DESIGN TOOLS

During the "Analysis" phase of a development effort, you and your team gradually constructed a set of assumptions about the interactive product you are developing. It is sound practice to confirm those assumptions before undertaking the bulk of the design work for the product. The assumptions should be confirmed with your client and with any vendors that may be collaborating on the project. The "Assumptions Checklist" is a tool that can help you confirm the assumptions underlying your multimedia development effort.

The "Assessment Checklist" is designed to help you assure that each of the objectives you have defined for your interactive multimedia product is accompanied by one or more reliable and valid measures. All too often development teams wait until a product is almost complete before "making up a test" intended to measure its outcomes. That is generally too late. By planning for assessment early in the design stage of your product, you will have a much greater chance of designing a program that is actually capable of achieving its objectives.

The "Assessment Matrix" is designed to help you assure that each of the goals or objectives you have defined for your interactive multimedia product is assessed by one or more reliable and valid outcome measures. All too often development teams wait until a product is almost complete before "making up a test" intended to measure its outcomes. That is generally too late. By planning for assessment early in the design stage of your product, you will have a much greater chance of designing a program that is actually capable of achieving its objectives. This tool will help you to consider alternative assessment procedures because traditional paper and pencil tests are often inadequate indicators of a program's outcomes. Alternative performance assessment strategies such as "observations" and "portfolios" should be considered.

An important product of the analysis phase of a multimedia development project is a clear description of the salient characteristics of the users of the multimedia program. In other words, you want to define your "target audience" accurately and in sufficient detail to make sound design decisions. The checklist presented below includes four major categories of user characteristics: 1) cognitive, 2) personality, 3) social, and 4) physical. Obviously, any given multimedia program can't be adaptable for every kind of individual difference, but multimedia can be designed to accommodate the user characteristics that are most critical in one or more specific contexts.

A key element in the instructional development process is to specify the objectives for your program as clearly as possible. Vague or poorly stated objectives often result in instruction that is inappropriate or assessment that is invalid. For example, consider the following objective: "Trainees will understand the importance of safety procedures on the job." Such a vague objective provides little direction for how training should be designed or how the performance of this objective can be assessed. This tool is designed to help you write more specific objectives by providing you with a list of observable verbs. The tool includes verbs for both the cognitive (knowledge or intellectual processing) domain and affective (attitudes or values) domain.

The objectives for an interactive multimedia program should answer four essential questions about the performance or outcomes of your program: who is to accomplish the performance, what the performance is, the conditions under which the performance will occur, and the criterion or standards by which performance will be judged. The "Objectives Review Checklist" is a tool that can help assure that your objectives are stated as clearly as possible. Precise and unambiguous objectives provide useful direction for designing interactive multimedia as well as essential information upon which to base your assessments.

In many projects, trainers or teachers will be expected to implement an interactive multimedia program at a local site such as a training center, school, or campus. Obtaining input from these people as early as possible in the design phase of your project is essential. You can obtain a great deal of useful information from instructors concerning the feasibility of implementing multimedia. They can also provide many good ideas for the design of your program. The information is the survey below could be obtained in a number of ways, e.g., face-to-face or telephone interviews, mailed questionnaires, or focus groups.

Robert Gagné is a major contributor to both behavioral and cognitive learning theory. One of his most notable contributions is a model of instruction that includes nine critical events such as "Grabbing the Learner's Attention" at the beginning of a lesson. Although the model seems quite simple, it has been shown to be an effective way to organize instruction across a wide variety of subjects. It is one model of instruction that might be employed in an interactive multimedia program. Of course, there are other models that may be more appropriate in your situation.

An essential component of evaluating an interactive multimedia program (or any other type of program) is preparing a sound evaluation plan. The "Evaluation Plan Template" tool includes the major topics that should be included in a reliable and valid evaluation plan. One unique aspect of this plan template is that it encourages you to consider decisions that must be made and should be affected by the evaluation data you collect. The strategy seems simple, but is very challenging in actuality. Working with your team, you need to anticipate as many possible decisions that may be made about the IMM program you are developing or implementing. For each decision, try to identify questions that must be answered to help you make a better decision. Then and only then should you decide on the evaluation design and data collection methods to be employed.