Effective approaches to designing multimedia methods of teaching and learning quantitative subjects

Abstract

Recent advances in Information Technology and its applications have certainly made an important contribution to our learning and information sharing. The Internet, in particular, has taken us to different heights in terms of information storage and communication. A general comparison of the current computers’ capabilities with the ones 20/30 years ago, would demonstrate the modern computers’ significant contribution to teaching and learning. For instance, we can collect data in multimedia format from various sources, analyse it and create multimedia presentations to be given to students. These presentations can also be, at very low costs (or no costs to the user), sent to several people around the world. Hence, we are in a very good position to utilise the technology and incorporate different types of media (text, sound and vision) into the teaching and learning materials. As part of a research project by the author, a number of surveys on learning style preferences were carried out on different groups of students at different international universities. The findings have indicated that visual features play a very important role in learning and teaching. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of using visual features, anecdotes and analogies in developing multimedia-teaching materials for quantitative subjects.