**2.4.2 Multimedia**

598 Mechanical Engineering

including elements of interactivity with the receiver user. The development of several versions for each application leads to the diversification of methods, which range from a

The tutorial aims to introduce participants to the educational process in a given subject, with the final goal of assimilating a minimum level of knowledge. But there are some

Educational methodology is rich in media content (static content, motion screenshots, animation or video instructions), which is necessary in order to exemplify the necessary

 A tutorial cannot replace a course, so theoretical aspects are usually overlooked in favour of practical ones. Theory is only mentioned when it becomes absolutely

In general, if software is permanently installed, the tutorial makes reference to the way

 A minimum of IT resources and documentation (for the hardware, the software and the prerequisite knowledge), time and motivation are the only things necessary to acquire a

Usually the tutorial starts with an introductory section that informs the student about the objectives and the nature of the lesson (Borza et al., 2007). The information is then presented in a determined form. Questions that are addressed to the student receive an answer. The program considers the student's response and provides a reaction in order to strengthen the

2. determining the target audience who should attend the tutorial. The difficulty level, as well as the estimated time of browsing must be determined. These two affect the degree of motivation for learning. It is preferable to have a short tutorial that covers a more

There is a focus on a particular topic, without details about adjacent concepts.

simple slideshow to rich multimedia applications.

necessary to explain an applied situation.

**2.4.1 The steps involved in making a tutorial** 

understanding and to increase student performance.

Monitoring of the student on browsing the lesson;

Additional guidance depending on the accuracy of the responses;

Usually there are several steps to be followed when creating a tutorial:

limited topic, instead a richer one that demands for a lot more effort.

1. establishment of the subject that will be treated in the tutorial;

The constituent parts of the tutorial are:

Presentation of the information;

Sequencing/Segmentation of the lesson;

of using multimedia software;

steps in solving the problem.

tutorial.

Introduction;

Motivating the student;

 Questions and answers; Answer analysis;

Completion of the tutorial.

fundamental differences from other educational processes:

Multimedia is everything you can hear or see: texts, books, pictures, music, sounds, CDs, videos, DVDs, Records, Films, and more. Multimedia comes in many different formats. On the Internet you will find many of these elements embedded in web pages, and today's web browsers have support for a number of multimedia formats. The support for sounds, animations and videos is handled in different ways by different browsers. Some elements can be handled inline, some requires a plug-in and some requires an Active control. Multimedia elements (like sounds or videos) are stored in media files. The most common way to discover the media type is to look at the file extension. When a browser sees the file extensions .htm or .html, it will assume that the file is an HTML page. The .xml extension indicates an XML file and the .css extension indicates a style sheet.

Picture formats are recognized by extensions like .gif and .jpg. Multimedia elements also have their own file formats with different extensions.
