Action Research Project: - iMET

14invites user involvement. This can be delivered on CD-ROM, DVD, or over the Web. The goalof multimedia in education is to immerse the student in a multiple sensory environment in orderto transfer and infuse knowledge and understanding by mimicking experience as closely aspossible. In this way, multimedia addresses different learning modalities. Auditory learners,visual learners, and tactile learners benefit from varied presentations of information. Studentsoften have the opportunity to select the most meaningful information avenue for themselves. Tohelp students appreciate a literary work in a way that books cannot achieve, one mightincorporate dynamic hyper-linked text with images, literary criticism resources, translations, andrelated Web sites (Gray, 2000).The effect of multi-media enhancement is that it benefits retention of factual information.Higgins and Boone (1996b) found that students increased “retention over time when theinformation was contained in a hypermedia enhancement note as compared to when it wascontained in the main body of text.”With interactivity, the computer engages the user to respond to its prompts. Probably thefirst worldwide awareness of computer interactivity was the computer HAL in the StanleyKubrik film, “2001, A Space Odyssey”. The element of interactivity is commonplace in onlinelearning. Interactivity mostly functions to provide feedback, an important ingredient to academicsuccess. John Bishop describes how interactivity is employed in the class.com learning program:Students are asked in a science class to drag items from a list on the left to a column ofeither element or compound. If they drop the item in the wrong column, it goes back tothe left and the student must try again (Personal communication, October 5, 2001).