MITE6323 E-Portfolio

In this course, MITE6323 Interactive representations of Information and Knowledge, at  first, I am looking forward to learn more about theories on how to design Interactive representations of Information and Knowledge. Before enrolling in this module, I am already familiar with using Flash to produce interactive multimedia files. Also, I am familiar with windows movie maker and some other video editing softwares like Ulead Media Studio Pro and Pinnacle Studio. Contemporary technology allow easy creation of powerful visual displays, and brings visualization to much higher level by enabling interactivity. However, it’s always time consuming to produce such interactive learning objects. Therefore, when designing multimedia files for teaching and learning, it’s very important for us to decide what factors should we take into consideration.

In the first two lessons, our module facilitator, Dr Daniel Churchill, has quoted some references from Tufte’s (2001) principles of graphical excellence. Tufte believes that Visuals can communicate complex ideas with clarity, precision, efficiency and convey the most knowledge in the shortest time and in a small space.  Lester(2000) suggested that Well designed graphics are far more effective than words. "Deconstructing Visual Information by questioning who the visualization was made for, by whom, why, and based on which data." I agree very much with Lester on his view. It is very important to have detailed planning before we start working on the multimedia files design.

In Lessons 3 and 4, Dr Churchill continue to introduce the concept and classification of learning objects. Mayer(2005) suggested that people can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone.

From the above quotes, it seems that using interactive multimedia files in teaching and learning really have many advantages, however, the main question is, how should we start designing these kinds of interactive learning objects? Any guidelines to follow?

FACTORS that affect my learning in this course

1. Different technical Skill levels

In this module, a social constructivism approach is adopted.  Every students are required to prepare their own E-portfolio using Blog tools.  Dr Daniel Churchill and Ryan Yue(which is also a MITE student) act as the blogs facilitator.  It is hoped that every students can contribute and give comments to each other. However, Personally, I think that a very important Pre-assumption has been missed in the module design.  In order for students to be able to discuss and give constructive comment to each other, they should have similar knowledge background, just like in this course, they should  have acquire certain technical background. For example, in completing the second lesson task, I used Flash to produce a multimedia interactive file.  What I expected is that  other classmates will discuss how to improve the way of presenting the information in an interactive way. However, the most feedback I received is asking me how to and what software I have used in creating the file, and obviously, any frequent web surfer can tell it’s a flash file by just watching at it.  The different technical skill levels is really hindering both the depth and direction of the discussion.

2. LIMITATIONS of using Blog as teaching medium

For example, I’ve a very good piece of information that I wanted to share with others.   If I just posted it on my blog, it is very likely that this useful piece of information is being ignored or missed.  The reason is very simple, as a student, I won’t visit every classmate’s blogs every day, even if I will visit other classmates’ blogs regularly, the chance of this piece of information being ignored is still very high.

Other than the Module facilitators’ blog, there should have some other places, like discussion forum to share this kind of information.  Or the facilitator really need  to do a real hard job on visiting and integrating all students’ blogs every week.

Therefore, I think that Blog is more suitable for self-reflection, rather than as a two ways or multi-direction channels. However, I am not saying that Blog is not good for learning. The main point is, we need to consider how to make use of this kind of new technology. Why we bother to use some new tools if some old and simple tools is available?