The Renaissance Project

Aim: To design the most effective uses of multimedia in higher education.

Reflection: The task of integrating the whole package of interactive design, pedagogy, educational software, supporting materials, contents and indexing, graphic design and desk-top publishing, CD-ROM mastering and finally manufacture taught me about the end-to-end process in designing educational materials.

I began working with David Riddle to assemble and produce a CD-ROM containing the tools for creating multimedia which were available in 1989. Later I supported a team led by David Riley to create a CD-ROM called 'Planet Earth: a Gaia Library" which provided materials for learning about James Lovelock's theories.

Reflection: I learnt through visiting the CD production plant how much cheaper and error-free the production process for CDs in comparison to audio-tapes. The implications of this cost equation and the direct access to large volumes of data made the CD-ROM the obvious choice for delivering educational materials opening new horizons in multimedia, interactivity and large data-sets and thus became my focus for the next five years before the internet arrived.

When I took the post of Senior Lecturer with Stephen Heppell in September 1990, I continued on the same project taking a leading role in the design and production of the CD-ROM packages and working on the Insights for Teachers and Parents CD-ROM in particular developing software and the overall design of the CD-ROM and its packaging. I advised and supported the other teams in the project from Coventry Polytechnic, the University of Cambridge and Keele University who provided substantial opportunity for developing thinking through the dialogue around our mutual design and production.

I prepared master CD-ROM 'disk images' and took them on magneto-optical cartridges to the headquarters and factory of Sonopress in Guterslöh in Germany. Part of the Bertelsmann publishing conglomerate, Sonopress were a leading manufacturer of Compact Disc content.

Many other products, papers and presentations were created under the publishing umbrella of this project.

Contribution: Working within a small team I helped design, collate, program and took sole responsibility for technical production of some of the earliest CD-ROMs developed for education. My part: 20% (with Stephen Heppell and others)

Originality, impact and importance: Our exploration of the educational design to discover the potential of new interactive multimedia on CD-ROM led to some of the first such products created for higher education in Europe. At the time I had to travel to a factory in Germany, since there were few facilities in the UK for manufacture and very few places we could prototype the CD-ROM materials. They were subsequently distributed worldwide with international publishing agreements. Each CD-ROM pioneered interactive and participative learning design in the years before internet. (Neesham, 1990)