Multimedia Presentations Workshop
University of Manchester,
9-10 April 1996
This Workshop was organised as part of SIMA (Support Initiative for Multimedia
Applications). Despite being held during the Easter break, it attracted
a lot of attention, proving that this is obviously a subject of some interest.
Around 30 participants from a range of disciplines attended the event, which
consisted of a number of presentations and workshop discussions.
The Workshop had a number of aims. Firstly, are multimedia presentations
a good thing? While recent years have seen a rapid increase in the numbers
of computers used in education, for a variety of tasks, presentations and
particularly lectures are probably the last area to be affected by computer
technology. Is this simply because multimedia presentations have little
to offer over traditional methods, or is there some lack in the software
or hardware? Secondly, assuming there was some need for electronic presentations,
the workshop discussions were to provide some recommendations which could
be used by presenters and those responsible for equipping lecture theatres.
Presentations
The opening presentation was given by Professor Philip Barker of Teeside
University, who looked at 'Moving Toward Electronic Lectures'. He felt that
electronic lectures (not necessarily multimedia) had a number of advantages
to offer, including the ability of the electronic lecture to then act as
the foundation of an online version of the course. Terry Hewitt from the
Computer Graphics Unit, University of Manchester, argued the case for 'Chalk
and Talk'. He felt that OHP transparencies represented a reliable technology
that was portable and easy to use and modify. Reliability and portability
were themes that cropped up several times during the two days, and were
felt to be major barriers to the uptake of electronic presentations. A
presenter does not yet feel confident that, without taking all their own
equipment, they can go to another site and run their presentation without
problems. Stuart Hirst, from Leeds Metropolitan University, gave a multimedia
presentation on the second day, showing how different media could be incorporated,
and delivered. Some of the problems with setting up this demonstration
provided useful feedback for the discussion groups.
Workshop Discussions and Recommendations
Three Workshop groups were identified:
- Software Tools - looking at what was required in a good presentation
tool
- Basic Environments - looking at what was required to support the development
and delivery of multimedia presentations
- Strategy - looking at the general reasons preventing the take up of
multimedia presentations.
At the end of the two days, a number of major points had been identified,
and many of the group recommendations did in fact overlap. It was felt that
multimedia presentations were worth pursuing. Multimedia illustrations could
provide students with a much better insight and understanding of some topics
than simple text, but multimedia should be used appropriately, and only
where required. Current presentation tools were thought to be reasonable,
but better import and export facilities to allow easy exchange of material
between different packages, support for standard formats, and support for
non-linear narratives to allow more interactive presentations are required.
Other major recommendations included:
- The need for departments and institutions to share media clips
Developing multimedia examples to illustrate lectures can be very costly
in both time and resources, often beyond the scope of individuals only producing
examples for themselves. Finding existing clips and clearing copyright can
also be difficult. Some kind of shared, copyright cleared database of examples
would therefore prove invaluable
- The need for a standard set of equipment in lecture theatres
Lecture theatres need to contain a minimum standard of equipment, but perhaps
more important than this, presenters should know well in advance what is
available. A data sheet listing all hardware and software, supported resolutions
etc., should be available for every theatre. Since fully equipping a lecture
theatre for multimedia presentations would prove very expensive, the idea
of a 'presentations trolley' was suggested. This would be a central, moveable
resource containing the computer and data projector which could be used
in smaller lecturer theatres and seminar rooms around the campus.
A full report of the workshop and its recommendations will be made available
shortly on the SIMA WWW pages: (http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/mmsup.html)
Sue Cunningham
SIMA Multimedia Support Officer
Computer Graphics Unit
Manchester Computing
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
UK
Tel: +44 161 275 6095
Fax: +44 161 275 6040
sue.cunningham@mcc.ac.uk
http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/mmsup.html
