Multimedia Development

The following describes how my multimedia product appeals to the visual/spatial intelligence.

People with visual spacial intelligence learn well through visuals, pictures and colorful displays. The product powerfully uses images, videos, and text to tell the story of foster children and the need for people to get involved. Using images and videos as well as links to helpful resources make the product much more attractive than simple words on a page.  My multimedia product is designed to educate and activate the user to become aware of the need and to give them information that would allow them to get involved with foster care or foster families. The design of the product uses bold images on a tattered wall. This is symbolic of the nature of foster care.  Foster families and those who support families try their best to create a safe, healthy, and life giving environment for the children, yet the children are dealing with immense pain and loss and regardless of how nice of an environment that is created, there will always be some unresolved pain that tatters their hearts.  The product includes two very emotional videos that leave the audience with a very real and tangible sense of the problem. The goal of the product is to clearly present the problem and a logical and practical solution. The solution is resolved by providing information about 3 ways people can get help and to ultimately connect them with the openhomesohio.org website, which is an organization I co-founded. 

The following describes two multimedia principles my project supports:

1. My project supports the multimedia principle, which states that people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. The project uses words, pictures, and videos to create a more engaging and captivating experience for the learners.
2. My project supports the segmenting Principle, which states that people learn better in user-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit. My multimedia project enables the user to navigate at their own pace in a linear fashion or organically by clicking on areas multimedia presentation they would like to directly access. 

The following section describe 5 principles of Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and how I incorporated these in my multimedia product.

Cognitive Theory of multimedia assumes people have 2 channels for processing information: auditory and visual. It also assumes, people have a limited ability to process information and therefore chunking information rather than overloading information in one space is useful. The following 5 principles of Cognitive theory were applied to my project:

1. Selecting relevant words - the words I chose were relational and memorable. For example, the 3 ways to get involved all begin with the letter "C" - Caregiver, Companion, Coach. 
2. Selecting relevant images - The images I chose were relevant to the topic of foster care. For example, a yelling child is quite common. I felt it was important to not sentimentalize fostercare but to present the truth with images that cover the emotional spectrum. From sadness and yelling to smiles and hugs. 
3. I chose to organize relevant words to help the learner identify key ideas. For example, each section has words organized around the topic. The section that contains a movie about a child being removed from the home has the word "REMOVED" enabling the user to go right to that section if they choose. 
4. I organized images in such a way that captures the emotional weight of foster care. I set up the problem using pictures that depict the pain involved and correlated the solution with images of happiness and family. 
5. The project is designed to help the user create connections between the problem and the solution. Additionally providing relevant and localized information about foster care in the state of Ohio helps the learner integrate the information with their own sense of society in Ohio. 

The multimedia project chunks information rather than having one long giant text page. It is designed to help the user filter, select, organize, and integrate information.