Project Description

The Multimedia Centre in the Faculty of Arts at UWA is interested in finding ways of promoting creative and innovative use of multimedia by students. We are interested in integrating multimedia work into mainstream courses of study in the humanities and social sciences.

In 1996, Fardon visited the "Burning the Interface" exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. One particular exhibit, "Virtual Persons" by Luc Courchesne (University of Montreal), so inspired Fardon that he developed a model for student-produced multimedia, which we have called "Interactive Conversations" - based on the basic concept of " Virtual Persons". The "Interactive Conversations" model involves the students actively creating dialogues, filming scenes, capturing video, and creating a multimedia presentation. The basis of the concept is an encounter between an actor (on screen) and the subject (computer user). The encounter can be re-enacted by the subject many times, each time following a different path through the conversation.

The expected student learning outcomes can be logically divided into two categories: Generic Learning Outcomes and Language Learning Outcomes. This project involves the active evaluation of "Interactive Conversations" projects being undertaken by various language teaching staff in the Faculty in 2000.