Authorware Tutorial

The aim of this tutorial is to provide an overview of the Macromedia authoring package, Authorware. In this tutorial we will create a very simple reference package called 'Beginners German'. The tutorial will demonstrating some of the useful features Authorware offers for the development of information resources.

Directing the learner's attention

With its blending of animation, sound, color, and text; multimedia can easily exceed a learner's ability to attend to the information being presented. The "developer stack" screen used in Grabinger's experiment overtaxes attention by presenting several different instructional messages on the same screen. Likewise, multimedia instruction that blends simultaneous text, video, and sounds, all trying to convey disparate messages, will simply divide—even overwhelm—the learner's attention.

Instructional architectures and cognitive learning processes

Instructional methods can be assembled in various ways to form instructional design plans. I call these plans instructional architectures and will illustrate four major architectures that capture the range of instructional design methodologies in contemporary multimedia. What follows is a summary of the four architectures, a brief description of how humans convert new sensory data into knowledge and skills in the learning process, and a description of how the architectures and instructional methods facilitate those cognitive processes.

Authorware, multimedia, and instructional methods

Methods are the instructional techniques that facilitate learning. Media are the means of implementing those methods (as well as conveying the material to be learned). For example, methods include demonstrations, animations, examples, practice, and feedback. Media include overhead slides, computers, video, workbooks, and instructors among others.

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