Creative Studies MLC1013: April 2010

What is multimedia? Multimedia is media that uses a combination of different forms. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, images, animation, video and interactivity content forms. Multimedia can be used in various areas such as advertisements, art, education, entertainment, web design and so on. It is widely used nowadays in which they enhances our living lifestyles.

Can multimedia enhance creativity in one self? According to an Experimental Investigation of Emotion Generated by Dance Dance Revolution, It is widely acknowledge that media, including image, music, text, video games, generate an emotional response. Emotional response is a reaction to a particular intrapsychic feeling that motivates some action or behavioral response. Reeves and Nass (1996) showed in the studies that people relate to computers and video games in ways that are similar to how they relate to people in the real world, which is with emotion. Gee (2003) suggests that video games operate with principles of learning that encourage active and critical thinking. The generation population that is expose to video games became smarter and more thoughtful yet increases their capacity for creativity. According to a research that was conducted by Dance Dance Revolution on video games players, after players played the game, a classic, two-dimensional model of emotion was created and the emotion can be dissected into the dimensions of valence and arousal. Valence is the extent to which a study participant feels positive or negative after a mood manipulation and arousal is the extent to which a participant feels energized either physically or mentally. It is said that moderate levels of game-induced arousal will facilitate creativity more than high and low levels of arousal. Valence, otherwise called affect in the emotion literature, is thought to prime related thoughts, and since the average person has more positive thoughts than negative thoughts, a positive affect will generate more new ideas than negative affect. A theory that partly based on a series of studies ( Isen Daubman, & Nowicki, 1984, 1958, 1987) found people in whom positive affect had been induced outperformed those who control their thought. They tended to give more unusual first associates to neutral words or give more out of the box ideas and found more solutions to problem- solving tasks. Playing video games and other multimedia tend to create positive mood rather than negative mood, and positive mood will definitely increase the number of original ideas produced. Multimedia does boost ones creativity.

Multimedia plays a vital role in education helping students to build up their creativity at a very young age. In a traditional classroom, teachers play a dominant role as they provide all the information needed to students. Students on the other hand, are passive learners and follow teacher’s instruction blindly. But today’s world has changed so much when Communication and Information Technology (ICT) is incorporated into teaching and learning. Students are now more active and they play an important role in learning with the help of multimedia. According to Papert (1996), young people’s access to information is more interactive and they learn for the pleasure and benefits of discovery. For example, students learn through slides that were shown to them during class and through the Internet, they obtain wide range of information and special ideas. Besides that, Scrimshaw (2004) also points that the implementation of ICT in the classroom is “both an innovation in technology and teaching”. Multimedia that is a combination of text, graphic, sound, animation and video is a powerful presentation tool, which can be effectively used for teaching and it is easier for students to absorb. By using method, learning can be livelier, because it is a give and take process, students involve more throughout the process causing them to think more and be more creative. Now students are more independent in learning, they will find the way to solve problems and think outside the box when needed. When students are no more spoon-fed by teachers, they need to work and think harder, the more they think and imagine, they become more creative. According to Vaughan (1997), students are stimulated with audio, they will have about 20% retention rate, audio-visual is up to 30% and in interactive multimedia presentation, the retention rate is up to 60%. Hence, multimedia tools can enhance many skills such as, communication, critical thinking and most importantly, creativity.

There’s certainly a lot more to say about Multimedia. Multimedia web designing for example, as we know, multimedia consists of text, graphics, audio, photo images, animations, video and many more. All of these are what we used nowadays for making a dynamic multimedia websites. When the components play together, the outcome is very interesting and attractive. When such elements are incorporated in a website design, the site becomes interactive and appealing. Based on the article written by Cyrus Bilimoria (2008), depending on the objective and the message that you would want to convey to your targeted audiences, you need to select the media elements to be used in the Multimedia web Design. In order to attract audiences into the particular website, creativity must be applied in such circumstances, which is why creativity also plays an important role in web designing.

In conclusion, multimedia helps in enhancing creativity in on self, and also plays a vital role to build up their creativity at a very young age. As in global competition, not only it changes in the field of education, multimedia helps business fields to learn technology and transfer the learning to future entrepreneurs. Not only multimedia can bring entertainment and interactivity, it is prior to build an advanced environment in the future.

Reference

Vaughan, Taay.(1997). Multimedia making it work. (3rd edition) New Delhi: Tata McGraw

Hill.

Turgut, Y., & Irgin, Pelin (2009). Young learners’ language games learning via computer

games. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 1 (2009)

Bardzell J., & Bardzell, S. (2005). Fostering creativity in learning media: Applying insights learned from creative design software. In P. Krommers & G. Rocjards (Eds). Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia, and Telecommunications 2005 Chesapeake, VA, USA: AACE [Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education].

Agnew, P. W., Kellerman, A. S. & Meyer, J. (1996). Multimedia in the Classroom, Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Reeves, B., & Nass, C. (1996). The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications and Cambridge University Press.

Gee, J. (2004) What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York and Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Isen, A., Daubman, K. & Nowicki, G. (1987). Positive affect facilitates creative problem- solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology