The Innovative Research on Multimedia Teaching of Colleges

Transcription

1 The Innovative Research on Multimedia Teaching of Colleges ZHANG Yuxian, WANG Hong Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin China, Abstract: Based on the definition of multimedia teaching, the article has analyzed the status of multimedia teaching of the domestic colleges and pointed out the existed problems such as inadequate investment in funds, the unreasonable design in teaching content and being lack of novelty in multimedia courseware. Finally the article proposes some innovative means and measures described from the multimedia operating mechanism, the teaching effectiveness, the courseware design, the teachers quality and the evaluation system. Keywords: College, Multimedia teaching, Innovation 1. Introduction With the great development of science and technology in this century especially the increasingly highlight of information technology, china s high education is facing profound reform. The traditional teaching methods can not meet the social need of knowledge and information transmission. Nowadays multimedia teaching has become a kind of teaching mean which is paid wide attention and universally adopted by the domestic and overseas as well as a kind of important mean which is used to improve the teaching quality and innovate the traditional teaching methods [1,2]. We can say that developing the multimedia teaching positively meets the need of the colleges completing the cultivation of high-quality talents and the time development. It is also the only way in which we can attain modern education of the new period. 2. The Meaning of Multimedia Teaching The so-called multimedia teaching, in the process of teaching and according to the teaching goal and the teaching object s feature, can express visually the abstract concept by designing teaching to reasonably select some kinds of elements of media information such as symbols, language, characters, sound, graphics, image, animation and videos and use multimedia computer to synthetically deal with and control the elements. Multimedia teaching also can present the content of multimedia teaching and accomplish the process of teaching through multi-way man-machine interaction. Multimedia teaching can be divided into two levels: 1 Hardware view: With the central instrument such as multimedia computer and projector and some external aided instrument, we can use the character, sound, graphic, image, animation and video to do teaching activities[3]. 2 Software view: according to the teaching goal and the teaching object s feature and through designing teaching to reasonably select and use multimedia software, teachers combine the traditional teaching method with the current method to accomplish the whole process of teaching. After that, teachers impose various multimedia information on students to form reasonable teaching structure and finally get the optimized teaching effectiveness. 3. The Actual Condition of the Domestic Colleges Multimedia Teaching 3.1 Status Analysis With the development of the teaching innovation, multimedia teaching has attained more and more attention in colleges. A important symbol, whether the research and application of the multimedia teaching has been emphasized and developed or not, is established by state education commission to weight the level of the education and teaching. In recent years, colleges have do much effort. They have 463

2 invested more funds, have done multimedia teaching actively and have successively developed and established a series of multimedia education software, multimedia studio, network classroom, distance education system and campus network[4]. The advantages of the application of the multimedia teaching in colleges are gradually manifested. It can be seen in the following aspects: (1)From teaching methods, the multimedia teaching has transcended the traditional teaching methods and teaching ideas. It has provided the college teaching with a mew teaching method. It also has promoted teacher s ideas to be changed, the educational concept to be updated and teaching methods to be improved. As a result, it can improve teacher s quality, promote the building of courses and improve the teaching s quality and efficiency. (2)From the teaching content, the multimedia teaching is beneficial to the renewal and richness of the teaching content and the teaching material system. It has solved the contradiction between more content and fewer hours. It also has provided the students with more and newer information in the limited time. As a result, it motivates the enthusiasm of the students. (3)From the teaching experiment, the multimedia teaching uses the multimedia computers to simulate experimental teaching environment to make the learners to have the real sense. Under that situation, the student s practical ability can be cultivated through the suggesting, inspection and guidance which computers can provide. CAI, a kind of experimental simulation software, is used to do some previews of actual operation experiment. In this way, the students have gained a deeper understanding of the principle of the experiment and been more skilled with the operations. The simulation experiment with multimedia can make the students contact with more experiment instead if the real operation and can overcome the difficulties that we are lack of laboratory equipment. (4)From the teaching object, through the vivid factors such as character, sound, graphic and image supplied by multimedia technique, students can gain a deeper understanding of the content and the learning interest of students can be greatly motivated. Meanwhile, students have more chances to take part in the teaching activities reflecting the dominate position of the students. As a result, the active learning has substituted the passive learning, classroom atmosphere has been activated, the students ideas have been enlightened and the learning ability of the students has been strengthened. (5)From the teaching resource, the multimedia teaching has optimized the allocation of resources and been beneficial to the integration of courses. As a result, the faculty-student ratio and the availability of teaching equipment have been improved. The elective classes have been broadened because of the using of humanity, social science, art and economy. These elective courses are beneficial of broadening students knowledge range, improving students comprehensive quality and motivating academic atmosphere. 3.2 The Existing Problems Though the multimedia teaching could give us better teaching effect, in the practical process of multimedia teaching we can deeply feel that many existing problems should be seriously treated and solved because the multimedia teaching is a new thing especially its unscientific and nonstandard operation. (1)The funds are limited. Because the status put inadequate funds into education, the teaching funds of colleges are relatively tight. Especially because of the increased enrollment for colleges and universities, the growth ratio of the input of the teaching funds is much smaller than that of the number of enrolled students. As a result, the number of the multimedia classroom is far from meeting the need of teaching. This situation is more serious in some local colleges. What have been referred above has severely hindered the development of the multimedia teaching [5]. (2)The universality of the multimedia teaching is lower. Some colleges only call for and do some experimental thing. They have not extended and implemented specific and clear policies, plans and requirements. As a result, most teachers could not obtain the training and the development of the multimedia teaching has been hindered. (3)The design of the teaching content is not reasonable. Because topics of some multimedia 464

3 courseware are not reasonable, the meaning is not good and the whole design of the teaching content is insufficient, we should pay more attention to the existed problems when we use the multimedia. The aim of using multimedia is to realize the purpose of teaching better. If we don t do well, the multimedia teaching can not meet the basic requirement. (4)The multimedia courseware is lack of novelty. We should something updating and innovative to make the multimedia courseware remain new, or the content and the method will appear updated. Meanwhile, when we do courseware we should pay more attention to the leading role of teachers and give them certain space and time. As a result, the individual characteristic and ability of teachers could be reflected. 4. The Current Innovative Measure of Colleges Multimedia Teaching There are some defects in the practical process of the multimedia teaching and it still could not meet the requirement of the modern education. So we should do further development and improvement. How we do further development of the multimedia and improvement of the level of the multimedia teaching on the original basis? According to the experience of colleges and universities at home and aboard, we can develop multimedia-aided teaching better from some following aspects. 4.1 The Strengthening of the Building of Rules and Regulations The multimedia teaching is different from the traditional teaching method. The person who has been accustomed to the traditional teaching method may not be easy to accept it. Sometimes they will resist the multimedia teaching. In this circumstance, it is necessary for colleges related functional sections to do further improvement of the building of rules and regulations of the multimedia teaching. Otherwise, we should make sure that the multimedia teaching could be implemented, guided, monitored and reviewed. 4.2 Doing the Reasonable Teaching Design to Improve the Teaching Quality The multimedia teaching could make the teaching information visual, image and vivid. It also could make the content of the site and experiment classed and make the abstract content visualized and embodied. If do properly, the teaching quality could be improved and good results could be attained, or negative influence could be generated and the teaching effectiveness could be decreased. Therefore, the informational society gives a higher demand of the informational quality of the teacher. So when teachers do the multimedia teaching, they should change traditional teaching ideas, do elaborate teaching designs including the determination of the teaching goal and policy as well as selecting the teaching media according to information types of the teaching content. Teaching medias, as a vehicle communicating teaching, have different qualities in expressive ability and teaching functions. Although there are the same medias and information, there is different the teaching effectiveness. Otherwise different teaching media has different function. Teachers can use various teaching media to optimize the teaching, overcome the deficiency of the hardware equipments and the contradiction between the lack of infrastructures and the actual demand. When using the multimedia to do teaching, teachers should not detach the content from the books and not fill the students with knowledge through people and machine. If it is that, the burden of students will be enhanced. The following things teacher should try their best to do are that: firstly, they should set problem situation to motivate students motivation and interest of learning; secondly they should create situation to make students get personal experiences; thirdly they should announce the law to help students understand more easily; they should do simulation to make knowledge visualized so that the difficulty of the learning could be decreased; fourthly they should transform time and space and demonstrate explain to enlarge the effect of observation; fifthly they should expand the capacity of the knowledge to provide students with wide thinking space; finally they should interactive with students and share resources with students. 4.3 Emphasizing on the Research of Teaching Methods of CAI in the Circumstance of Developing the Multimedia Teaching 465

4 In the practical process of CAI, teachers should pay more attention to teaching methods to avoid the ineffectiveness of the teaching and the decreasing of the teaching quality due to using unreasonable teaching methods. Modern teaching means should match modern teaching methods. An a result we should do some research about relevant teaching methods when we use the computer. In the process of developing CAI, if we use the computer in order to use the computer, it will have no meaning. So we should emphasize on the research of teaching methods of CAI if we want CAI to play its real function in the process of the teaching and achieve the goal. In overseas it is emphasized on greatly and many successful examples could be seen. With the development and the application of modern teaching techniques, modern teaching methods have 20 years history in overseas. In this period, many educators have proposed a series of new teaching methods such as discovery teaching method, questioning teaching method and case teaching approach. When we learn these methods, we should pay more attention to the practical condition of the domestic education to improve the teaching effectiveness and efficiency of the domestic CAI at the fastest rate of speed. Otherwise we should emphasize on studying how to apply the modern media of CAI to existed teaching methods and studying which methods could use modern methods. 4.4 The Reasonable Topic Selection and Strengthening the Building of Courseware Courseware is a kind of computer software which is designed to do teaching activities and a kind of interface at which the learner and the computer can interactive with each other. It has teaching effects so it has the function of teaching and promoting. The best hardware without courseware will not have real functions. As a result, the most fundamental and critical work is to make teaching courseware when we implement computer-multimedia teaching. In the process of making courseware, the selecting of courseware s content which could determine whether the whole multimedia teaching could success or not is very important. The development and making of the multimedia courseware should be based on classroom teaching so the courseware which meets the need of the classroom teaching could be produced. We should make courseware to display the important and difficult part of this subject which could be explained in other methods but could be explained by the multimedia courseware. So the advantage of the multimedia could be embodied. Otherwise we should know that the information the multimedia courseware displays is not simple displaying of knowledge but a kind of information which has been selected and treated. The making of the multimedia courseware should base on the content such as skills, concepts and rules. The multimedia courseware could integrate and synthesize much information such as character, sound, image, animation and video, but each media should do proper selection to achieve a certain goal and display the organic combination on the screen to motivate students in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the studying. It will be no meaning for the multimedia teaching to display simple character and dull pictures. In addition, though we can express the same content in different multimedia methods, we should choose optimized combination modes for example we can display the teaching content in dynamic static integrated, dynamic and intuitive method. 4.5 Playing the Role of Campus Network Adequately We should strengthen the development of the campus network which have been built, consummate its functions and accelerate the treatment and the utilization of teaching resources to fully play its role. The teaching content and method can be embodied in the courseware of CAI, for example the teaching plan of excellent teachers could be made into CAI network courseware so that students can study and communicate with each other through network. As a result, it is beneficial to the improvement and development of the multimedia teaching as well as the improvement of the teaching quality. We must clearly know that the multimedia teaching is just a aided mean and a kind of method. In other words, the multimedia must be subordinate to and server the teaching content. The teaching content should not completely base on the multimedia content. As a result, the multimedia teaching will be suitable and reasonable in the arrangement of the content, the making of the picture and hierarchical structure. We should avoid being away books and ineffective forms; we also should avoid the deviation of the content and the reprinting of the paper as well as the application of dull pictures. Meanwhile, we 466

5 should make sure that it is not good for all content to be made into CAI courseware. We should make the important and difficult point or the content which could not be clearly explained by traditional teaching method and whose teaching effect isn t obvious into CAI. Otherwise, we should do less simple content and do more comprehensive multimedia content to highlight the advantage of CAI and avoid the waste of resources. In a word, as a kind of assisting means of teaching and a kind of teaching method, the multimedia should be utilized effectively. Now it has become a trend to use the multimedia. Using the multimedia is an important content and is a trend of the innovation of the teaching. At last, how to make better use of this modern teaching mean should be seriously studied and improved gradually. References [1] Liu Xing-rong. Analyzing The Application of The Multimedia Network In The Process of The Teaching[J]. Science and Technology Consulting Herald, 2008,(3): [2] Li Rong. Using Advanced Education Theory To Improve The Quality of The Multimedia Teaching[J]. The Power Education of China, 2008,(1): [3] Wang Qi-nu, Yang Bing, Wei Wen-zhong. An Education System for Multimedia Teaching[J]. Higher Education of Science, 2006,(3): [4] Xu Fu-yong, Lv Ying-qi, Cao Bin-zhao. The Making and Application of The Manual Picture in the Multimedia Courseware[J].Higher Education of Sciences, 2007,(1): [5] Li Feng-peng. How to Design and Develop Multimedia Teaching Courseware[J]. Education for All-round Development, 2008,(1):