Evaluating Internet Techniques and Methodologies in
Areas for the Multimedia Instructional Design Team:
Incorporating the Works of Pierre Lévy, Philosopher of
Contemporary Virtual Culture, Paris, France
Multimedia and Instructional Design:
Designing the Design Team for New Technologies
. . . What I ask of the text is
that it make me think, here and now. (Lévy, 1994). This statement
is almost a purified form of the very essence of Interface Design, or
the structural elements of Web-based courses and Distance Learning in
this Information Age. The man who phrased this apt summary is Pierre
Lévy, a philosopher of contemporary virtual culture, of Paris, France.
He teaches in the Department of Hypermedia at the University of Paris-VIII.
He was commissioned by the French Ministry of Education under the auspices
of Michel Serres, where he developed a network concept known as
Arbres de connaissances (Trees of Knowledge) with Michel Authier.
Lévy is also interested in collective intelligence studied in an anthropological
context. (Georgetown Univ. & CCT, 1996).
For this writer, engaged in
research of and by the Internet for establishing the most profound and
useful system for the training and support of a multimedia instructional
design team, Lévy has also come to represent one of the “heroes” of
our time. His thoughts are certainly not universal in the undulating
world of design or instruction or even of computing — however, his theories
empower those who have immersed themselves in the auspices of instructional
design and who have committed their talents to the furthering of a perfected
system for the improvement of learning environments. Lévy’s works embody
the spiritual and the mystical found in any of humanity’s finer works.
He has explored the spirit of the Internet, the soul of discovery, the
wizardry of the online worlds, waiting for the purposeful or accidental
explorer. His words bring excitement, as the designer searches for reasons
and support, while creating learning scenarios that leave traditional
education far, far behind. Lévy explores the leaps of imagination and
the fire of yet undiscovered means of exploration. He brings a vision
when most simply suffer from a lack of words to describe the miracles
of today’s electronic hyper-journeys.
This writing is purposed for
outlining methods, techniques and tools for the leader of an instructional
design team. As the path led deeper into more mystical aspects of the
actual PURPOSE of learning, the place and yearning of the learner, the
status and desire of the teacher, and the unknowable reaches of the
cyberspace highway — more and more of Lévy’s writings began to make
sense to this author. In many ways, this IS a spiritual journey, for
we take much on faith. We lunge into a huge unknown, and we accept much
that is written in terms we can never understand, by entities we will
never meet. Lévy expressed that we embark on creating a Superlanguage.
For now, the things we create and learn, remain in a shadowy limbo,
only a suggestion of what may be around the corner, in time and space.
Of many readings, Lévy’s works exhibit the intense excitement of the
Internet as no other writer or philosopher has been able to capture.
In creating the most succinct
and helpful environment for a design team, the logistics of space, equipment,
software and thousands of helpful tools are essential, even critical.
Throughout this search, however, this author realized that the internal
search was the most important factor. For those of us who have worked
in arenas heavily influenced by copyright law, for instance, Lévy’s
words hold great impact. He theorizes that hypertextual systems and
digital networks have deterritorialized the text, the writings,
the actual objects of copyright law. Through these systems and networks,
there has emerged a text — a mode of communication —
without distinct borders. Now, we can say, “there is the text,”
like one might observe that there is water or sand . . . millions of grains
and fathoms of water. Endless. The text has been put into movement,
it has whirled into a torrent, it has been made into the conveyor, the
messenger — it has become an entity of constant metamorphosis. “It
is thus closer to the movement of thought itself, or closer to the image
of thought that we share today.” (Lévy, 1994).
Lévy further states that perhaps the
deterritorialization of the written word that we are witnessing
today is nothing but a prelude to the emergence of the newest type of
connection with knowledge. Through a kind of
spiraling return to the oral base of the original communication
of our ancestors, knowledge is once again being transported by living
human collectivities, rather than by the colder, material devices on
which we currently rely. There is a difference, however. Perhaps, this
time, the undeviating carrier of knowledge would no longer be the physical
community with its carnal memory — but
cyberspace, the territory of virtual worlds, and the
only garden where a collective intelligence might be cultivated.
(Lévy, 1994).
The visage of the design team
— any design team — is changing in drastic and determined ways. Each
hour of each day that we spend studying and refining methods and means
for bringing improved and aesthetic media to the masses, what we have
just learned and implemented often is already destined for that closet
named “archaic.” It is outmoded often before it is made available for
the target audience. The purpose of this research and writing has been
to study the paths necessary for gathering, teaching, and unifying a
team of designers that will embrace all new technologies and learn to
bring the art of new learning to the troubled world of Education. This
team of designers must not only be well-versed in instructional design,
but also in the rapidly expanding areas of multimedia. New horizons
stretch ahead for this Global Village. It remains in the hands of a
chosen few to actually design the face of learning — for the
near and distant future. No one will understand this burden better than
the Project Leader for such a team, immersed in multimedia instructional
design. Not just the learning content, but the impact of the five known
senses, as well as the emotions and many other internal structures are
being “face-lifted” by teams who are currently re-shaping the way humanity
views learning. As the paradigm continues to shift, this will become
increasingly true.
A successful creative department
is one that constantly researches for tools that will provide extremely
strong solutions for multimedia and content design. In earlier research,
this writer discovered that well-known software companies have added
their prowess to this pressing need for new structure in education means
and methodologies. Adobe Systems, Inc. has made a powerful set
of tools that help in achieving aesthetic and business goals. Their
Web site includes everything a Project Team Leader would need in the
way of invaluable tools needed in a startup for a highly technical,
state-of-the-art department. Their online tutorials and simulations
provide a melting pot of ideas on how other design professionals use
these software to do far-reaching works.
If there is
any catch-phrase that is catching on quickly, it might be the
term, “multi-purposing.” In this new, on-demand world, one attribute
of any service or product must be its ability to serve in more than
one direction. It needs to be not only functional, but also adaptable
and flexible. Adobe’s site provides extensively detailed reviews
on how to multi-purpose work for print, Web, broadcast, and multimedia
delivery. When the multimedia team’s final goal is the creation of learning
content for delivery by computer, this means that there is a high need
for creating work with the ability to
multi-purpose. Adobe’s Web site offers a wealth of information
in case studies in the design, illustration, and multimedia industries,
showing point-by-point reviews in how to make these concepts work. (Adobe, 2000).
Adobe’s site includes
helpful areas in the training of an instructional design team, with
unique tools for leading the design team. They offer tutorials that
explain the basics of developing Web pages, links to tips and techniques
for using their newest miracle-makers and latest versions of old companions.
Examples such as Adobe LiveMotion, Adobe PageMill, Adobe After
Effects,
and Adobe Classroom
in a Book,
their very comprehensive training series for all their software — these
are all useful software tools for a multimedia design department. (Adobe, 2000).
Although these are company-specific products, the theories and design
concepts are universal. The list of resources goes on to include Web
publishing and graphics software, and an exhaustive list of additional
online educational resources.
Adobe recognizes its partnership with companies and individuals
that stand as models or exemplars in the design and education communities.
Although these examples could also be considered simply as resources,
there is more to it than that. Each model is seen in the profession
as an entity that not only is state-of-the-art, but also trend setting
— artistic as well as technical. Members of one’s team will draw encouragement,
will learn to establish high goals in their work, and will learn to
look for the leaders in their profession, in order to emulate that high
level of success.
Adobe isn’t the only
high tech software firm that is putting a real practice behind their
preaching! Here is another exciting prospect, also based in a software-directed
academy — the creation of a new system that will enhance and elevate
the quality of education that students receive.
Allen Communication, a pioneer in the multimedia training and
education arena, has been working with educators and educational institutions
at all levels for the past decade to fashion, form, and test a solution
aimed at integrating technology into a unique educational environment.
The solution arrived at is the Allen Academy of Multimedia, a
grassroots program designed to provide the opportunity for both students
and teachers to learn about, practice, and then produce interactive
technology-based courses as part of their normal curricula activities.
(Allen Communication, 2000).
Where is all this new thought
for new designs in learning, leading us? Paul D. Houston, Executive
Director of the American Association of School Administrators, recently
said, “The demands of the 21st century require new thinking about education.
We must abandon the ‘re’ ideas such as
re-form, re-engineering,
re-thinking, and create new systems for learning which involve
all the environments that impact children and life-long learning, the
home, the community, and the workplace.” (Allen Communication, 2000).
This form of
re-formed and re-engineered thought is evident in new trends
that are being shown — as well as new levels of competency — in the
upcoming generation of employees. It is vital that the multimedia team
members keep current! And, while studying the new competencies, it must
be realized that the very acts of thinking and observing are being
re-structured. It can be compared in some ways to the participants
in demonstrations of recent years, who have loudly proclaimed: “WE
are the people.” Lévy states this even more loudly:
“We will also be able to pronounce
a somewhat bizarre phrase, a phrase that will resound with the totality
of its significance when our bodies of knowledge will inhabit the cyberspace:
‘We are the text.’ And our freedom will be greater, the more
we become the living text.” (Lévy, 1994).
This metamorphosis is shown
clearly in current text- and visual-based creations being produced within
the parameters of our new paradigm. There are also essential components
in learning new technologies and applying them to the ever-changing
scenario in learning products! Even the seasoned designer learns new
approaches when creative problem-solving techniques are applied. A recent
trend on Web sites such as Adobe’s shows that inclusion of educators
on the Web site allows a multimedia instructional design team to begin
to compile a list of references of the professionals they encounter
in their Internet searches. The advice or critique of an educator such
as those associated with corporate “tools entities” such as
Adobe, might some day make or break the project-in-progress.
It isn’t just educators or
educational institutions who are awakening to the importance of these
issues. There are just as many business entities deeply committed and
ensconced in leading programs that will change the face of learning
activities. Just who is leading the way in expanding new media instructional
practices and tools? The New Media Centers organization is a
collaborative network of academic institutions and vendors, serving
as a synergist to integrate new media into education.
Adobe was one of the founding vendor members of this network,
and has worked with its academic and corporate members, worldwide.
In helping institutions of higher education to enhance teaching and
learning through the use of new media, organizations such as these help
in bringing together pioneers in the new media field from academia and
industry. New Media Centers identifies academic institutions
around the world best suited to serve as models for innovation, both
on campus and in their communities. Its corporate members then help
them appropriate and use state-of-the-art new media technology to create
hands-on laboratories. These laboratories offer an ideal setting for
beta-testing, software development and the training of tomorrow’s workforce.
Acting as the program hub for
its members, the NMC national staff convenes both traditional
conferences and electronic forums to discuss the key pedagogical, technological
and legal issues facing educators and corporations in the new media
realm. New Media Center institutions work with each other and
with NMC corporate members to develop the new technology needed
for education. Individual centers are also encouraged to develop community-based
programs, such as in-service training workshops for primary and secondary
school teachers and professional development courses for lifelong learning.
NMC Corporate Members are working together in the
New Media Center program to provide technology solutions for
and form close relationships with academic institutions. (NMC At
A Glance, 1998).
Thoughts on the Esoteric Nature of New Technology:
Re-Designing The Design Team
If
New Media Centers is identifying academic institutions that are
best suited to serve as models for innovation (both on campus and in
their communities), there are also private business entities who are
already well on the way to identifying and setting standards for the
multimedia design community. The need for the team environment that
works healthily together is an almost universal criterion for the business
world. Sometimes, the best description for any subject is the one that
is given in current vernacular. According to the currently unrivaled
3D-production outfit named Protozoa, the team needs to “plan
ahead, but don’t be afraid to use duct tape.” (Fox, 1998). Members of
Protozoa’s team advocate that perhaps real-time animation is
the best description of what they do. Even though their core business
is selling software and knowledge, in order to
use all those things, a user needs more than just the technology.
A knowledge of how to design for the technology is also needed
— skills such as being able to manage all that data, knowing how to
use the various media such as VRML or television, and learning how to
“staff and budget” the business. The
Protozoa team admits that “you can spend forever dinking around
with this stuff [3D animation].” (Fox, 1998).
Keeping one’s sights set on
the final use of the hard work of design leads to often non-standard
— or at least “non-corporate” thinking. Because 3D creation is such
a rigid medium, users don’t really take a freeform approach, but (sometimes
sooner, sometimes later) they get down to really planning out the “nuts
and bolts” of a project. Where true creative genius is evident is when
that same team of excellent planners manage to keep a large chunk of
chaos in it. “Really good web designers or really good artists
usually just kick stuff out. Some of the best web design I’ve ever seen
has been created out of experimentation.” (Fox, 1998)
Protozoa likens this
process to feeling like the team members feel a freedom to make something
really unique and spontaneous — “fast and cool with duct tape.” The
real success happens when the team, then, can turn the 3D (or any art
form) “into brush strokes.” They, of course, are referring to the taking
of the rough diamond of the idea, and refining it into a true art form.
It is interesting how a very
"Gen-X" and slam-dunk culture such as
Protozoa can then directly link us back to the more esoteric
and mystical thought patterns of a man like Pierre Lévy. It isn’t just
the modern multimedia or 3D design team that has had insight into the
partnership, or even closer relationship of “marriage” of creativity
and learning, of technology and communication. Certain artistic experiments
have attempted to establish instruments of communication and of production
— collective happenings intricately involve the
receivers, transforming the interpreters of the art into actors.
This act links the interpretation with a
collective action instead of conforming to the established scheme
where messages (art, sound, or whatever) are sent
toward the receivers, who, of course, are situated
outside of the process of creation. The receivers are then invited
to somehow make sense of the work after it is completed. “Artists
experimenting along these lines could well be the first explorers of
the new architecture of cyberspace.” (Lévy, 1994). In fact, this small
discourse by Lévy, in so many words, describes the exact theories of
art and communication, as those expressed by
Protozoa.
These are profound theories
to ponder, for the creative multimedia design team. The ART of instructional
design is changing, screaming perhaps, for the receivers to be
intimately involved in the process of the creation of the learning scenario.
It is in this manner that the student becomes the teacher, the teacher
becomes a student, and the cyberspace environment fosters this fertile
soil for such a collaborative work. It seems to this writer that the
Project Leader, then, assumes a position much like a referee in a game
— helping to position the principals in an extraordinary contest — where,
hopefully, all will win.
If we extend this line of thought
further, we can see that 3D, or any form of visual augmentation in the
online environment, begins to resemble the attributes of the text —
the digital hypertext. It all begins to take on an automatic response,
allowing the operations of actual reading to unfold and emerge — it
extends the dimensions of the reading. Hypertext, hypermedia
— they are always in a cyberspatial process of reorganization.
The navigator, the learner, can create a particular text according
to the needs of the moment. All of the databases, the expert systems,
the tables, the hyperdocuments and interactive simulations and other
virtual worlds — they are ALL potential rich soil for texts, images,
and sounds. With the advent of extreme 3D such as that of
Protozoa, perhaps cyberspace will also be a rich field for even
tactile qualities. These may be eventually actualized by individual
situations by digital realms yet undiscovered.
When
pondering a concept such as “undiscovered digital realms,” members
of any design team, as well as individuals caught in the Internet flurry,
must also think deeply about the methods that demand to be used, to
stay current. The possibility of being passed by, as new techniques
and manners of development constantly whirl around cyberspace corners,
is very great. One exceptional tool that the Project Leader will embrace,
is a standard set of organizational and research tools for ways to stay
current with multimedia and development offerings. The content of the
Internet is CONSTANTLY changing, as tools, resources and documents are
added or deleted daily. The search tools we use are susceptible to the
ebb and flow of the Web. Many are very good, but none is perfect. The
ironic act of researching for further research tools, is a very “real
reality!” One very good safeguard is to develop a list of reliable resource
pages, and to refer to them very often, making note of all pertinent
changes. Some very effective resource sites include the “Librarians’
Index to the Internet: What’s New This Week,” the “Internet Scout Net:
Happenings,” “Yahoo! What’s New,” dozens or hundreds of searchable Usenet
Newsgroups, and an expanding set of project- and skillset-connected
resource sites (many of which are listed on university or distance education
Web sites). (Ackermann & Hartman, 1997).
Goals
For New Technology:
Re-“Dreaming” A Design Team For A Superlanguage
The
uncharted reaches of the Internet — might they be compared to a kind
of small-scale Copernican revolution? It is no longer the reader following
the instructions of reading and moving about in the text — but
now it is the text, mobile and kaleidoscopic, turning, folding and unfolding
itself, manifesting facets of itself, in front of the reader. More importantly
— at his prompting. (Lévy, 1994).
As designers, Lévy’s writings
instigate the most profound of introspection — not just of our talents
or skills, but to the core of our belief systems and our commitment
to the vast worlds of learning adventures. The concept of collective
intelligence refers to intelligences:
distributed everywhere, active everywhere,
placed boldly and with firmness everywhere, coordinated and vitalized
with synergy. It is a unique world in which we travel, with the communication
being almost like a communion.
Even if we begin, as members
of the design community, by pondering the
charted areas of the Internet . . . we have to realize they will
“un-chart” and reorganize along new lines by tomorrow. Should we begin
to consider knowledge as a continuous and pulsating space, where it
is the same for all, and, ironically, different for everyone? It is
time to begin to imagine a galaxy of virtual worlds that give expression
to the diversity of human knowledge, a heavenly route that reflects
the movement through space by its explorers. Almost living, these electronic
byways structure and restructure themselves, chart and re-chart collective
actions of all its members — each of which have embarked on their own
small trip into distance learning — with writing and reading, and adopting
each twist and turn as it appears.
As authors in the awesome whole
of restructuring the knowledge of our race, will we embrace the unknowable
as a challenge and incorporate it into our media team as easily as a
new copy of Adobe’s latest software? Or will we continue to “communicate”
through the metal media we know today, thinking only in diminutive manners,
detached from one another? Will we yet, once again, reorganize the methods
of the suffocation of inventiveness and the division of our intelligences?
As harvesters of the online
world, foragers into virgin forests of knowledge, and nurturers of unpredicted
mental giants in future learners, do we dare to take the route of the
collective intelligence? Amazingly, as we clasp these new methods and
truths, and don them as honorable vestiges of commitment to an electronic
superworld, this author believes that we would gradually invent techniques,
systems of signs, social forms of organization and of regulation. These
will permit us to think together, to concentrate our intellectual
and mental power, and to multiply our imaginations and our experiences.
Could it be that the Internet and all of the mental prowess behind its
creation, has also brought us to the Redeemer, who will help us to work
out practical solutions for the complex problems affronting us in real-time
and on all levels?
None of us — not “we, the author,”
nor “we, the learner” — none of us have EVER known, nor do we know
NOW, the capacities that we have designed and implemented. No
amount of assessment will ever reveal the true depth or breadth of our
contributions. While embracing the speculation of collective intelligence,
it is mandatory that we know that this does not mean the mastery of
others or ourselves by creating writhing, painful human
collectives. It is more like a fundamental
loosening of the grip, a softening of the hard hand of the lack
of enough knowledge — and the altering of the very concepts of our identities.
Collective intelligence, perhaps,
is the goal of the multimedia design team. This discourse has
attempted to tie the hard edge of technology to the softer lines of
the vulnerability and the sword-bearing strength of humanity’s finest
goal and also it's finest tool — the search for knowledge. The
mysteries of this connection are as old as our race. Our goal should
become the manipulation of information so that it can be distributed
everywhere, so that it will no longer be the privilege of a separate
social class. It will naturally be circuited into every human activity
as a tool in the hands of everyone.
Lévy states that “we are destined
for an encounter with Superlanguage.” (Lévy, 1994). In the opinion of
this author, it is like a first and foremost directive for an instructional
design team. We must not only comprehend the essence of collective learning,
but inject this concept into our work, as it
is what drives this new Information Age.
The hardest task is gulping
down and digesting the awesome honor of being a part of the generation
that is planning humankind’s next great
Communications Epoch. We are authoring more than just content
or learning methods . . . we are carving the numbers on the yardstick.
The astounding growth and importance of the Internet, for multimedia,
for education, for seeking to be architects of our own learning systems,
we MUST listen to those who have paved the eRoads!
In an “on-demand” world of
instant knowledge retrieval, those who create the settings for learning
must judge their works by the availability and usability of their design
systems. Now, more than ever, we must consider Lévy's words: “. . . What
I ask of the text is that it make me think,
here and now.”
References
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Ernest, and Hartman, Karen. (1997).
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