Research Essay on Multimedia Design & Early Learning
Dileep Katiyar: Master of Digital Design (Oct 2007),  Griffith University
3405QCA - Design Technology & Society.     Lecturer: Dr. Charles Zuber

Part I

The intention of this essay is to build a case for kindergartens and primary schools, to use computer based multimedia software as a tool for formal and structured learning, not just entertainment. The essay traces the growth of multimedia technology and its acceptance by tertiary education institutes. It outlines the difference in tertiary and primary education in Australia, in the context of E-learning. It examines, via two projects, the importance of digital literacy among children and the ease with which they can achieve it.

Part II

The author has created a multimedia educational CD-ROM for preschoolers. The rationale for the visual and interaction design of this software is included in the essay. This learning tool was tested and surveyed, as a part of the study. The focus group comprised of 3 to 7 year old boys and girls. The essay includes the findings of the survey and suggestions from parents and teachers to increase the software’s effectiveness as a learning aid.

Part I.  Interactive Multimedia and Computer Graphics:

Advent and Growth

I hear, I forget;

I see, I remember;

I do, I understand. – Confucius

This Chinese proverb was our slogan for marketing the power of interactivity, back in India, in 1993, when I started work in the field of interactive multimedia at Siemens Information Systems Ltd., Mumbai. Multimedia was all about ‘doing’ something or ‘interacting’ with an application. Media was no longer something to stare at or listen to. The desktop PCs during that time supported 256 colour displays, 16-bit stereo audio and small screen video playback. This seemingly state of the art technology was a far cry from today’s 16.7 million colour displays, surround sound audio and large screen videos that can stream off a server sitting thousands of miles away. Yet, it was the new frontier for interactive training, presentations and entertainment.

Products like Hypercard for the Apple Macintosh, Authorware, Toolbook and Director for the PC, had been launched with a promise to make creation of interactive content easy for trainers and presenters. Words like Edu-tainment and Info-tainment were quick to be coined as domains overlapped and technologies converged (Martins 2005).

While the information technology industry was busy celebrating the arrival of entertaining features on the desktop PC, Hollywood was working on the first full-length feature film, to be made entirely on computers without the use of real actors. Pixar released ‘Toy Story’ in 1996.  The director, John Lasseter said, "You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone, it has to be the story and the characters." (Lyons 1998). However, the way children would relate to computer generated images had been changed forever.

The new visual grammar of computer-generated imagery had arrived. This was further cemented by the flood of 3D animated movies, released by Pixar and various other studios that had mushroomed after the success of Toy Story. This phenomenon was not restricted to USA. The Shrek series has been extremely popular among kids worldwide, with movies being dubbed in several languages and released globally. The style of graphics for my educational CD-ROM has largely been inspired by this style of 3D imagery.

Multimedia Designers and Education

 In spite of the promise of early authoring tools to provide an easy way to develop interactive presentations and training material, design and development of such content soon became a highly specialised area, especially when it came to the Web. Adrian Shaughnessy (2005) writes in his article ‘Love the Internet’, “Not only is the technology subject to constant revision, but the demands of both clients and users are evolving at a hyperactive rate.” He adds, “Accelerating technology is not the only factor. The commercialisation of the Web has reached warp speed, and with this comes a demand for greater ‘usability’. Another equally hot topic is ‘accessibility.”

This is where the highly specialised multimedia designers and developers step in. They have now become a part of the administration system in tertiary education institutes, helping teaching faculties to create and broadcast multimedia content, using the institutes learning management systems.

E-Learning: Tertiary Institutions and Schools

In Australia, the terms E-Learning and Learning Management Systems are usually used in the context of higher education. “These Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Blackboard, Moodle and others when used creatively are able to support quite varied learning experiences, particularly in relation to content based, single learner, self-paced learning contexts.” (Gibbs 2005). Tertiary institutions have budgets to hire multimedia professionals to develop e-learning content for their LMS. They have open labs where students can have guaranteed access to a computer at almost any given time. After hours access to computing facilities is common in tertiary institutions. Students can access course material from home, off the LMS and can often complete a test from home too.

As opposed to this, primary schools have relatively scarce computing facilities and infrastructure to create and broadcast electronic course material to students is non-existent. While projects like one laptop per child (OLPC) are being implemented in least developed countries (LDCs), Australia continues to be content with a ratio of five students per computer in schools (Fact Sheet: Education and Training, 2005).  This ratio is a lot higher in many public schools. Most school children in Australia have access to computers at home, but they are not used to access course content from a school server, in the way students in tertiary education institutes do. Structured course content isn’t available to pre-schoolers or school students, in any electronic format.

Dale Spencer (2007), who is an author with particular interest in new technologies, writes, “When so many of today’s children are digitally literate by the time they get to the school gate, the most obvious task for teachers is to use the new technologies for further learning.” Liu Min’s study of how pre-kindergarten children use interactive multimedia technology, indicates that children as young as three are ready for interactive multimedia technology. In his study, “the children demonstrated a great interest in using the technology and had little difficulty in adjusting to the new learning environment, although many children were exposed to the technology for the first time.” (Min 1996, p. 4).

Furthermore, developing countries like India too, have contributed to pioneering research in computer-based education, specifically for India's poor. This has been led by physicist Dr. Sugata Mitra, who has  a PhD in physics and heads research efforts at New Delhi's NIIT, a fast-growing software and education company with a market cap over $2o billion (investing.businessweek.com).

Digital Literacy & Kids:

Hole-in-the-wall project (Mitra 2004)

Dr. Sugata Mitra’s ‘Hole in the Wall’ project started of in 1999 and soon became a World Bank funded project. The idea struck Dr. Mitra in 1987, after observing that his six year-old son had learnt how to use DOS commands.  This Minimally Invasive Education (MIE), as Dr. Mitra calls it, places a computer behind a wall and is accessible to kids through a hole in the wall. The kiosk attracts a lot of children from the nearby streets, who eventually learn and teach each other several computer tasks, thus acquiring digital literacy with an amazing speed and ease.

What the children learnt?

An estimated 300 children can learn to do most or all of the following tasks in approximately three months, using the “Hole-in-the-Wall” arrangement with a single PC:

All Windows operational functions, such as click, drag, open, close, resize, minimize, menus, etc.

1. Draw and paint pictures on the computer, load and save files play games.
2. Run educational and other programs, play music and video and view photos.
3. Browse and surf the Internet, if a connection is available.
4. Set up e-mail accounts, send and receive e-mail, chat on the Internet.
5. Perform troubleshooting, for example, fixing sound if the speakers are not working.

 The findings were:

Groups of 6-13 year olds do not need to be ‘taught’ how to use computers. They can learn by themselves. Their ability to do so seems to be independent of their:

Educational background.

1. Literacy levels in the English language or any other language.
2. Social or economic level, Ethnicity and place of origin, i.e., city, town or village.
3. Gender, Genetic background, Geographic location and Intelligence.
4. The Cambodian kiosks showed a computer-literacy impact similar to the ones in India.

One laptop per child (OLPC) project (www.laptop.org)

“It's an education project, not a laptop project.” - Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC

The one laptop per child project is attempting to provide a laptop for every child in countries listed as ‘less developed’ by the UN. Their mission on their website www.laptop.org reads, “Any nation's most precious natural resource is its children. We believe the emerging world must leverage this resource by tapping into the children's innate capacities to learn, share, and create on their own. Our answer to that challenge is the XO laptop, a children's machine designed for ‘learning learning’.”

The website adds, “The project's origins go back more than four decades to the early days of computing, when no one dreamed they would ever be suitable for children. But pioneering thinkers like Seymour Papert, who is an MIT Media Lab Professor, disagreed sharply, and over time led the long march from radical theory to reality proving the immense power of the personal computer as a learning tool for children.”

These projects highlight the belief with ample evidence, that children can acquire digital literacy simply by being exposed to a computer. Once they acquire that literacy, they are on their way to learn everything the computer has to offer. These projects establish a strong case to teach children using digital tools.

Part II.  Monster ROM: Pre-School Educational CD-ROM

 (http://www.dileepmedia.com/cars.html:  play online or download MAC/PC versions.)

 The CD-ROM in its current shape and form joins the ranks of many other edutainment CD-ROMs available off the shelf for parents. My attempt has been to study its learning impact and find out whether, after some fine-tuning, such products can be used as a serious learning aid, and not just to keep the kids busy.

The objective of this CD-ROM is to attract 3 to 5 year olds towards commencing their learning. The project uses a theme of cars in an attempt to appeal to boys, using the same philosophy as toy manufacturing companies. Due to time constraints, an equivalent CD-ROM for girls could not be developed and tested. The goals of this CD-ROM are to teach pre-schoolers the following:

 Counting: 1-10 & 11-20.

1. Colours.
2. Shapes.
3. Alphabets.
4. Directions: Left / Right  & Signals: Red to stop / Green to go.

 The home page allows the kids to have fun by clicking on elements like the tyres, siren and wipers. The CD-ROM attempts to be the first ‘virtual buddy tutor’ of a kid, when the child has just learnt how to use a mouse and few keys strokes.

Almost all other pre-school CD-ROMs have a lot of modules and sub-modules in them. It is a great process of discovery for a child, but sometimes too many modules can cause kids to feel compelled, to keep on engaging with the software, until they have discovered it all. This can be argued to be unhealthy. My educational CD-ROM has only 6 modules and it takes less than half an hour to interact with all of the modules in one session, after which the learning is supposed to cement via repetition of sessions. 

Interaction Design

The CD-ROM was designed, to be used by kids who can use a mouse to do the following:

1. Point by rolling over
2. Point and Click
3. Click and drag

 Visual Design and Sounds

The CD-ROM uses a theme of monster trucks and cars. I used my 9-year old daughter’s voice, since I observed that my son was always happy to take instructions from her. 3D computer generated imagery is used wherever possible.

An analysis of the consumption patterns of my 4-year old son and his friends, led me to choose a theme of cars. Most 4 year old boys find meaning for their childhood in a lifestyle that includes a big collection of cars, playing racing games on the computer, watching videos of roaring monster trucks and movies like Cars, Incredibles and Shrek, that use 3D generated imagery. (Press, Cooper 2003). So, to make the

CD-ROM meaningfully appealing to kids, I decided to trial the theme of cars, with a 3D look and feel.

Questionnaire Design

The questionnaire was designed to seek feedback easily and quickly in the areas of

a. Visual Design b. Interaction Design and c. Learning.

The feedback form seeks parents’ comments and children’s suggestions.

The questionnaires along with the CD-ROMs were distributed in child-care centres and preschools for gathering feedback.

Survey Analysis

While the CD-ROM was intended to appeal to boys, both genders were surveyed. The focus group comprised of 8 boys and 5 girls between the ages of 3 and 8.

Group Size:    13

Ages:            3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3.5, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8

Mean Age:     4.5

Median Age:   4

Gender Mix:   8 boys | 5 girls

Skills with a computer mouse: ……………………………………     None: 15.3% | Some: 38.5% | Good: 46.2%

 Findings

Visual Design

Did the child like the theme of cars?…………………   Yes: 100%

Did the child find the CD entertaining? ……………    Yes: 84.6% | Not Sure:   7.7% | No:  7.7%

Was the visual look appealing?………………………       Yes: 84.6% | Not Sure: 15.4% | No: 00.0%

Did the child understand the menu icons?………     Yes: 76.9% | Not Sure:   7.7%  | No: 15.4%

Among the boys, 100% found the CD-ROM entertaining. While this indicates that gender specific themes would be more successful in engaging children with the learning process, it would need more research.

1 girl said, she preferred ‘not just all boy stuff’ and her younger sister would have liked a theme of fairies, flowers and dresses.

Learning

Was the CD useful in teaching the following?

Colours: …………………………………...…………………        Yes: 92.3% | Not Sure:   7.7%  | No: 00.0%

Numbers:………………………………….…………………         Yes: 84.6% | Not Sure:  15.4% | No: 00.0%

Alphabets:……………………………………………………         Yes: 69.2% | Not Sure:   7.7%  | No: 23.1%

Shapes:…………………………………….…………………         Yes: 76.9% | Not Sure:  23.1% | No: 00.0%

Directions:……………………………………………………         Yes: 53.8% | Not Sure:  23.1% | No: 23.1%

Road Signals:…………………………….…………………         Yes: 61.5% | Not Sure:  23.1% | No: 15.4%

Do you consider this to be a useful aid to early literacy and numeracy?
Yes: 92.3% | No:   7.7%

Interaction Design

Could the child figure out how to interact with the screens?

Home Screen:…………………………..……………………       Yes: 84.6% | No: 15.4% (Point and Click)

Colours: …………………………………....…………………       Yes: 92.3%  | No:   7.7% (Rollover for sound and Click)

Numbers:………………………………….…………………         Yes: 92.3%  | No:   7.7% (Point and Click)

Alphabets:…………………………………..………………         Yes: 92.3%  | No:   7.7% (Rollover for sound and Click)

Shapes:…………………………………………………………        Yes: 91.7%  | No:   8.3% (Rollovers, Drag & Drop)

Directions:………………………………….…………………        Yes: 77.0%  | No: 23.0% (Point and Click)

Road Signals:…………………………….…………………         Yes: 69.2%  | No: 30.8% (Point and Click)

Themes suggested by the children:

Boys: Knights & Castles, Animals, Construction, Dinosaurs, Race Cars, Pirates, Bridges, Moving Objects, and Trains.

Girls: Fairies, Flowers, Pony, Dresses, Houses, Motorbikes & Scooters, and Farm Animals.

Comments / Feedback

Numbers section

1. Increase the size of the dots to be clicked. (Many parents highlighted this).

2. Change cursor on rollover.

3. Once clicked, grey it out 

Shapes section

1. Instead of having two different parts, one to learn shapes by rolling over and another one to drag and drop the shapes to build the truck, they could be combined into one.

2. Shapes like oblong, diamond and oval could be introduced 

Alphabets

1. Both children liked to “see” all the different cars under “ABC” but were not interested in the names of the letters. 

(Author’s response: This can probably be fixed by placing the letter next to car, once again, after the letter is clicked. The letter should be made similar in size to the Logo of the car)

2. Was not keen on the ABC module as there was no interactive element i.e. just viewed pictures of cars when clicked on the alphabet.

(Author’s response: An animated car could perhaps provide a lot more action and fun)

3. When developing an aid, a vital tool for an early learner is the phonetic sounds because 15 letter names are confusing for a child.

(Author’s response: This suggestion could be implemented by using a professional voice over artist)

Home Screen 

1. Directions on home screen, didn’t know where to start.

1. Child is female so grew tired of car theme. Have GIRL | BOY option at the start.
2. Great work, kept the children engaged. Nice and brightly presented. Would appeal to boys.
3. Can he make some more – They’re cool!
4. Maybe some more action in each segment, our son suggested that a horn in the car would be great for him.
5. He found it easy to drag and drop and liked the car moving. The alphabet and dot-to-dot numbers was too hard for him but he could do it with assistance.
6. Had some trouble clicking on the dots in the numbers section. Make the dots bigger, especially for younger children.
7. Needs more varied rewards for completion. Needs matching games to test the child. e.g. ask the child to paint the car blue and test if he or she is right.
8. Driving game was a bit slow. Child wanted to drive on grass, instead road curved with steering. Maybe have a goal (school) for child to drive to.
9. After she completes an activity it would be nice to gain positive feedback, including an aural comment. E.g. great work! She liked the spinning car on the rails.
10.  Overall, a bright and interesting CD. The car graphics and selection of cars is great.
11. Child too young for fine mouse control (number dots too small).
12. Directions & Road signals confusing, lost interest.

Conclusion

1. educational cd-rom pre-school
2. freepre school learning games
3. preschool learning cd rom
4. shapes for pre schoolers

The statistics in my case may be small; nevertheless it indicates the need for such software. Children will invariably spend a lot of time on computers at home playing games and surfing the net. By providing parents with structured multimedia content to engage the kids, the school’s academic program can be reinforced and furthered at home as well. The best part is that multimedia educational software can be made as entertaining as playing games. The benefits of introducing multimedia based learning software into the school curriculum are far too many to be ignored, even by the sceptics.

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