Teaching purposes, learning goals, and multimedia production in teacher education.

             The authors of this article coordinate and teach different
             core subjects within a course of preservice teacher
             education in the Faculty of Education, University of
             Melbourne, Australia. Both subjects are obligatory, and are
             taught to the same cohort of students. The first author
             coordinates the subject Learning and Teaching; the second
             author coordinates Language in Education. Each author (as a
             member of a design team) independently developed an
             interactive CD-ROM to be used as a fundamental component of
             subject content and delivery. Even though each author was
             motivated by a similar philosophy of worthwhile learning
             and teaching, differences both in teaching purpose for the
             subject and in interpretation of the nature of desired
             learning generated two strikingly different products. In
             this article, the two multimedia products--Quality in
             Learning and Teaching (QuILT) and Building
             Understandings in Literacy and Teaching (BUILT)--are
             compared to illuminate the influences of teaching purpose
             and learning goals on the creation of educational
             multimedia. These major design issues are complemented
             by an overview of the manner of use of each program
             within the teacher education program, and faculty and
             student reactions to program implementation. Finally,
             implications are provided to guide other educators who wish
             to produce multimedia for teacher professional preparation.

JI. of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia (2003) 12(3), 243-265

CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS FOR MULTIMEDIA DESIGN AND USE IN TEACHER EDUCATION

Increasingly, the use of multimedia to support learning is becoming embedded within diverse fields of university education. One such field is preservice teacher education. In an environment of diminishing budgets and increasing student-staff ratios in university faculties of Education, the task of orchestrating the transition of novice teachers to competent practitioners continues to challenge teacher education courses. Further, the rapid and pervasive increase in influence of information and communication technologies in all areas of modern society provides another significant press for change in course nature and structure. Innovative, authentic, and cost-effective ways of providing opportunities are required, for preservice teachers to leave their course confident and competent to begin independent teaching in the ICT-rich context of contemporary society.

It is tempting for multimedia designers simply to create "electronic textbooks" (Herrington & Standen, 2000, p. 197) that are conceptually simple to develop, as they often rely on linear transmission of knowledge with the user the passive recipient of instruction (Reeves & Okey, 1996). This approach is not that adopted here. Both authors, in their independent efforts to produce worthwhile educational multimedia, shared an overarching belief in the value of "active learning," where users learn best by "actively making sense of new knowledge--making meaning from it and mapping it into their existing knowledge schema" (Gipps, 1994, p. 22).

This description of these multimedia products as based on "active" constructivist principles implies a sharp surface/deep dichotomy in the nature of the desired learning. Likewise other dichotomies can be invoked, such as those relating to: the nature of "good teaching" (monist or pluralist; absolutist or relativist); means of fostering durable change in beliefs and actions (real or virtual experiences); means of effectively bridging theory and practice (deductive or inductive logic); and to approaches to the learning process (individually or collaboratively). A comparison of QuILT and BUILT in terms of such learning and multimedia design constructs can illustrate how nuances in their interpretation are a result of different teaching purposes and learning goals. Further consideration of the nature of the active, constructivist learning required in each CD-ROM, in terms of more subtle dichotomies will be made below. However, prior to this, the constructs of constructivism, reflection, metacognition, and situated learning that guided the production of each CD-ROM will be discussed.

Constructivism

Since the 1970s, constructivism--the idea that learners actively construct their own understandings--has been central to a wide range of theories and perspectives on desirable learning. This emphasis has been reflected in such fields of educational research as learners' conceptual change, particularly research on so-called "alternative conceptions"--conceptions that are at variance with accepted understandings and that perturb the learning process. Similarly, reflection has become a central component of contemporary learning theories (e.g., Baird, 1991; Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985; Hatton & Smith, 1995; Schon, 1983). A difficulty with both constructivism and reflection is that their meanings are elusive, with writers differing markedly in their use of the terms. Several varieties of constructivism are extant in the literature with the two most relevant to this article being personal (radical; endogenous) constructivism, and social (exogenous) constructivism. The former variety emphasises the intrapersonal dimensions of learning and their implications for teaching, and the latter is directed more to interpersonal interactions mediated by social experience and enculturation, often through language. Aspects of personal constructivism will be considered through discussion of the concepts of reflection and metacognition below; social constructivism relates particularly to the discussion of the concepts of situated learning, cognitive apprenticeship, and scaffolding.

Reflection

For nearly two decades, but particularly since the surge in interest in reflection following Schon (1983), writers have drawn attention to its ill-defined nature and process (e.g. Baird, 1991; Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985). Clear differences in the focus of reflection (e.g., introspective or problem-centred) and in when it occurs in relation to an experience (anticipatory, contemporaneous, retrospective) are just two elements that confound succinct communication (Baird, 1991). Notwithstanding this lack of clarity reflection has, however, become a keystone in approaches to teacher preparation and development:

     Many teacher education programs are now supporting teachers' active
     reflection and construction of a range of pedagogical beliefs and
     practices in order to adjust and further develop their own personal
     and public theories about teaching and learning. (Latham, 1996, p.
     43)

Metacognition

While use of the term reflection has a long history, metacognition is of much more recent origin, with interest in its use stemming largely from the latter half of the 1970s. Previously, there was some lack of clarity between the knowledge and the executive monitoring and control aspects of metacognition; more recently, some writers have used the term metalearning to signify monitoring of learning, as compared with the more general monitoring of cognitive resources connoted by metacognition. For the purposes of this article, the term metacognition will be used to signify the personal knowledge of (metacognitive knowledge), and monitoring and control over (metacognitive awareness and control), personal learning or teaching practice.

Associated Constructs

Further, other social constructivist perspectives regarding the nature and process of effective learning increasingly are driving design and evaluation of multimedia. Foremost amongst these are the key constructs of "situated cognition" and "cognitive apprenticeship" (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991) and "scaffolding" (Herrington & Oliver, 1997; McLoughlin, Winnips, & Oliver, 2000; Winnips, Collis, & Moonen, 2000). A related concept is the nature of "authentic learning and assessment contexts" (Lebow & Wager, 1994).

As will be described, various pedagogical considerations accompany the design of learning environments that are compatible with a constructivist epistemology and that are based on learner reflection and responsibility for learning (Jonassen, 1991; Herrington & Standen, 2000; Squires, 1996). Designers attempting to incorporate the aforementioned features in a principled and systematic way are faced with the problem of clarifying their own interpretations of the key terms used in the theoretical literature. This article addresses this challenge for educational multimedia designers--to personally clarify the nature and intent of constructs that they value and, especially, to determine how to operationalise these constructs as learning approach, progress, and outcomes. This challenge was faced by the authors, who had embraced in principle the importance of the major constructs but who, in their interpretation and application of these constructs, produced two very different programs. First, the context for production of each product will be considered, then a summary provided of program implementation and evaluation.

PROGRAM CONTEXTS, PURPOSES, AND CORE FEATURES

Both QuILT and BUILT are dual platform (PC and Mac), interactive, video-based CD-ROM programs developed for core professional studies subjects in three courses in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. These courses are the four-year undergraduate Bachelor of Education (Primary), and two post-initial degree courses: the one-year Diploma in Education, and the two-year Bachelor of Teaching.

QuILT was developed for the subject Learning and Teaching, a subject for which the content and underlying theory centre upon the nature, process, and outcomes of learning and teaching. The objectives of the subject are to enhance the students' understandings of and practices related to pedagogy. Thus, the focus and theory base for the subject is expressly learning and teaching. The two-disk CD-ROM provides over 300 QuickTime video clips (QTVs) of authentic classroom teaching and learning episodes and associated teacher and pupil interviews. The episodes are situated in six classes taught by seven teachers in one elementary school and one secondary school. The classes encompass 11 years of schooling--from the preparatory year to year 10. QuILT represents everyday, authentic classroom practices of practicing teachers; its purpose is not to present scripted episodes of exemplary teaching. In each of the three years 1999-2001, the program has been revised to improve aspects of program architecture, navigation, and instructional clarity, but the aims and conceptual underpinnings of the program remain unchanged.

The subject Language In Education, for which BUILT was produced, is expressly concerned with developing novice teachers' understandings of the structures and functions of English as they observe language being used in its written and spoken forms in a range of classroom contexts. As with QuILT, extensive use is made of QTV clips capturing authentic unscripted classroom teaching and learning episodes, across the early primary to upper secondary years and across the various discipline areas. Reflecting its concern with language, literacy and teaching, BUILT is structured into four Units, entitled respectively "Texts in Context," "Oral Language," "Writing," and "Reading." These units are each divided into two topics, the first being an examination of the structures and functions of language in the written and spoken modes and the second being an examination of teachers applying their own knowledge about language as they effectively scaffold student learning in each mode. Thus, two related "content" (and consequently "theory") bases underpin BUILT: substantively, the explicit focus on language and literacy; secondarily, a more pedagogical focus--the influence of issues related to language and literacy for effective learning and teaching.

As previously mentioned, independent production of each CD-ROM by the respective development team reflected a broad similarity in each team's underpinning pedagogical epistemology. Even though the teams were comprised of different individuals, from different areas of scholarship, who taught different subjects with different aims and objectives, they independently approached the design and production exercise with some clear similarities in values, beliefs, and understandings regarding the nature and manner of effective learning and teaching. These similarities include a strong valuing of constructive epistemology, with its associated features of situated cognition, scaffolding, cognitive apprenticeship, and reflection. The sharing of these values is evident in some broadly similar design features of both CD-ROMs. However, some quite different design choices also indicate interesting and illuminating variations in the interpretations of key concepts (such as those previously listed).

DATA ON PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION AND USE

QuILT has been used by between 750 and 950 student teachers in each of the four years 1999-2002; BUILT has been used by the same cohorts in 2001 and 2002. In each week of each subject, student teachers prepare for class use by working through portions of the program and preparing written responses that build upon screen questions and tasks. These responses are discussed as part of collaborative activities that occur within stable seminar groups of approximately 30 students. For both products, extensive data have been collected on faculty and student teacher perceptions of each program, on its manner of use, and on learning and teaching outcomes. For QuILT, individual questionnaires, written focus group evaluations, and individual interviews over the four year period of implementation have generated data representing reactions of over 1000 students and approximately 20 faculty. For BUILT, similar evaluation took place over a two year period, and involved interviews with 10 rather than 20 faculty. Details of these data are not contained in this article, but some general findings are highlighted in the following section, in which Herrington and Oliver's (1995) nine characteristics for constructivist-oriented multimedia are used as a frame to compare the broad similarities and specific differences in design and implementation of the two products.

A FRAMEWORK FOR COMPARING DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

From a review of literature on situated learning, Herrington and Oliver (1995) produced a list of nine criteria used to guide the design and development of multimedia within a constructivist model. These nine criteria encapsulate the key concepts discussed earlier, all of which are open to the kind of interpretations that result in different forms of multimedia. Herrington and Oliver's nine criteria thus provide a convenient set of headings under which the design and manner of implementation of QuILT and BUILT can be compared.

1. An authentic context that reflects the way the knowledge will be used in real life.

Both QuILT and BUILT are designed to stimulate purposeful, directed inquiry regarding classroom learning and teaching. Central to this process is the extensive use of QTVs of classroom teaching and learning episodes, representing interactions from the early years of primary school through the upper years of secondary school. These interactions are unscripted and represent authentic aspects of the physical, pedagogical, and interpersonal contexts into which the novice teachers will be apprenticed. The QTVs of classroom interactions are accompanied in both CD-ROMs by interviews with the teachers who articulate the reasoning behind their pedagogical choices. In the case of QuILT, there are also QTVs of interviews with the school students, who provide learners' perspectives on the interaction. However, rather than simply providing examples of teaching and learning practices and helping student teachers acquire procedural knowledge, the purpose of the QTVs was to stimulate higher order learning by assisting student teachers to actively construct personal meaning out of the stimulus material presented. The specific purpose of QuILT was to help novice teachers actively construct a personal position on the nature and quality of learning and teaching in general; and explore ways in which they might use such a position to frame their own practice. The specific purpose of BUILT was to help novice teachers actively bring to consciousness knowledge about language and literacy, and reflect on the role of language and literacy in their own learning and teaching.

Both CD-ROMs provide the same cohort of preservice teachers with extensive opportunities to experience virtual classroom contexts similar to those in which they will later be making their own pedagogical choices. Thus, both design teams have met this first requirement necessary for consideration as a constructivist resource. However, nuances in interpretation in each case of the notion of "authentic" classroom episodes merits further exploration. While in both cases the videotaped material constituted unscripted records of teachers' normal classroom work, rather different selection criteria determined the sites and therefore the content of the material filmed.

In the case of QuILT, the only criterion used for selection was that the teachers and students be willing to be recorded. This resulted in the presentation to users of complex, everyday classroom scenarios where teachers were struggling with a wide range of problems. The purpose in QuILT was to have the user first observe but then move "beneath" these classroom behaviours to understand more about the purposes and meanings that underlie them, and thereby make more informed and reasoned assessments of whether the episode demonstrates quality learning and teaching practices. This purpose was developed by presenting a metaphor of a magnifying glass, through which the user carefully examines the classroom actions of others. According to the metaphor, this magnifying glass can have four "lenses," each allowing a different "view" of the interactions. The four lenses are entitled: (a) teacher action, (b) student action, (c) teacher thinking, and (d) student thinking. Each lens is identified through colour coding on the screen, and the latter two lenses centre upon teacher and student interviews. More detail on this, and the other, metaphors that form the design structure for QuILT are described in Baird (2003). Through assessment items entitled "Action Planners," users explicate their emerging views of quality and produce plans for translating these views into concrete strategies for their teaching and their students' learning.

BUILT also grounds key concepts about pedagogy in the virtual experience of authentic classroom interactions, but the classrooms were selected for filming on the basis of their teachers' exemplary use of strategies that achieved desirable and clearly observable language, literacy, and learning outcomes. For many preservice teachers, especially those secondary teachers with science, music, and art backgrounds, focussing on the often complex structures of spoken and written language is demanding and nontransparent. With such complex and (for many) new disciplinary content, it was important to provide opportunities for novice teachers to focus and systematically reflect upon the language of classroom interactions in manageable ways. It was also important that, while these interactions represented everyday classroom situations, they also provided models of effective teaching of language and literacy. QuickTime video clips of teacher interviews were also selected to provide clear insights into teachers' planning, teaching, and assessment decisions and how these influence their students' language and literacy development. Other authentic resources complement the extensive use of QTV in BUILT. Panoramic QuickTime Virtual Reality screens with numerous hotspots allow users to explore the written language of a number of classroom environments and consider the quality and range of resources for scaffolding students in these contexts. Visual presentations of authentic student and teacher texts present vehicles for guided analysis and interactive exercises, allowing the teaching and learning to be more practically-oriented. Through such a deeply situated approach (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991), novice teachers are provided with rich opportunities to systematically examine the language used in a range of classrooms as specific discourse communities.

Therefore, while both QuILT and BUILT represent authentic contexts that reflect the way pedagogical knowledge would be used in real teaching contexts, the nature and purpose of the virtual contexts differ appreciably. Authenticity of context is evident in BUILT in the selection of unscripted, situated, but exemplary classroom episodes and in QuILT in the selection of unscripted, situated, and everyday classroom episodes.

A recurring finding from data collected in all years of program use was the value that users placed upon the high level of engagement generated through consideration of "real teachers in real classrooms." The authenticity of video classroom sequences, as previously outlined, was seen as providing a credible and relevant adjunct to the student teachers' own lived experiences in university and school-based practicum settings. For QuILT, the diverse year levels, subjects, and physical and interpersonal contexts served to challenge users to seek principles for personal teaching practice that would transcend these specifics. For BUILT, the opportunity to freeze and reflect on virtual classroom micro-interactions allowed novice teachers to identify principles related to language, literacy, and learning that they could rehearse in their upcoming practicum.

2. Authentic activities

Herrington and Oliver (1995) argued that, to be considered as a constructivist resource, the learning environment needs to provide ill-defined activities--"students find as well as solve the problems" (p. 4, emphasis in original)--that have a real world relevance and that ideally present a single complex task to be completed over a sustained period of time. Such authentic activities are ones that enable learners to become immersed in the language, culture, and situations of communities of practice, and subsequently to truly "see the world" as practitioners do. Both CD-ROMs explicitly reflect a cognitive apprenticeship model of teaching (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989, Levin & Waugh, 1998; Guzdial & Keogh, 1998), in that their approach embodies:

 The development of concepts out of and through continuing authentic
 activity ... where apprentices enter the culture of practice ...
 through "legitimate peripheral participation," where people who are
 not taking part directly in the activity learn a great deal from their
 legitimate position on the periphery (Brown, Collins, & Duguid 1989,
 p. 39-40).

For both resources, an electronic notepad allows users to record reflections on this peripheral participation and respond to key questions. In using the QTV clips of classroom interactions and teacher reflections, in conjunction with the notepad facility, developing teachers are systematically apprenticed into becoming "insiders" (Kramsch, 1998) in the discourse community of reflective professional educators (Schon, 1983).

Progress through QuILT is problem- or issue-based. The QTVs and their component activities were selected to be problematic, stimulating various interpretations, or value positions. The program centres around a range of "Focus Areas" or major topics related to classroom learning and teaching. Such topics include: Student Learning and Teacher Purposes and Questioning for Learning. The user starts a Focus Area by entering a virtual classroom and considering the learning and teaching occurring within (Figure 1).

The screen questions shown in Figure 1 provide a frame for users to try to make sense of the everyday, complex, and ill-defined actions of both students and teachers that are portrayed in the related classroom sequences. By observing these sequences, and then attending to associated student and teacher interviews, users seek to infer the meanings that underlie actions. Thereby, users are both finding and solving problems, as required by Herrington and Oliver (1997).

In selecting the video clips and constructing the associated screen questions, the designers of QuILT held firmly to some personal value positions regarding quality. These value positions can be summarised according to particular alternatives in the dichotomies mentioned earlier. These alternatives all support a divergent, rather than convergent,

approach to understanding the nature of quality. Specifically, the view of quality in teaching that is reinforced is one that is essentially pluralist and relativist (that is, there is more than one good way to teach, and that what constitutes good teaching is not always the same, depending on a multitude of personal, interpersonal, content-related, and contextual variables). Given this value position (and as previously mentioned) the aim throughout is for the user to induce, from specifics of classroom learning and teaching episodes, personally-derived principles of quality practice that, in turn, become the basis for the user's developing conception of quality. A related issue is the fact that no educational theory is introduced in QuILT. After working through a particular Focus Area and having recorded responses to screen questions in an electronic notepad, the user subsequently shares and discusses personal insights that have arisen from this process in a collaborative, in-class group situation. Here, staff members build upon emergent insights by introducing theory in a relevant, purposeful, and "need-to-know" manner. Thus, educational theory elaborates, informs, and positions students' views, rather than being introduced a priori.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In BUILT on the other hand, the activities, while authentic in the sense that they arise out of depictions of authentic classroom activities are generally illustrative, rather than always being based on a problem. A theoretically distinctive model of language and literacy underpins BUILT, one which is functionally-oriented and concerned with how meanings are made in real social and cultural contexts where language serves a variety of purposes (Halliday, 1978, 1994; Derewianka, 1990, 1998). Consistent with this model, the interactive tasks of BUILT are designed to help novice teachers learn about the structures and functions of English language used in its written and spoken forms in a range of classroom contexts and learn how to apply this linguistic knowledge for effective student learning. Within and across each of the four units and eight topics mentioned earlier, interactive tasks scaffold users as "linguistic novices" into progressively more sophisticated understandings of the structures and functions of spoken and written texts. Activities based on animations, drag-and-drop, and roll-over facilities provide opportunities for novice teachers to rehearse emerging content knowledge.

Tools such as a Glossary button allow users to check their understanding of linguistic terminology at point of need and a Bibliography button allows them to access a list of references. Both these resources are constructed to be compatible with the functional model of language and literacy discussed earlier. As with the learning activities of QuILT, those in BUILT are based exclusively on the authentic written and spoken texts of real classrooms, involving users in "legitimate peripheral participation" (Figure 2). However, unlike with QuILT, BUILT users are scaffolded through these activities into convergent understandings of language consistent with an explicitly valued model of literacy and learning.

3. Access to expert performance and the modelling of processes

Herrington and Oliver (1995) argued for the importance for learning environments to "provide access to expert performances and the modelling of processes, allowing students to observe the task before it is attempted ... for example, short movies of experts performing skills--such as, a teacher asking open ended questions ...." (p. 5). As indicated in the previous two sections, it is clear post hoc that the current authors' perspectives on this requirement differed, and this difference related to the purpose of the product for the subject concerned. For QuILT, lesson segments that demonstrated the teacher and students grappling with the complexities of authentic, everyday classrooms was the modelling required. It enabled users to progressively acquire the competence and confidence to embrace and interpret a classroom context that preserves the messiness and complexity of the everyday situation, and act efficaciously within this context. In a real sense, each of the teachers within the program were providing expert, if not exemplary, performances in that they were operating as well as they could given the constraints, pragmatics, and multiple demands of the "normal" classroom. In QuILT, there are videos of teachers asking open questions, for instance, and the quality of these questions and the unexpected nature of many of the responses become foci for discussion and debate.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

In BUILT, modelling of the effective use of oral and written language for learning is provided by "expert" teachers represented in everyday classroom interactions in the QTV clips. Reflective tasks and guided analysis of these QTV clips provide novice teachers with opportunities to "freeze" these complex and often "messy" interactions and reflect on them systematically in ways not available in the pressures of their own teaching experiences. Analysis of these "expert performances" is further assisted through the provision of transcripts of the classroom interactions in the video clips, some transcripts also having been coded in ways that highlight key features of oral interaction, thus providing the novice teacher with a specialised reflective metalanguage. Written products, as well as interactive processes are also modelled. Still shots of model student- and teacher-written texts are available for close examination, with the wording and images of longer texts being made available through enlarged "thumbnails." QuickTime Virtual Reality panoramic views of classrooms allow novice teachers to click on hot spots to view close ups of the model written and visual texts on the walls and desks. By capitalising differentially on such multimedia resources, both QuILT and BUILT provide, in different ways, the "window into model practice" advocated by Herrington and Oliver (1995 p. 5).

4. Multiple roles and perspectives

This characteristic of providing multiple roles and perspectives--that "the resource must have an integrity which enables close scrutiny and examination, and may yield fruitful information and rich learning situations, time and again" (Herrington & Oliver, 1995, p. 5)--was central to the design of each product, but again attended to in qualitatively different ways. In QuILT, the four "lenses" mentioned under characteristic 1 provides a design metaphor for returning to the same QTV clip, but from different points of view, and that progressively increases fruitfulness for the user. More generally, the structuring of QuILT content into nine thematically-based Focus Areas provides the user with opportunities for exploring how different teachers, teaching different content at different year levels, grapple with similar issues, problems, or tasks. This diversity allows each user to select approaches and strategies that he or she feels best suit personal needs and concerns.

Given that the learning encouraged in BUILT is more convergent than the divergent approach encouraged in QuILT, there is less emphasis here on seeking a diversity of evaluations of the same learning/teaching episodes. Multiple perspectives of classroom interactions and texts are nonetheless available through the presentation of a range of approaches and strategies used by various "expert" teachers. For example, the oral interaction strategies used in early primary school classrooms are juxtaposed with those used in secondary Science classrooms, which are in turn juxtaposed with those of secondary English classrooms. The written texts produced by upper primary SOSE students can be compared with those of junior secondary Visual Communication students. Users can make such comparisons in ways that meet their own needs, navigating their way through BUILT in a nonlinear way through the use of a hyperlinked table of contents and a "go to" facility. Through such similarities and differences in their design features QuILT tends to focus on the multiple roles of the user, while BUILT focuses on the multiple perspectives provided by the stimulus material. Both provide rich learning situations that can be revisited repeatedly.

5. Reflection

Reflection is a key to making sense of any situated learning experience. As previously mentioned, the two programs differed in their reflective orientation, with QuILT promoting an inductive, and BUILT a deductive, approach. The nature of user navigation and progress through both programs highlights an important feature of the role of reflection in professional preparation. For both programs, the process of reflection was used to generate enhanced user metacognition regarding essential elements of pedagogy. Neither program was linearly structured, however, and users could exert considerable metacognitive control over which screens or segments to view, in what order, in what depth, and for what purposes. Once at a particular place in the program, however, screen questions and related tasks provided the user with some guidance regarding focus of, and approach to, reflection. Thus, each program exhibits a balance between two seemingly contrasting elements: (a) the opportunity for the user to metacognitively control approach, progress, and outcome, based on needs, concerns, and interests; and (b) program structure that provides a degree of guided reflection to assist the user to make purposeful and productive progress. This balance was effected by each program incorporating a branched hierarchical design, where multiple topics or areas may be accessed in no particular order, but once a particular area is chosen, there are decided pathways along which the user is encouraged to move.

Again, the particulars of these elements differed in each program. In QuILT, users are required to access the Focus Area that is the topic at a particular time in the subject. For this Focus Area, the user may "open the classroom door" of whatever classes he or she wishes at each of the two schools that are the basis of the program. Once "inside" each classroom, certain alternatives or opportunities become available and, once selecting one or more of these, the user proceeds in a relatively prescribed manner. Throughout, reflection is stimulated through screen questions that require users to take a personal position on the quality of what is in the clips and then, through inductive logic, to generate guiding principles for personal action.

Reflection operates at two levels in BUILT. Reflection is the concluding stage of the five stage learning/teaching cycle, which accompanies its model of language, literacy, and learning (see point 8). At this level of "content knowledge development," novice teachers are encouraged, through using the various multimedia resources of the CD, to understand the significance to the learning process of a stage where (whatever the discipline area or the year level) teacher and learner are able to review understandings, evaluate the tasks accomplished, and plan future directions. Reflection also operates in BUILT, as in QuILT, at a metacognitive level where the architectural design of the CD encourages novice teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching they are experiencing, the relevance of their own learning, the problems or challenges they are facing and their own teaching goals. Regular small reflective tasks are built into each topic, typically requiring users to respond to broad prompt questions in their notepads. Larger reflective tasks also occur at the end of each Unit, requiring users to review all notepad entries for that Unit, and feeding into workshop or assessment reflections. As with QuILT, the hierarchical hypermedia design (Oliver & Herrington, 1995) allows relative freedom of access to Topics within Units, with preferred pathways, which were designed around maximising opportunities for reflection.

6. Collaborative construction of knowledge

7. Articulation

Herrington and Oliver (1995) argued for the necessity for collaborative construction of knowledge, and for articulation of this knowledge, where "interactions and activities need to be designed to engage higher-order thinking and critical reflection ... [where the] environment promotes articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit" (p. 6). Both QuILT and BUILT specifically address the need for collaborative enquiry and student articulation of knowledge at stages of the learning process. After working through a Focus Area in QuILT, students bring to class a printed copy of their notepad, which comprises written responses to screen questions. Thus, as class preparation, each user is required to articulate various personal values or belief positions. These responses are the basis for class discussion, where insights are shared, issues clarified, positions negotiated and defended, and theory introduced by staff as appropriate. At the end of a Focus Area, further articulation of personal values and beliefs are required by completion of the Action Planner which, as will be discussed in number 9, forms part of the formal subject assessment.

Likewise, in using BUILT, students articulate their understandings about language, literacy, and learning, guided by the Notepad prompts, both in individual reflections and in workshop groups. By making explicit to their peers their tacit knowledge about language, users have the opportunity, in interactive workshops, to consolidate that knowledge, defend positions based on it and negotiate what new knowledge they need. Collaborative activity between novice teachers working in different subject areas across primary and secondary classrooms yields particularly fruitful understandings about the development of language and literacy across the school years and across the disciplines.

8. Coaching and scaffolding

Marx, Blumenfeld, Krajcik, and Soloway (1998) argued for the importance of using multimedia to scaffold quality learning thus:

  Rather than respond to didactic presentations, the technology needs
  to engage learners in generative learning activities. Software needs
  to scaffold complex cognition such as organizing, synthesizing,
  problem solving, and applying new understanding. (p. 35)

The concept of scaffolding was central to both the instructional content and the instructional design of both programs. In terms of instructional content, the metaphor of scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976) described the temporary supporting structures provided by teachers as they assist learners to develop new understandings and skills, capturing both the centrality of the teacher's withdrawal of support as learners develop control over specific understandings and skills, and the erection of further scaffolding to support the development of a new set of specific understandings and skills. Baird (2003) describes how the design of QuILT fosters three types of scaffolding: (a) metacognitive; (b) conceptual; and (c) strategic. These will not be discussed further here, but each type clearly builds on design and structural features of QuILT previously outlined.

Based on recent educational theory of scaffolding (Hammond, 2001; Maybin, Mercer, & Stierer, 1992), a five stage "learning/teaching cycle" is presented in BUILT that allows novice teachers to systematically examine the skilled language and literacy practices of experienced teachers as modelled in the video clips. This five stage cycle (comprised of Engagement, Building Knowledge, Transformation, Presentation, and Reflection) is graphically represented in the form of a series of pentagons, where each pentagon represents a single learning/teaching cycle which combines with others to form a cumulative curriculum. The metaphor of scaffolding also underpins the instructional design of BUILT, such that users are themselves moved recursively through these five stages of each learning/teaching cycle, as they are: (a) engaged in issues of language, literacy and learning; (b) helped to build knowledge in this new area; (c) guided into transforming that new knowledge into understanding; (d) provided with various means of presenting that new understanding; and (e) provided with the means of reflecting on that new understanding. Thus, while they are learning about the principles of scaffolding children into learning through language and literacy, they are themselves scaffolded into new professional understandings as they experience the sequences of learning/teaching cycles that underpin the design of the CD ROM.

9. Authentic assessment

For both CD-ROMs, assessment of learning is integrated, authentic, and largely inseparable from the activities of the program. For QuILT, assessment is based on completion of Action Planners for selected Focus Areas. For each Focus Area, the Action Planner is designed to bridge emergent insights, issues, values, and beliefs regarding quality to specific plans for teaching practice. Thus, the purpose of assessment is to cohere three aspects of personal thinking, feeling, and acting regarding teaching: knowledge, values and beliefs; intentions and purposes; procedures and actions. In the section on "Authentic activities," the relationships between the ill-defined thinking, feeling, and acting of students and teacher were discussed in relation to the questions on a screen in Focus Area 2 (Figure 1). To illustrate the manner in which the tasks in the associated Action Planner are themselves authentic, the first task in the Action Planner for this Focus Area is as follows:

 In this task, you will relate teacher's purpose, students' actions in
 their learning, and the learning outcomes that are achieved.

* Choose three video clips from this Focus Area that, for you, demonstrate quality teaching and learning.

* For each clip, record:

- What you believe the teacher wants (teacher purpose);

- What the students do (student classroom actions);

- What the students achieve (learning outcomes).

     Later in the Action Planner, the user must build upon the insights
     generated to devise a plan for personal teaching that will cohere
     intentions and purposes, actions, and outcomes.
     For BUILT, formative assessment is based on the completion of
     interactive tasks and notepad activities selected from each of the
     eight Topics that are authentically situated and require authentic
     planning and action. In addition, there are two summative
     assessment tasks; one based on video clips of teacher instructional
     talk and the other on the literacy demands inherent in a textbook
     selected by novice teachers for use in their practicum.

REVIEW AND PREVIEW: PROGRAM FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MULTIMEDIA IN TEACHER EDUCATION

This article has emphasised the need for educational multimedia designers to clarify the nature and intent of constructs that they value and to determine how to operationalise these constructs to realise subject purposes. Approaches to learning and teaching are replete with seemingly polar opposites; such dichotomies include teacher-directed/student-centred; didactic/participatory; transmissive/interpretive; confirmatory/discovery, and so on. In turn, each of these polar opposites align with more general, models, theories or perspectives regarding the nature and process of effective, worth-while learning. As previously discussed, the authors had independently embraced a fundamental epistemological position that credited active, constructivist learning, incorporating processes of guided reflection and situated cognition. Thus, certain approaches were sought as fundamental to the learning and teaching process.

Differences in the authors' pedagogical purposes and learning goals associated with each subject, however, influenced nuanced interpretation of key constructs, and thus key decisions about conceptualisation, design, and navigation. Whereas QuILT is designed to foster exploration of the nature of effective teaching and learning, BUILT is designed to foster effective classroom-based language and literacy. QuILT requires an exploratory, inductive process of generation of principles of teaching ("theory") from specific episodes of everyday classroom teaching practices, whereas BUILT requires a confirmatory, deductive process of interpreting and understanding exemplary classroom practices in terms of provided theoretical structures. These differing interpretations and decisions characterise the pluralism and relativism of learning and teaching.

More important than the specifics of program similarity and difference, however, are the implications for other teacher educators who wish to embed interactive multimedia within their teaching programs. Three such implications are:

* The importance of a nonlinear, multi-level approach, and program progression. Both programs invite users to grapple repeatedly and from different perspectives with authentic classroom-based problems or issues that inextricably cohere practice, theory, and pedagogical purpose.

* Designing program navigation to balance cognitive, metacognitive, and affective pressure, and support. The programs allow users freedom to dictate approach, progress, and outcomes; with this freedom comes pressure to exhibit productive metacognitive awareness and control over personal practice. Support is provided both by the guided reflection stimulated by completion of screen questions and by face-to-face collaborative discussion in class.

* Both programs stimulate active learning for intending teachers, by assisting them to make sense of the complexity of classroom events through elicitation of the meanings that underlie these events.

Other recommendations are not based upon information previously provided, but arise from other findings from implementation of QuILT and BUILT. These recommendations center upon training and professional development of the two major types of user, the novice teachers and their teacher educators. It became clear that many intending teachers lacked confidence and initial competence in using interactive multimedia that in turn compromised their willingness and ability to engage with the program. To alleviate this problem, comprehensive written instructions and in-class modelling of the use of graphic interface multimedia programs was found to be necessary in the early weeks of the subject. Possibly more importantly, however, was the need to provide supportive, focussed professional development for teaching faculty. Both multimedia programs are central to class activities and subject assessment. It was found that some staff were reticent to use and discuss the program in their classes because they lacked fundamental expertise in multimedia use and, particularly, in how to employ such multimedia to strengthen and extend their teaching goals. For both programs, some staff took at least one year to effectively integrate the program within their classes. Responsive, ongoing professional development for staff using both CDs has been effective in ensuring that staff are more confidently able to integrate the program within their classes.

Both QuILT and BUILT have successfully transformed teacher education at the University of Melbourne. While markedly different in conceptualisation and approach, both programs have enhanced the level of productive challenge for intending teachers by providing opportunities for shared, authentic illumination of different aspects of the complex integration of thinking, feeling, and acting of teachers and their students.

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