Creating Multimedia Learning Materials for Improved Teacher Training

Abstract

When teachers consider the effect of different multimedia materials on students, ways they learn from it and how to motivate students to become active learners, their teaching methods gradually change and improve. That consequently affects student’s understanding of the presented topics. With the evaluation of teacher’s support and knowledge about the use of multimedia tools that was done within the framework of the project “ICT in teacher training study programmes of University of Ljubljana”, we could find which multimedia tools and online environments would benefit teachers the most in their effort to apply more innovative, constructivist approaches in teaching. For that purpose, we carried out workshops with the chosen topics as a form of support for the teachers, who then applied their new gained knowledge and skills in their lectures. In our paper, we present the results of analyses of the surveys, carried out after the workshops for teachers and the student’s feedback after the teacher’s lectures. We focused mainly on determining the effectiveness and adequacy of such workshops in encouraging teachers for the use of ICT. Results show that such workshops are very suitable for teachers who wish to improve on their teaching skills and methods of using different skills to create interactive multimedia material. The student’s feedback implied that the students felt they understood the content better and that they liked the teacher’s implication of ICT in the lectures.