76-481 Writing for Multimedia

Units: 12.0 Department: English Cross-listed: 76-781 Related URLs: http://hss.cmu.edu/HTML/departments/engl When you listen to a talking head on screen while a graphic is displayed behind the speaker and a stream of running text provides additional information at the bottom of that screen, you are having a multimedia experience. As such, you are also having a multimodal experience because you are looking at static and animated images, hearing sound, and reading text simultaneously or in quick succession. Writers concerned with the multimodal interests of multimedia, enter a realm with unique opportunities and constraints for the content and design of the text. In this class, we will explore those constraints and opportunities by first reading about, then having in-class discussions concerning multimedia applications. We will then analyze examples of multimedia in order to discover how well those particular examples function. Finally, the class will produce solutions to three problems of increasing difficulty. First, individual students will produce a storyboard version of a multimedia experience. Individuals will then apply the learning gained from that storyboard to the design of a simple multimodal experience intended to entertain the viewer. Finally, students will consider an empirical study that indicates multimedia applications enhance learning. After reading that study, members of the class organized into creative teams will create multimedia examples that incorporate the studys findings in order to produce a multimedia portfolio piece that focuses on the goal of learning enhancement. In creating these examples, students will not only follow best compositional practices as defined by readings and lectures but also conduct user testing in order to discover how well the writer's intentions match the writers effects.

Popularity index Rank for this semester: #0 Rank in this department: #0   Students also scheduled 76-487 On-line Information Design 67-475 Information Systems Applications 70-414 Technology-Based Entrepreneurship 82-161 Elementary Italian I 85-320 Research Methods in Developmental P... 36-309 Experimental Design for Behavioral ... 76-390 Style 70-415 Introduction to Entrepreneurship 70-459 Web Business Engineering 76-382 Multimedia Authoring I

Spring 2005 times

No sections available for semester Spring 2005.