About HITS for Education

DISCOVERING HOW BEST TO USE MULTIMEDIA IN EDUCATION IN A CULTURAL CONTEXT

Three universities (UPEI, UdeM, and UNB) in two provinces (PEI and NB) created the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research in Culture, Multimedia, Technology, and Cognition-Education (CMTC-E) to investigate how multimedia can best enhance learning in a variety of cultural contexts. The Francophone and English cultures of NB and PEI provided a unique opportunity for cross-cultural investigations. Focusing on writing, music, language, and thinking, CMTC-E researchers aimed to delineate a culturally sensitive grammar of multimedia. This grammar, informing a model of the learner, should guide educators, technology designers, families and individuals in decisions involving learning and technology. Equipment and space were needed for laboratories dedicated to testing, multimedia development, communications, cognitive science, and usability; and for largescale digital storage and retrieval. 

HITS for Education held two conferences, one in 2009 and one in 2011, providing opportunities for educators, researchers, and students from many disciplines to meet and share ideas about advances in research on audio-visual and text-based technologies employed for the benefit of education. As every educator is aware, harnessing the power of computer multimedia technologies can potentially enhance teaching and learning. But how best to use it?  We are now focusing on a publication to synthesize these two conferences, and to answer that question.