THE KEYS TO RAPID DEVELOPMENT AND DISSEMINTATION OF MULTIMEDIA-RICH, INTERACTIVE EARTH SCIENCE LEARNING APPLICATIONS: EDUCATIONAL OBJECTS AND SYNGERY

Earth science students often have difficulty internalizing static representations of geologic processes. Yet when presented using multimedia illustrating time, motion and 3-D, they grasp the same concepts better. Although often not possessing the skills to create such media, most educators have the ability to incorporate them into their courses. Creating media-rich, interactive learning materials simplifies to finding media that fulfills an instructor’s pedagogical needs. Educational objects (EO), modular software “chunks”, are just such building blocks created by a few Earth science developers.

EO categories include: exploratory modules (EM), visual components (VC), virtual experiences (VE), assessment tools (AT) and electronic documents (ED). Through EMs, a learner explores a process, concept or event in an interactive manner. VCs illustrate motion, time and scale/scope through visual representations. VEs allow learners to experience places, events and processes they could not normally visit due to time, cost, safety or inaccessibility. They combine text, photos and maps with multimedia to provide background and context. ATs provide learners immediate feedback on understanding and comprehension using traditional methods as well as electronic assessments tools. EDs use multimedia and scripting to enhance and extend the traditional print document via user interactivity and feedback.

Educators with moderate programming skills can reuse, recombine and customize EOs to build learning applications that address many pedagogical goals. These applications can be interactive and media-rich, emphasis active learning and address a variety of educational levels (knowledge, analysis, synthesis, etc.). When tested, creators can post these applications to digital libraries for use by others. Thus, the learning applications themselves become synthesized EOs available to the Earth science community. In this manner, the original EO’s impact is multiplied and the number of EOs grows. Such contributions to the community may inspire others to modify, extend or broaden learning applications or build entirely new ones. In this manner, the synergy between developers and educators promotes a community of Earth science multimedia users while sustaining and fostering the growth of the available EOs.