Design, implementation and evaluation of multimedia resources for geography and earth science education

Abstract

Geography and earth science educators are simultaneously faced with increasing scrutiny of teaching, new educational standards and a plethora of new teaching methods such as computer multimedia. While there have been calls for the use of multimedia in geography and earth science education, few explicit guidelines detail how to actually begin designing, implementing and evaluating educational multimedia in the classroom. This paper describes an approach to educational multimedia design focused on a coherent set of multimedia design standards informed by an array of evaluation functions. Such design and evaluation standards should be shaped by broader educational and content (geography and earth science) goals. Our approach to design and evaluation serves as a fundamental step in examining the possibilities of multimedia in the geography and earth science classroom.