Factors influencing academics' development of interactive multimodal technology-mediated distance higher education courses

Abstract

Advances in technology and the continued emergence of the Web as a major source of global information have encouraged tertiary educators to take advantage of this growing array of resources and move beyond traditional face-to-face and distance education correspondence modes toward a rich technology-mediated learning environment. Moreover, ready access to multimedia at the desk-top has provided an opportunity for educators to develop flexible, engaging and interactive learning resources incorporating multimedia and hypermedia. This study investigates pedagogical, individual and institutional factors influencing the adoption and integration of educational technology by academics at a regional Australian university for the purpose of developing interactive multimodal technology-mediated distance education courses. These courses include a range of multimodal learning objects and multiple representations of content in order to cater for different learning styles and modal preferences. The findings of this study revealed that a range of pedagogical, individual and institutional factors influence academics' development of interactive multimodal technology-mediated distance education courses. Implications for distance education providers and individual academics arising from these factors and subsequent recommendations are presented.