Good learning experiences reach beyond the curriculum content of a subject. They provide opportunities for effective interaction as part of the learning experience and for students to reflect on what is learned and how it is learned. To advance these ideas in multimedia learning environments, this section outlines a framework of higher order learning qualities based on current educational theory.

By understanding and using the framework, educators and designers can help create informed learning contexts for the education of people of all ages and with different needs.

Learning Qualities:

Engagement is the degree to which a student is absorbed within the learning experience. In an engaging learning experience, the student intentionally and consciously participates, being motivated and recognising a purpose in the experience.

One of the ways that teachers are encouraged to help students engage in learning tasks is to ‘make learning fun’. Making learning fun means making it personally satisfying for the learner. Satisfaction is gained when students feel that they have accomplished something significant and productive. Learners should leave the experience with a strong sense of achievement; a feeling that they have created something worthwhile, whether it is something they have made, drawn or built, or an idea or theory they have about the topic.

The interaction between students and their environment provides patterns, facts and opinions that support reflection and generate new learning and new questions.

Instead of students passively receiving information and reinforcement, students derive their understanding from their own active involvement in finding, making sense of and using knowledge. As people know things in different ways, so they learn best in different ways. Therefore, educational multimedia products need to accommodate different styles of learning. Students’ personal needs, differences, goals and preferences should be respected and considered. Students need to be offered options, either by presenting activities at different levels or choosing different types of interactions. For example, students may have some control over the speed at which information is delivered or use cause-and-effect interactions to help them assess their own level of understanding.

Higher order thinking requires that students engage in cognitive tasks such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation, and that they reflect upon their knowledge to form

new understanding.

Active learning requires students to go beyond the surface to interpret data, and to organise, speculate, test, elaborate on and abstract information. Instead of memorising facts and behaviours, students deal with ideas and acquire personal knowledge.

Learning environments can promote higher order thinking by:

• asking open and provocative questions

• presenting issues that need to be explored in some depth before any response is given

• requiring students to make complexdecisions and contributions.

Constructive learning environments emphasise the development of students’ own ideas and knowledge, rather than the selection of information from pre-packaged options.

• Students make things, search for meaning, see relationships and make connections.

Each individual brings a unique set of experiences and attributes to the learning setting. Adaptive learning environments accommodate and respond to a wide range

of personal differences.

• The way students learn can vary according to preferred learning styles, aptitudes and intelligence, stages of development, motivation and capacity to direct their learning and ways of thinking.

• Adaptive learning environments provide students with the opportunity to develop and exhibit their understanding in a way that makes sense to them.

• Students should be provided with several ways of viewing and using the same piece of information, and should have significant control in the form of choice.

Creative learning environments allow students to work in imaginative ways to associate ideas, produce new ideas, and devise their own internal and external representations of ideas.

• The ability to think and act creatively relies on a capacity to apply past experience in new ways.

• A student who attempts to solve a problem or improve a situation, particularly where a problem does not respond to familiar approaches, needs to be creative in their thinking and application.

• In the design of interactive multimedia learning experiences, open-ended systems provide an environment for students to construct and create solutions.

The student needs to be able to participate freely in the learning experience.

• The learning environment must encourage sharing, and help students to develop skills in dealing with positive criticism, action, critical reflection, curiosity, enquiry, taking risks and entering new territory.

• Liberating learning demands the removal of constraints, fears, prejudices, and ideologies that can hamper the learning process.

In collaborating, students work to ether to collect and exchange knowledge, receivefeedback and gain insight into the way to approach and solve problems.

• Collaborative learning is valued in education because employers (among others) have realised that modern business requires employees who are able to work together in teams, and schools need to prepare students for this type of culture.

An autonomous student assumes responsibility for, initiates, guides and monitors their own learning, drawing upon human and physical resources, as they are required. Autonomous students may work alone or help a group to work as one.

• To achieve autonomy, students need the skills and attitudes to work and learn independently and with confidence.

• These skills include the ability to locate and process information, the ability to manage time and human and physical resources and communication skills.

Discussion provides opportunities for logical disputation, engagement with meaning, perspective and interpretation.

• There is general agreement that at the present time we are not able to construct software that can adequately ‘understand’ the conceptual difficulties a student is experiencing and offer meaningful assistance.
  
• Machines however, can offer opportunities for discussion through email, chat rooms, mailing lists, discussion groups, shared whiteboards, interactive role plays, dialogue tracking, video email, collective knowledge banks, planning aids and other strategies.

Reflection requires students to examine the reasoning behind their own interpretations, conclusions and opinions and assess the validity of the evidence considered.

• Reflection is a key component of critical thinking and conceptualisation. Learners stand back and take time to consider what they know, and what and how they are learning and form new understanding.

Context recognises that knowledge consists of items that exist in relation to each other, rather than independently.

• Putting information in context allows students to use their knowledge to interpret and understand new information and the relationships between pieces of information.

• The social and organisational setting in which a product will be used is very important.

Authentic learning involves acquiring knowledge in a setting which students perceive as ‘real’ or legitimate.

• By using real-life tasks and case-based studies, students can apply their understanding to new and challenging situations.

• Real and case-based tasks are likely to be perceived as purposeful and productive, rather than contrived, and so are more likely to produce a feeling of accomplishment that is instrumental to students engaging in their own learning.