Approaches to cell biology: developing educational multimedia.

It’s all around us. On television, at the movies, and on the evening news we see animations that take us inside a fatal wound, demonstrate how a spaceship achieves orbit, or reveal the intricacy of the immune response. Can these powerful new media tools be put to use in science research and teaching? Increasingly college and university faculty are engaged in the business of developing multimedia to augment their work. Science faculty have discovered the power of multimedia to simulate process or change over time, reveal multidimensional structure, and engage their students in useful, interactive scenarios to reinforce their understanding of science. Kenneth C. Green, of The Campus Computing Project, reports that 62.5% of colleges and universities participating in the 2002 Campus Computing Survey offer at least one complete Web-based course. He further reports that well over half the participating institutions of higher education either have a campus Web portal (a large entry point-site to the World Wide Web, offering an array of services and links) now or have one under development (www.campuscomputing.net/). Peterson’s online directory (www.petersons.com/distancelearning) lists some 1,100 institutions that provide online degree programs. Course management software providers Blackboard, eCollege, and WebCT report impressive profits and penetration at most colleges and universities throughout the country (Blackboard reports 38% second-quarter growth over 2002 performance, while eCollege reports 27% growth over the same period in 2002). These data point to an increased prevalence of multimedia on college campuses and indicate an elevated student expectation to use multimedia tools in their educational experience. Educational research points to the effectiveness of using multimedia activities in instructional settings. The capacity for repetition, new methods for encouraging student exploration and discovery, assistance with complex and highly visual processes, and accommodation of a wider range of learn-