Designing multimedia learning application with learning theories: A case study on a computer science subject with 2-D and 3-D animated versions

Education is important; whether it is at the primary, secondary or even at the tertiary/ university level. The government of Malaysia has put in a great deal of emphasis on educating the population, at least at the primary and early secondary level. It is now an undisputed fact that many learning institutions are finding new means to traditional methods in order to bridge learning efficiency with technology. "Universities today are in transition. Much of the change we see is driven by economic pressures and demand for graduates who will be able to function in a knowledge society" (Franklin and Peat, 2001). The growing awareness amongst educators has resulted in the diversification of learning and teaching processes in these changing times. In Malaysia, the institutes of higher learning are currently moving towards a more multimedia oriented classroom (Teoh and Neo, 2006).

Traditional educational content can now be transformed into interactive multimedia content by using authoring packages (Roselli et al., 2003). This fact has enabled the teacher to innovate their instructional designs by presenting the education content in an interactive and multi-sensory manner rather than the traditional single media format. This infusion of multimedia into teaching and learning has altered instructional strategies in educational institutions and many colleges and universities, including those in Malaysia are currently gearing their teaching and learning towards one which uses multimedia technology to enhance the student's learning process (Teoh and Neo, 2006).

Developing effective materials (in any medium) that facilitates learning requires an understanding and appreciation of the principles underlying how people learn. Just as engineering is the application of basic principles from physics and chemistry, and as medicine is the application of basic principles of biology, instruction is the application of basic principles of learning (Alessi and Trollip, 2001).When a developer plans to develop an educational courseware or an e-learning application, the principles of learning to apply to the application should be thought about first.

The subject that was chosen to be the domain of this study was a topic in computer science education, which is Operating Systems, specifically on 'Memory Management Concepts'. Operating Systems (OS) is a field studied in Computer Science, Information Science and Computer Engineering. Some of its topics require a careful and detailed explanation from the lecturer, as they often involve many theoretical concepts and somewhat complex calculations, demanding a certain degree of abstraction from the students if they are to gain full understanding. The traditional course model prepares and exhibits slides and presents some theoretical exercises has been found to be insufficient, to assure a précised comprehension of what is being taught and without a practical vision, the students tend to lose touch of the introduced concepts (Maia et al., 2005) . Sample prototypes were developed displaying learning content in two versions: 2-D animation and 3-D animation .The prototypes that were developed for this study was given the name OSIMM (Operating Systems in Memory Management).

This paper first discusses on the learning theories applied in this study, then Mayer's Cognitive theory of multimedia learning is explained , thirdly, the use of animation is discussed, and finally, screen design of the prototypes (OSIMM) are shown.