MULTIMEDIA AND COLLABORATIVE LEARNING Kathleen Cohen San Jose State University

RAPIDLY CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES ARE CHALLENGING OLD WAYS OF TEACHING  THE TEACHER NO LONGER ALWAYS KNOWS BEST!

THE NEW PARADIGM INCLUDES:  Learning how to learn  Exploration  Problem solving  Learning to collaborate

THE ART HISTORY AND MULTIMEDIA COURSE:  Includes students in Art History, Library, Design, Education and Multimedia  Focuses on the use of computers and networks for researching and presenting art historical materials  Emphasizes collaborative learning

FACULTY STUDENT COLLABORATION  The teacher need not be an expert  Students bring their skills to the class  Teacher selects a general topic and suggests subtopics  Students form groups around subtopics  Together they create a project to go on the web  Technology depends on student expertise

STUDENTS ARE EXPECTED TO LEARN TO:  Find and evaluate materials in books as well as in digital form  Use image databases  Edit images using Photoshop  Use copyrighted material appropriately  Evaluate good and bad web design  Understand how their particular skills are used in a group project  Understand something of the dynamics of teamwork

TASKS FOR THE INSTRUCTOR  Reduce anxiety level  Select general topic for the semester  Give guidelines for group projects  Organize teams with necessary skills - make sure each student has a task they can accomplish -get students to define what they will do -suggest modifications to make unified whole  Give copyright lecture & monitor usage  Discuss challenges of teamwork & solve clashes

ASSIGNMENTS:  Complete two digital lessons related to general topic & do a write-up  Sign onto class listserv  Search campus library for 4 books/articles  Search state-wide library for 4 more  Search a foreign library for 1 more  Find 4 web sources  Write an annotated bibliography

ASSIGNMENTS: continued  Find the best web site and the worst and do a class presentation, using a design worksheet for evaluation  Edit 20 images in Photoshop and demonstrate what they did with one  Work with their team to create a module  Keep a log of what they did  Write up an evaluation of the course

LECTURES & VISTORS:  Copyright law  Librarian on search strategies  Campus network manager on networks  Designer for Yahoo on design issues for the web  Professional on designing for handicapped  European expert on future of networked multimedia  Chinese official trying to decide on introduction of web into Chinese universities

TECHNOLOGY & SUPPORT  TECHNOLOGY  HTML and Dreamweaver  FLASH with Animation & Video  ART HISTORY  WorldArt database with 50,000 images  GRADUATE OR ADVANCED STUDENT  Helps with technology & design issues  Gets course credit, no pay