A Few Comments About Media Types
Media types for online courseware vary according to ease of creation, ease of
use from a repository, ease of use of related tools, need for support for media
creation and use, bandwidth required, and other factors.
Please consider the table below.
|
Media Type |
Ease of Creation |
Need for Special Hardware or Software |
Need for Development Support |
Bandwidth Requirement |
Availability of Repository for Reuse |
|
Text or Hypertext |
Easy |
Low |
Small |
Low |
Moderate |
|
Text or Hypertext and Graphics |
Moderate |
Moderate |
Moderate |
Moderate |
High |
|
Text, or Hypertext, Graphics, and Audio for Streaming |
Difficult |
Considerable |
Considerable |
Considerable |
Moderate |
|
Video for Streaming |
Difficult |
High |
High |
High |
Low |
In the above, cost of development generally increases as difficulty of creation, need for special hardware or software, need for development support, and bandwidth increase, and cost of development generally decreases as media are available from repositories for reuse. However, issues such as rights and conditions to use media from repositories can make such media use less than totally attractive; for example, publishing companies will often allow reuse of their media in online courseware creation only as long as media related texts are in use by the institution creating the courseware.