The purpose of this paper is to report student and faculty perceptions from an introductory management information systems course that uses multimedia, specifically streaming video, as a vehicle for teaching students skills in Microsoft Excel and Access.
Student perceptions are captured via a qualitative survey administered at the end of the course in which a multimedia component is employed. Faculty perceptions are the experiences of the authors who also taught the courses that contained the multimedia component.
Results from the survey indicate that using a multimedia component to convey course material provides benefits to students in the form of greater satisfaction with the learning process, a greater understanding of the material, as well as a reduction in the amount of effort required to complete homework assignments. Furthermore, from an instructor perspective, a marked reduction in visits from students who required additional exposure to previously covered material, a decrease in prep time during subsequent semesters, and seamless portability to online learning contexts are experienced.
While prior, experimental research in this area has illustrated how various technology attributes can be employed to positively affect learning outcomes, the paper seeks to provide the perceptions of both students and instructors when a multimedia environment is used to supplement or replace the teaching of procedural knowledge in the classroom. By offering a faculty perspective, the paper hopes to provide guidance to others who may be considering such an undertaking by sharing the pros and cons of implementing a multimedia component into a course.
