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SIMA Multimedia Survey

This survey was conducted by John Murdoch of the Robert Gordon University School of Librarianship and Information Studies.

Introduction

Background

The growth in use of multimedia within the UK Higher Education sector has accelerated in recent years, and looks set for continued expansion in the future. However, this expansion has not followed any coherent structure and consequently a wide variety of hardware and software is currently used for multimedia applications, with little or no co-ordination between institutions in terms of cross-platform compatibility.

The Support Initiative for Multimedia Applications (SIMA) is funded under the New Technologies Initiative (NTI) from the Joint Systems Committee of the HEFCs. It aims to provide a single focus of information in the area of multimedia and will link in with other projects and initiatives for UK Higher Education and will dovetail with the current activities of the Advisory Group On Computer Graphics (AGOCG).

The survey was commissioned by SIMA to establish the range of hardware and software currently in use for multimedia applications in UK Higher Education.

Scope

The restricted timescale available for this survey prevented full coverage of all multimedia activities within UK Higher Education. Consequently it was decided to limit the coverage of the survey to those projects funded by various HEFC initiatives, specifically the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP), the Information Technology Training Initiative (ITTI), multimedia projects funded by the NTI, and other projects commissioned by SIMA.

The survey concentrated on the hardware and software in current use by projects for development and delivery of multimedia applications. The survey also aimed to determine the importance to projects of standards, both de jure and industry/de facto.

The following details refer to responses from multimedia related projects. For full details of all responses and projects covered by the survey, please refer to the paper copy.

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