Research Assistant: D. Lindrum
Sponsors: Intel, Purdue-on-line, MIDC
Each day more multimedia materials are authored at Purdue. Creating a common library of existing resources may increase the total use of multimedia materials, facilitate and encourage the use of materials across administrative and disciplinary boundaries and help to reduce the burden of creating new materials.
Through this project we will seek to develop sound methodologies for the collection, storage, search and interrelation of multimedia instructional content. We will strive to incorporate proven pedagogical principles in our efforts to catalog, index and access these unique and complex data.
A well engineered data warehouse will allow professors to begin courseware development efforts by drawing upon current resources. Query tools will be configured specifically for use in an instructional environment. Putting access in the hands of students will allow them to create the kinds of integrated presentations that are increasingly prevalent in the academic and business worlds.
While multimedia resources offer an abundance of well documented benefits to the instructional environment, the interrelation of large bodies of such resources promises an order of magnitude increase in the value of these resources. Data will be divided into the smallest usable chunks to allow for maximum flexibility in the restructuring of content.
What has already been invented will be available for use and the materials being authored will benefit from the collected wisdom of Purdue's educators. Key word schemes, consistent descriptions of non-text resources, thorough searches and intelligent agents will work together to facilitate the re-integration of knowledge.