Individual Reflection

Course Objectives

The Basics

Throughout EDCI 337, I have learned a lot of things about interactive and multimedia learning. Before even taking this course, I had already taken EDCI 335: Learning Design for Technology-Mediated Environments. Both courses focus on interactive learning, so I had some experience before jumping into EDCI 337. 

Some of the challenges I came across were related to implementing multimedia in the work we do. Course objectives were centered on what multimedia is, how it can be applied in educational contexts (including images, hyperlinks, audio, etc.), and how to create things like storyboards or prototypes of multimedia artifacts (comics, videos, web pages). To put it simply, those are the course objectives I needed to meet. The question is, did I meet them? And how well did I perform? I will be discussing my personal growth below.

Challenges and Difficulties

To answer that, let us start with the first project we received: Challenge A, the comic. At that point, I had no concept of how a comic can be made, so I created a comic on a topic I was already familiar with: hand anatomy. I used my knowledge in Canva to create what I consider a good short comic. I believe the finished product explained the topic in a concise and visually pleasing way.

Besides the prototype, I demonstrated my understanding of multimedia and interactive learning when creating and formatting my WordPress blog for the challenge. Incorporating some multimedia principles into the blog seemed easy enough (use images, good spacing, use of headings, etc.) but explaining the multimedia principles in detail was not easy. 

For subsequent challenges (the group projects) I prioritized sections that were my strong suit, such as context and audience, storyboard and prototype, and the team reflection. Ofcourse, my group members handled their fair share of the work, completing the sections they excelled at. Effectively, as I had learned more about the course objectives, my focus shifted. Some parts of the assignment required a level of detail the others did not have, while others required a way with words I did not have. Essentially, my team broke each group project into sections, and each of us did the sections we were best at. And we got a high grade on Challenge B, so the plan worked!

Evidence of Learning

I have learned a lot about multimedia learning throughout this semester. I have experienced personal growth in creating multimedia artifacts and applying multimedia principles. To elaborate, the main instance of personal growth was in creating multimedia artifacts for the course’s challenges. 

Challenge A

Notably, since I have not received feedback for Challenge C, I can not comment on prospective growth in regards to the webpage. With that being said, the comic challenge was my first experience with creating a multimedia artifact (using Canva, no less), and so I was quite inexperienced at the time.

According to the feedback I received, it was apparent that I did not use the “comic medium” effectively in communicating my ideas. I had not properly displayed the signalling and coherence principles in my comic, because I used too many different “text hierarchies” in individual panels (bad signalling), and I added irrelevant imagery (butterflies) to the comic, which served no purpose and only distracted the reader.

Challenge B

For Challenge B, I put a lot of effort into making sure the video was straight to the point, and followed the multimedia principles of redundancy, signalling, and coherence. To that end, I used concise text narration and calming background music to focus the reader’s attention on the content of the video. Since the video is only one minute long, I prioritized the redundancy principle by explaining the steps that go into hand washing as they were being taken in the video. 

With that being said, my video did not fulfil the modality principle, as there was no audio narration, and the feedback highlighted that the timer I added was not visible enough. Basically, It was an improvement from the last artifact I created, but it was still not perfect.

Future Contexts

In the future, I would like to use my skills in multimedia learning to create more Canva, video, and web page artifacts for my future Co-op. The next Co-op I have will take place in Spring 2026, and one of the deliverables is to create a video tour of a smart home at the end of the Co-op. Using the skills I was imparted this semester, I will undoubtedly create a good video that builds off of the multimedia principles I learned in EDCI 337.