The Description of the Course "Multimedia in Education"

The challenging course in the whole teaching and learning process, that is "Multimedia in Education", was launched at the department of the Modern Languages of Moldova State University in the Fall semester in 2002. This course is the logical result of the personal experience of Dr.Valentina Singhirei in the field of using multimedia in education for more than 20 years in ESP and TEFL, and as her collaboration with the IATP and the ARC staff in the intensive and extensive implementation of the Internet and other multimedia tools in education, in general.
Within the introduction to the course the students are supposed to get know what multimedia mean, how they are useful, what their limitations are, and what the prerequisites are for their successful employment.

In the subsequent lectures, classes, and presentations given with the support of the lecturer and the IATP assistants the students will be exposed to the overview of tools in education, with the identification of all relevant technologies, and be acquainted with the information and practice projects on how to make them and use for academic purposes.
The aim of the course is the development of a new vision of implementing tools in the learning/teaching strategies for TEFL and ESP, in particular, and for other fields of teaching/learning process, in general.
The main part of the course should identify, explain, and give examples of how each of these tools can be used to enhance a course. The explanation why a new tool might be used rather than an old one (i.e. blackboard) and when old tools are still sufficient is of paramount importance. Also, the students are supposed to be exposed to the samples when the teacher could tailor this to different types of courses, i.e. content-based, communicative, distance learning or whatever.
As regards practice projects, students should be forced to do multiple theoretical course-designs implementing new tools, including a clear explanation of how the tool will help their course be better, and why they choose it instead of something else. They should also be urged to do multiple projects/presentations for the class demonstrating their abilities to use the tools under discussion. The new course is a big challenge for Dr.V.Singhirei and her students.