Professional Development of Multimedia Courseware

Developing multimedia courseware is considered very difficult. Both development process and implementation of the product seem to be difficult. In this article it is assumed that the complete life cycle including development and implementation has to organized consistently in order to deliver successful products. A framework of ways of thinking, modelling, working and controlling the development process is used to derive criteria for a comprehensive method. Separate quality assurance of both product and process is proposed. This and other theorems are tested in a professional courseware project for second language learning. The results indicate that separation of quality control of product and process is positive. Other conclusions concern the roles of the participants of the developing team. Lessons from film making and other creative design disciplines can be learned. Another conclusion is that "good" methods and tools do not work without a suitable way of thinking and, thus, the way of thinking should be an explicit part of a method. Writing or adjusting a formal QA-plan as a first phase of a new project is a good way to provide this. Results of this study may be applied for other multimedia products as well.