New Media, New Practices: Experiences in Open Learning Course Design

We explore some of the complex issues surrounding the design and use of multimedia and Internet-based learning resources in distance education courses. We do so by analysing our experiences designing a diverse array of learning media for a large scale, distance learning course in introductory computing. During the project, we had to significantly rethink the design and production of our learning resources as we shifted from a paper-based teaching model to an interactive teaching model. This shift entailed changes to our design products (to promote more effective media use by learners) and changes to our design practices (to foster consistent media use and design across a large and distributed team). Course designers and course students alike needed help in breaking out of paper-based models of learning to obtain maximum benefit from the interactive teaching model.

Publication(s)

To appear in: Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI '98), Los Angeles, 1998.