, which are available
from the authors upon request.
2.4 Distributed Collaboration
It is difficult enough for students to learn how to
collaborate in small groups when they are physically in the
same room. When they are geographically distributed, the
problem is even worse. Since they don’t really know the
others in the group, they are often reluctant to give
information and they are reluctant to ask questions, for fear
of appearing stupid. In order to give students a nonthreatening forum for practicing collaboration, we first
teach the use of news groups: how to subscribe, how to
start a thread, how to post, proper quoting etiquette and so
on. In a later unit we teach searching the Internet for
information by explaining how search machines work and
discussing various problems that occur when indexing and
retrieving information.
At the end of the unit we have a sort of group treasure hunt:
We have six questions that are very hard to answer. The
students who are synchronously logged on are encouraged
to start threads in the class news group for the different
questions. The students are to share both information about
places they have looked and not found information, as well
as to post promising URLs. The goal is not that each
individual student finds the answers and can describe the
searching path, but that the group manages to find the
answers in collaboration.
This exercise is just plain fun! Of course, the news group
format will encourage people to get off on discussing
neighboring topics. It is helpful to have a teacher monitor
the conversation and nudge the discussions back on to
topic. We try and find difficult questions for at least half of
the questions that even the teachers do not know the
answers to, so that the students can feel the thrill of real
research.
As an example, one of the questions was whether or not it
is permitted to keep dogs within the city limits of the town
of Reykjavik in Iceland. After some digging around in pet
sites, one of the students triumphantly declared that it is
allowed: he had found the regulations for importing dogs
into Iceland. Since Reykjavik is in Iceland and dogs can be
imported, he concluded that it is allowed to keep dogs in
the city and most of the other students went on to the next
question. One student persevered in her search, however,
and found a site with official information about the capital
of Iceland, including the chapter noting that it is illegal to
keep dogs within the city limits – they are only allowed to
be kept in the countryside. She triumphantly informed the
rest of the group of her discovery and the group learned
that one does need verification of anything found on the
Internet.
2.5 Collection boards
In the unit on the history of the Internet we experimented
with using a didactical technique that is often used in
schools, the questioning-developing discussion (fragendentwickelndes Unterrichtsgespräch). The teacher poses a
question, for example asking the learners what they think
the Internet is. In face to face instruction, the answers are
collected on a board in the classroom, and when the teacher
is happy with the results a summing up of the answers,
perhaps complemented with a personal definition, is given.
Figure 4: What is the Internet for you?
For the Internet we implemented HTML forms and Perl
scripts that allow us to ask each learner a question, and then
collect the answers in a list. The list is refreshed every 30
seconds, and the learner is encouraged to come back and
look a few minutes later, to see what the others in the group
have written.
After this collection board page the teacher can sum up
with a page containing her personal view of the question.
We have our implementation fully parameterized and offer
simple tools for manipulating the board. A teacher can
begin the instruction by clearing the board and if desired
saving the current state. Should it become necessary, she
can remove inappropriate answers that were offered by
some students without erasing the entire board. She can
also select which answer page she wants displayed right
after the collection board page. Figure 4 shows the question
page and Figure 5 is a selection of answers (in german) to
the question “What is the Internet for you?”.
Figure 6: The Weibull Distribution
Figure 5: Answers to the Question in Figure 4
2.6 Interactive exploration of mathematical functions
Mathematical functions can be quite abstract and the
dependencies between the parameters can be difficult to
understand. Software packages such as Mathematica or
Maple can be very useful for visualizing such relationships,
but they are generally too expensive to be packaged into a
learning unit.
Evaluations that we have conducted on our preliminary
work are very encouraging, the students really enjoy using
these interactions. They learn to communicate and
cooperate with each other, which for us is the ultimate
interaction. Some of our students report that they feel that
they have now finally understood the more abstract
concepts, even though they have had lessons about the
concepts previously.
We developed a Java Applet to plot simple functions so
that students can explore the dependencies. We have
implemented the statistical functions for the normal
distribution, for the binomial distribution and for the
Weibull distribution. The parameters to the functions can
be entered by a student and the function is plotted on the
screen. Changing values of the parameters causes the new
function to be plotted alongside of the original function and
so the effect of the parameter on the resulting function can
be clearly seen. Of course it is possible to reset the
parameters to the default setting when the screen becomes
too cluttered. Figure 6 is a screen shot of the Weibull
distribution applet.
Our research project will be continuing on until 2003. We
hope to develop more interactions of this kind and welcome
ideas and comments. The Perl scripts are available from the
authors.
3
Bibliography
Conclusions
In this paper we have presented six different examples of
interaction over and above electronic page-turning that we
have implemented in our work. We feel that interaction is
an extremely important aspect of using multimedia in
educational software that is often neglected. We hope to
eventually be able to make tools available so that teachers
and multimedia developers can easily incorporate
interaction of this nature into their work.
Acknowledgements
We want to expressly thank the other members of the
Virtuelle Fachhochschule team for the many discussions
we have had on this topic. Particular thanks are due to
Stefan Müller, our production chief, and his amazing group
of students who are able to transform the wildest ideas that
we have had into useful animations.
[1] Shirley Alexander,
http://www.iim.uts.edu.au/using/mmdefn.shtml,
Last modified January 18, 2000
[2] Virtuelle Fachhochschule, Project group Berlin,
http://vfh.tfh-berlin.de/
[3] Ainslie Ellis, Toolbook multimedia demonstrations for
Java programming, Tips and Techniques session,
ITiCSE 2000, Helsinki.