Abstract:

Teaching digital multimedia in higher education faces new challenges. The traditional industrial models of production, distribution, and consumption of multimedia content have changed mostly associated with the current use of online social networks. Through social networks, everyone can have direct access to his or her followers. However, for most users, the creation and mechanics of these networks are somewhat opaque and complex.  

It is then considered urgent to teach future content producers about the current contexts of multimedia communication. To face this challenge the proposed learning method is problem-based, requiring students to be active producers and explorers of the applications that will facilitate the creation of their multimedia project.

Semantics and content taxonomies are increasingly more relevant on the web and social media services. However, understanding how it all works can be very difficult to understand.    

The proposed method challenges students to create their own semantic content in the form of an interactive video. The idea is to make them aware of this new mechanism with a hands-on approach, supporting the development of several skills like critical thinking, and collaborative and cooperative work.

In this article, we review the conclusions of an initial study presented in 2014 having into account the last three years of experience as a professor in a bachelor course in Multimedia and Communication.

The model assumes that graduate students should be able to create complex interactive online experiences within a period of 8 months. So, by the third-semester students are introduced to content taxonomy in the media industry. In this semester, they use an application that lets them use categories and keywords to link images and video segments. The application is called Korsakow and has been used by professors in academic contexts since 2009. The proposed method has been applied in two full semesters where students are supposed to create, test and publish their work.

The pedagogical approach also must consider that students start the semester with little or no significant programming skills and with no video production skills. They are then led to explore the application with only basic guidelines and tutoring. They develop exploration skills and, although projects are individual, students find the most support on each other. Collaboration is supported and happens mostly because many problems that arise in the course are very specific to the working conditions they find. These can vary according to the computer capabilities they use, the internet connection speed, the server graphical limitation, and so on. The purpose of this article is to propose an alternative method to approaches that assume that these rather complex concepts can be learned by simply reading about them in books and application manuals.

Some intermediate conclusions will be presented as well as the main guidelines to facilitate the implementation and increase the odds of success in reaching the proposed objectives.

Keywords:

Semantics, interactive, multimedia, digital literacy, video.