Impact of Educational Multinational Multimedia Packages on the Understanding Capabilities of Corporation School Children in Chennai, India

Teaching and learning environment which use multimedia based resources greatly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of learning by engaging students at a deeper level than may otherwise be possible. This is particularly so in situations where “real world” phenomena and processes are being taught. Using such a multimedia package in teaching science concepts is novel. This paper reports on the successful development of a multimedia package dealing with science communication to school children. Teaching the complex science concepts for children in a conventional classroom setting is challenging because students have difficulty in visualizing the techniques and processes involved. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that many of the processes occur naturally over longer time periods and so cannot be easily integrated into normal teaching environment. The multimedia software package incorporates several different media modes including text, drawings, photographs, graphics and animation. The evaluation of this package was done using experimental research carried out with Tamil medium fifth standard corporation school students which indicated that it provided greater insight and understanding of the complex science concepts being taught.